Category Archives: Strategy

Why the progressive movement is suddenly torn over AOC Reply

by • Activism, Electoralism/Democratism, Strategy • Tags:

For those who ever thought Alexandria was a serious radical or revolutionary, remember that she was an intern for Ted Kennedy, memorialized (as opposed to celebrating) the death of John McCain, and has never taken positions any more “radical” than do-gooder reformist and SJWish ones. She has never had anti-imperialism as a core focus of her politics, not even on the level of a moderate anti-interventionist like Tulsi Gabbard. She has never had much interest in class politics beyond conventional welfare statism. Her “Green New Deal” is, at best, an effort to shift the focus of state-capitalism/crony-capitalism away from Big Oil toward Big Green. And she seems to subscribe to the standard SJW paradigm on “social issues.” At what point has she ever called for dismantling, the overthrow of the ruling class, or global anti-imperialism? Nowhere, as far I can tell.

By Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbein

Politico

Soon after her upset primary victory against a Democratic Party boss in 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez traveled to St. Louis to prove her victory wasn’t a one-off by campaigning for Cori Bush, who was similarly taking on a longtime Democratic congressman.

“What I’m asking for you to do is to support my sister, Cori Bush,” Ocasio-Cortez said at a rally. “It is so important what we did, we just came off of this win in New York, but people were trying to say, ‘It’s just one place.’”

Bush lost that race but is challenging Rep. William “Lacy” Clay again in an August primary. She has more money and higher name recognition, and earned the endorsement of Bernie Sanders. But Ocasio-Cortez isn’t helping Bush this time.

After her victory in 2018, Ocasio-Cortez encouraged progressives to follow in her footsteps and run for Congress with the backing of the left-wing group Justice Democrats, even if it meant taking on powerful incumbents. Sixteen months later, the Missouri primary isn’t the only one Ocasio-Cortez is steering clear of.

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Rawabi and the Case for Cooperative Governance Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Strategy • Tags: ,

By Jidy Chitta

Startup Societies Foundation

As the startup societies movement has matured a few core tenets have emerged to explain the value of creating startup societies to the broader world. The concept of competitive governance is one of those tenets. In a nutshell, the theory of competitive governance advocates for a world where governments compete for citizens in a similar fashion that companies compete for customers.

This governance-as-a-service market would then incentivized governments to innovate more solutions to their citizens’ problems. In 2011, Patri Friedman explained that “…a startup sector for government means more competition, more new ideas, [which] means things will eventually improve in the current large providers (existing countries).”

Describing government as a dated industry ripe for disruption is useful for catalyzing ideas for innovative alternatives. However, framing startup societies as rivals to existing countries does not direct the next iteration of experiments to the most pragmatic path forward and can alienate the industries most important allies: existing countries.

Surveying the industry as a whole indicates that a market of collaborative startup societies will be the main driver of growth. Framing opportunities this way opens up new possibilities to develop solutions to difficult problems around the world. While there are many examples that demonstrate this point, the Rawabi project is a particularly inspiring case to explore.

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Founding Startup Societies: A Step by Step Guide Reply

by • Activism, Strategy

Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. The proliferation of startup societies is the modern rendition of the proliferation of the free cities of the Middle Ages.

Available from Amazon.

Founding Startup Societies: A Step by Step Guide by [Frazier, Mark, McKinney, Joseph ]

This Guidebook provides comprehensive how-to information to build Startup Societies. These are small areas that innovate in governance, such as Shenzhen, Dubai, and Singapore.

The Authors wrote this Guidebook to radically lower barriers for launching Startup Society ventures. This Guidebook covers twenty steps to create a Startup Society from ideation to running a full-scale city. It also introduces unique best practices for making Startup Societies: creating consortiums, launching competitions, sharing upsides with local communities, leading with a gift, and scaling from small locations to larger ones.

The Guidebook backs up its guidelines with fifty years of research and field work in over fifty countries. It is a great starting point for entrepreneurs who want to use policies to rejuvenate rural and urban neighborhoods around the world, or to create new ones. It is for everyone with a game-changing Startup Society idea and the drive to achieve it, in their local communities or elsewhere.

Episode 101 – Season 5 with Bellamy Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Sexuality and the State, Strategy • Tags: , ,

A great interview that covers many topics that are relevant to ATS such as the value of “pan-secessionism” as opposed to “world domination anarchism,”and left-wing authoritarianism. Listen here.

“Since Bellamy was here at the start of The Brilliant project it is great to check in where he is at regarding the things we are talking and thinking about. Obviously Bellamy and I have been having similar experiences in the Anarchist Space over the past few years. This episode is about some dissimilar experiences and what is next with each of us and our respective media projects.”

The Conservative Anarchist Solution 3

by • Activism, American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Health and Medicine, Immigration, Left and Right, Strategy

This is the transcript of a talk I gave to the H.L. Mencken Club on November 9, 2019.

By Keith Preston

When it comes to questions of strategy, it is important to base one’s approach on a reasonable estimation of the probable circumstances one will be facing in the future.

I constantly hear claims that there will be a civil war at some point, or an apocalyptic revolution, or a coup, or the election of a populist leader that will set everything straight.

But the probable future of the United States will be something more like what is actually happening on the West Coast at present. In the future, the United States will increasingly start to resemble a Latin American nation in terms of demographics, socioeconomic class structures, and political characteristics.

Many people on the Right tend to focus on the demographic angle, and it is certainly true that the US is experiencing a demographic transformation in the sense that in the future there will be no ethnic majority, but merely a collection of minorities.

However, just as important is the fact that class divisions continue to widen in the US. The gap between rich and poor is the widest it has been since the 1920s, and there is no evidence this will change in the foreseeable future. I would argue that the widening class divisions probably have dozens of causes rather than any singular cause, but it is an issue that is just as important as the demographic issue.

At present, California is starting to look like what a traditional so-called “Third World” model society looks like. In Third World societies, and traditional societies generally, class structures are such that the very rich live in opulent luxury, with a relatively small middle class of ruling class functionaries, and masses of workers and poor people. That is the picture that is emerging in California.

Certain areas of California are among the wealthiest in the nation. There is also a middle class and upper middle class of professionals, tech workers, public sector workers, bureaucrats, and corporate managerial personnel, but what Americans traditionally think of as the conventional working to middle class is shrinking in size, and the ranks of the poor, including those experiencing Third World or Fourth World levels of poverty, are growing. For example, some areas of California have poverty levels that approximate those of the Congo. California cities have a massive homeless population of the kind normally associated with Latin America or South Asia. Certain medieval diseases like typhus and leprosy are making a comeback among the poor in California as well.

It has been said in the past that California is the bellwether of the nation, and I suspect that will prove to be true in this scenario as well. Increasingly, US politics is starting to resemble Third World politics with openly demagogic figures on both the left and right beginning to appear. In Third World politics, it is not uncommon for open socialists and communists as well as right-wing extremists to get elected to parliaments. Corruption, nepotism, ethnic spoils systems, institutionalized bribery, and flagrant incompetence are not exceptions but the expected norm.  We see plenty of examples of this happening in the United States as well.

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A History of Decentralization 5

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Environment, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Men and Women, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Science and Technology, Secession, Strategy

aragon.black
Jun 11, 2019
14 minute read (full)

First let’s decentralize history…

This month’s thematic has been a real challenge for us and raised many questions in our minds. Why? The history of decentralization is complex and non-linear. But most of all, it is difficult to be considered from an objective point of view, stripped of the predominance of the state.

Talking about decentralization leads obviously to discuss about centralization; to find the ghosts of history, to cross-reference the victories and failures of social-political movements; to discover some contemporary alternatives to the generalized centralization of our lives. Unless we consider that a technology is neutral, in the end, we cannot talk about decentralization without talking about governance, suffrage, politics or apoliticism, autonomy, organization… and the dominant model of centralization: the nation-state. Still, if a very vast literature and documentation concerns rise of states, it must be stated that the one granted to the opposite, i. e. the absence of a state, is almost non-existent. More…

It took a decade for the Declaration of Independence to matter in American life Reply

by • Activism, Strategy, Uncategorized

Stanford News

Two Stanford historians discuss how the United States’ Declaration of Independence became one of the pillars of American civic life and other lesser-known historical facts about what happened on July 4, 1776.

BY ALEX SHASHKEVICH

On the historic day of July 4, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was approved by Congress, Thomas Jefferson, its primary author, went on a small shopping spree and bought seven pairs of women’s gloves.

Declaration of Independence

Celebrating the Declaration of Independence on July 4 is an American tradition, but it took a while for that tradition to develop. (Image credit: todd taulman / Getty Images)

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11 Micronations in Europe You Never Knew Existed Reply

by • Activism, Secession, Strategy

This needs to become a global trend, like McDonald’s.

By Harry Stewart

The culture trip.

We’ve all heard of places like Liechtenstein and the Vatican, tiny European nations with minuscule populations. Yet these are internationally recognized states—actual countries, if you will. Even more bizarre are Europe’s micronations: quirky little self-proclaimed lands which have come into existence for the strangest of reasons. Here are the most unusual on the continent.

The Republic of Saugeais

This tiny slice of eastern France actually formed as a state in jest back in 1947. The owner of a restaurant of the same name jokingly asked a visiting government prefect if they had permission to enter his kingdom. Upon further interrogation, the sharp-witted proprietor invented details of his kingdom on the spot, and was somehow officially appointed president of the new republic. Primarily made up of good-humored retirees, Saugeais once elected one of its many presidents after the latter received a particularly vigorous round of applause.

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How to build your own country Reply

by • Activism, Secession, Strategy

By Joe Quirk

CNN

If you’d like to live in a country that caters to your values and lifestyle, why not build your own? Nearly half the earth’s surface is a blue frontier over which no country holds sovereignty, and startup cities that float permanently in international waters will soon be economically feasible as construction materials get cheaper, greener and printable in 3D form. These will be homesteads on the high seas — or seasteads.

Joe Quirk

Joe QuirkBy 2020, Blue Frontiers, our for-profit spinoff from The Seasteading Institute, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, plans to provide fresh jurisdictions on floating sustainable islands designed to adapt organically to sea level change. These will be privately financed and built by local maritime construction firms employing the latest in sustainable blue tech.We’ve already raised our seed round of investments to perform research and secure legislation, so get ready for the next wave of nations.Of course, the need for seasteads could not be greater. Americans are fed up with their government — in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans reported that they trust neither the Democratic or Republican establishment to represent them.But this isn’t a new sentiment. America’s founders were also fed up with their government. The New World served as a platform where political innovators could experiment with unconventional ideas. As new states and territories were established piecemeal across the frontier, they became incubators for novel ideas of governance — eventually shaping the country we have today.

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Why the “Far Left” (and “Far Right”) is Not Radical Enough 1

by • Activism, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right, Strategy

If there is one point that I have tried to make clear during the entire 20 years or so that I have been doing ATS, it is that the solution to globalization/globalism/imperialism/whatever one wants to call it is global revolutionary struggle, which is a struggle that (obviously) transcends most other boundaries and conflicts.

Opponents of the Empire may vary infinitely in their specific tribal affiliations: ideological, economic, religious, ethnic, cultural, moral, technological, etc. Yet the first question that has to be asked involves the issue of how the scattered tribes of resistance can collectively fight the common enemy. If one were living in 100 A.D. and trying to determine how to best resist the Roman Empire, the question would obviously be “How can the many tribes that are subject to the Empire engage in effective resistance?” The situation is essentially the same in 2019.

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Will the Red Tribe Revolt in the Face of Blue Tribe Victory? 7

by • Activism, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Secession, Strategy

Leading fourth generation warfare theorist Bill Lind, a paleconservative, discusses the possibility of a Red Tribe revolt as the Blue Tribe increasingly achieves national hegemony. Some highlights:

“…But something far more powerful than any issue is motivating the base: an ever-stronger feeling that it’s us against them.  “Us” is average people who work for a living, follow the rules, go to church on Sunday, and try to be good fathers, mothers, and neighbors.  “Them” is a mix of elites who despise average people, blacks and immigrants who live on working Americans’ tax payments while committing violent crimes and the Globalist 1% who get rich by exporting average peoples’ jobs….I don’t think it will accept that outcome, not when a radically Left Democratic president starts opening the borders, turning the White House into a LGBTQ wedding chapel and lets millions of black criminals out of jail while giving them the vote.  At that point, there is going to be a rebellion.

In much of the South, the rebellion could take an old/new form: nullification.  That issue seemed to be settled before the Civil War, when the Supreme Court ruled that states could not nullify acts of the federal government.  But in recent years, nullification has come back, not from the Right but from the Left, and, because it is coming from the Left, it has been accepted by the Establishment.  Two clear cases are laws regarding marijuana and enforcement of federal laws against illegal immigration.  On the former, state after state has legalized marijuana despite federal law that makes its sale or use illegal.  It is as clear a case of state-level nullification as I can imagine.  With regard to illegal immigrants, many Left-ruled cities have proclaimed themselves “sanctuary cities” where local police will not enforce federal immigration laws.

This is more or less the same argument I have been making for decades. The Blue Tribe (“progressives”)  have largely won the “culture wars” on most issues, and the “Blue zones” (large cities and coasts) are where most of the US population lives, with the Red Tribe located in the territorially large but sparsely populated rural areas. Decentralization involving urban-surburban-rural separation would largely  have the effect of achieving self-determination for most cultural factions while underming the state/ruling class/power elite at the same found. An anarchist-led revolutionary populism with a  far-left/radical-center/far-right “base” against the neoliberal/establishment is clearly the way to achieve such an objective. Think something like Italy’s Five Star Movement or the Pirate Parties on steroids.

One of the objections that is often raised to my perspective is that people will still be oppressed by authoritarian rightists in the Blue zones, or by authoritarian leftists in Red zones. But that is why pan-anarchism is necessary. There will not merely be Blue and Red zones, but purple, green, pink, lavendar, black, white, brown, yellow, and polka-dotted zones as well. This is not science fiction. Ancient Greece was a collection of thousands of cities with hundreds of different political systems. The Holy Roman Empire was a collection of hundreds of kingdoms and thousands of unique territories. The prototypes are already there. There are thousands of autonomous communities and startup societies around the world today.

Read the entire article here.