It is also interesting to consider the condition of the various anti-state movements at the present time. Even as cultural, socioeconomic and political polarization are the widest they have been in a century, even as the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe are faced with what is largely a class based insurgency within their own respective ranks, and even as the Democratic and Republican Parties are internally fracturing, the anti-state movements have achieved very little in the way of progress, with the exception of legalizing marijuana in a handful of states. The Ron Paul movement created a foundation for the growth of the wider liberty movement, an opportunity that was subsequently squandered with almost unbelievable incompetence on the part of Rand Paul. It is now, in 2016, Donald Trump rather than Rand Paul who is the true heir to the Ron Paul legacy (in the sense of cultivating an anti-establishment populism from the right).

  Ten years ago, I wrote:

  The crumbling of the US regime within a global framework of greater leanings towards (partial) decentralization and polycentrism will provide libertarian radicals in North America with unprecedented opportunities. It would be a foolish error of a truly historic magnitude if we were to let these opportunities go to waste.

  But this is precisely what “libertarian radicals in North America” have done. I suggested at the time that anarchists, libertarians, anti-statists, anti-authoritarians, and decentralists would have to move past their focus on sectarianism, locate common points of unity, and develop a viable common strategy for the achievement of actual political influence. As I said at the time,

  Obviously, the only kind of ideological framework suitable for such an effort would be something akin to Voltairine de Cleyre’s “anarchism without adjectives”, i.e., a non-sectarian, non-purist, tendency open to anarchists of all hyphenated tendencies as well as their fellow travelers. When I met Abbie Hoffman in 1987, I asked him what he thought the most common mistake made by radical activists was and he quickly replied that the main problem was that too many radicals waste time arguing over secondary issues like this or that “ism” rather than focusing on more immediate problems. We would do well to heed his advice. Larry Gambone describes the problem with doing otherwise:

  “Read even the most superficial book on anarchism and you will discover that many forms of anarchism exist-anarchist-communism, individualist-anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, free-market anarchism, anarcho-feminism and green-anarchism. This division results from people taking their favorite economic system or extrapolating from what they see as the most important social struggle and linking this to anarchism….The hyphenation presents a danger. Like it or not, everyone, without exception, compromises, modifies or softens their beliefs at some point. Where they compromise is what is important. Do they give up on the anarchism of the other aspect? You can be sure that most hyphenated anarchists will prefer to drop the libertarian side of the hyphen. There are plenty examples of this occurring.”

  In other words, our core creed must be “Anarchy First!” applied within context of decentralism, populism and libertarianism. Here is a set of potential “first principles” for an anarchist-led libertarian-populism:

  1) Minimal and decentralized government organized on the basis of community sovereignty and federalism.

  2) A worker-based, cooperative economy functioning independently of the state, the corporate infrastructure and central banking.

  3) A radically civil libertarian legal system ordered on the basis of individual sovereignty, individual rights and restitutive justice.

  4) A neutralist, non-interventionist foreign policy and a military defense system composed of decentralized, voluntary militia confederations.

  5) A system of cultural pluralism organized on the basis of voluntary association, civil society, localism, regionalism, decentralism and mutual aid.

  6) The achievement of the above through an all-fronts strategy of grassroots local organizing, local electoral action, secession, civil disobedience, militant strikes and boycotts, organized tax resistance, alternative infrastructure and armed struggle.

  This is a much generalized program that anti-state radicals of virtually any ideological stripe ought to be able to agree upon. I suspect that those who do not agree might be inclined towards an excess of purism, sectarianism or utopianism.

  However, “an excess of purism, sectarianism, or utopianism” continues to be the norm in the various libertarian, anti-state or anarchist milieus much to the detriment of the anti-authoritarians.

  There are a couple of issues that are serious obstacles to building an anarchist movement that is capable of a moving past the usual sectarianism that is found among the hyphenated tendencies. Most an-coms and “anarchists of the left” seem to hold to a de facto Marxist outlook on economics, and many an-caps seem to go to the opposite extreme and become Austrian fundamentalists.

  The same problem exists with social and cultural questions. Many an-coms (and some left-libertarians) seem to internalize the standard “social justice warrior” paradigm, and anarchists who don’t hold to that paradigm often seem to go in the other direction and become neo-reactionaries or something equivalent.

  Is it really necessary for anarchists to adopt these kinds of extremist positions?

  Is it not preferable to recognize that, yes, the Marxists are right that workers have frequently been oppressed by powerful business interests while, yes, the Austrians are right that state-socialist central planning is awful?

  Is it not preferable to recognize that, yes, terrible oppression has historically been inflicted on people of color, women, LGBT people, and others, and that problems still exist in these areas, while recognizing authoritarian dangers associated with PC culture, labeling broad categories of people as “privileged” based on immutable characteristics, the homogenization inherent in global capitalist monoculture, etc.?

  As we know, many anarchist discussion forums degenerate into food fights between proponents of these contending views. But perhaps the theoretical premises from which multiple parties are arguing are flawed to begin with?

  On the cultural questions, the libertarian writer Elizabeth Nolan Brown offers a potential third way beyond the usual neo-reactionary/social justice warrior dichotomy. However, the economic conflicts are just as problematic.

  With the exception of anarcho-communists (who are often viewed by critics as crypto-Bolsheviks), libertarians have an image of merely advocating one step down from state rule to corporate rule, and in the cases of certain kinds of libertarians, it’s true. There is a wide range of libertarian, anarchist, classical liberal, an even an-cap philosophies that don’t buy into the Ayn Randian “Let them eat cake!” approach to economics, but unfortunately they are the ones with the loudest voices and the greatest public recognition, mostly because they are so co-opt able by the right-wing of capitalism (see the Kochs). The problem with that kind of libertarianism is that there is simply a zero amount of constituency for the repeal of the minimum wage, total deregulation of capitalism, removing all environmental protections, totally dismantling the social safety net, etc. Not 1 in 100 Americans would actually vote for that which is probably the real reason why the Libertarian Party usually gets 1 percent or less in presidential elections. It’s ironic that they are so fascinated by markets and yet they never ask themselves why their product is not marketable. They have some good ideas on foreign policy, civil liberties, drug legalization, and monetary reform, but I suspect if any of that is ever implemented it will be done by a left, liberal or conservative party that has borrowed some libertarian ideas. Even the city-states, competing corporate governments, or communes envisioned by anarchists would have to maintain things like social safety nets to ever have any kind of legitimacy. The vulgar libertarian line amounts to “Let’s go back to 19th century capitalism!” Clearly, a more well-developed perspective is needed.

  The issue of how to attack the international corporate plutocracy is the million dollar question, and this is a primary issue that is just as problematic for an-caps as it is for an-coms. The problem is that it’s difficult to fit a serious description of how state-corporate capitalism actually works into a simple slogan like “Taxation is theft.” I guess you could say “Corporate welfare is theft” or “Crony capitalism is theft” and that would cover thousands of other things. But clearly we need an approach to economics that will prevent anarchists and anti-statists from being dismissed merely as Marxists or Republicans under another name. There are a wide range of ideas like this already out there but figuring out how to communicate them is the difficult question.

  The Presidential Race and the Limitations of Liberal Democracy

  This was an assessment I offered of the U.S. presidential contest of 2016 in the middle of that year as the candidates were about to receive the formal nominations of their respective parties (not to be confused with an actual endorsement of any of the candidates).

  Some polls now show Sanders actually having a better chance of beating Trump than Clinton. Up until ten years ago, maybe even more recently, it would have impossible for a self-identified socialist to be a viable presidential candidate. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. The US has taken a huge leap to the left in recent years due to generational, demographic and cultural change, as well as widening class divisions. I think a lot people still don’t realize how far left the US has moved. Hillary is actually the most right-wing candidate of the three major ones that are left with her neoliberal economics and her sucking off the neocons on foreign policy. She trends left on social issues, but that’s misleading as her constituency there tends to be upper middle class urban cosmopolitan professionals and upwardly mobile members of traditional out groups, and the progressive nanny state her followers tend to champion is the new social conservatism.

  Meanwhile, Trump started his campaign with an appeal to the populist right that allowed him to subvert the Republican Party from their right flank and from the bottom up. This was a brilliant strategy on his part and one that allowed him to dislocate the neocons and “movement conservative” shitheads in the mainstream GOP (and good for him!). But now he’s moving to the radical center with some Ross Perot-like populist ideas on foreign policy and trade, and he’s starting to initiate a crossover appeal the left on class, labor, and bread and butter issues. Again, this is a brilliant tactical move on his part, and one that I always thought would be the winning strategy if the neoliberal/neoconservative paradigm was ever going to be effectively challenged. Recent polls show Trump gaining on Hillary now that he’s adopted this strategy. Other polls show Sanders is even more popular that Trump and, ironically, he’s not even a real Democrat. He’s actually to the left of the Dems (more in the vein of the Greens or the SPUSA) and is only running as a Dem for convenience. Hillary is now the conservative, Trump is in the center, and Sanders represents the growing popularity of the far left.

  I don’t vote (or at least I haven’t since the early 1990s), but there are circumstances where “defensive voting” might be warranted, and even “offensive voting” in some instances. The US state that I live in doesn’t usually have referendums, but in places where there are referendums on the ballot regarding important reforms voting might be legitimate. Some states have referendums on drug decriminalization, “criminal justice” reform, and a wide range of issues that might be worth voting for. In some places there are referendums on huge questions, like exiting the EU or Scottish secession from the UK. There are occasionally independent candidates, minor parties, or maverick major party candidates that are worth voting for (the Pirate Party, for example). Sometimes there might also be a party that is so awful that voting against them is warranted so as to ensure their defeat. Who in their right mind would not have voted for the Social Democrats over the Nazis in the 1932 German elections, for example?

  At the same time, I do think anarchists need to devote more effort to thoroughly critiquing liberal democracy with its majoritarian-parliamentary-state-capitalist ethos. I think we can also make a distinction between someone like Murray Bookchin’s idea of democracy, and the kinds of centralized mass societies under plutocratic rule that we have at present. As an anarchist strategist, I’m in favor of building subversive political parties led by anarchists, or in which anarchists are embedded (like the Pirate Party, LP, Greens, etc) but only as a political arm for a popular movement consisting of anarchist federations that are independent of the state.

  We need a multi-pronged “all fronts” approach. Some anarchists will be involved with political parties, some will be forming micro nations like Liberland, some will be colonizing geographical areas like the Free State Project, some will be forming intentional communities, some will be forming worker cooperatives, some will be engaged in direct action like eco-sabotage, some will be doing single issue activism (like Cop Block or Cop Watch), some will be doing alternative media, and some will be involved in direct armed struggle like the Zapatistas or PKK/YPG/YPJ. All of these things are already happening, we just need for them to expand.

  One of the most important things to emphasize when we critique democracy is the question of scale. Democracy, socialism, communism, capitalism, etc., all work fine in relatively small, relatively localized groups. It is when these things are centralized into mass society and the state is when the problems develop. For example, there are communists, capitalists, anarchists, theocrats, and nationalists who express admiration for the Amish culture, and to some degree they are all of these things. By the way, the Amish have a great take on voting: “The Amish don’t vote in national elections. They vote in local elections. They do so because they have decided long ago that to vote for anyone on the national stage is to vote for a corrupt, lying, scheming Son of Satan. They won’t do it. Instead they argue that on the local level their vote just might make a bit of difference.”

  Crossroads 2016 : Where Do We Go From Here?

  As was the case with the previous essay, this piece was written in 2016 during the height of the U.S. presidential election campaigns of that year.

  Recently, I wrote about how many of the predictions that I have been making over the past decade or so have come true during the course of recent events. In particular, the 2016 U.S. presidential election represents the fulfillment of some of these predictions. Hillary Clinton is an almost perfect manifestation of the totalitarian humanist convergence I predicted nearly a decade ago, i.e. the combination of militarism, plutocracy, and police statism with ostensibly liberal and progressive values as an ideological cover (with these enforced by means of an ever more intrusive nanny state). Bill Lind describes the implications of this ideological framework very thoroughly. Jack Ross explains the present day political alignments that have emerged because of the rise of totalitarian humanism. And Vanity Fair describes how a new left-wing of the ruling class has emerged that comes from outside the ranks of the traditional WASP elites and is rooted in newer high-tech industries. I’ve been saying all of these things for years.

  Six years ago, I wrote about the ten core demographics that a radical or revolutionary movement in North America would likely need to organize in order to achieve the popular base needed for effective political action. Current events represent the stirring of many of these demographics and in a way that signifies that these cleavages are developing at a much more rapid pace than I thought they would when I wrote that original piece.

  The Donald Trump phenomena represents a stirring of the populist right and the sinking middle. The antiwar, civil libertarian, and labor-oriented sections of the Left have become increasingly alienated from both the Democratic Party and the liberal establishment even to the point that some on the antiwar left now favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.

  The Black Lives Matter movement represents a movement of black Americans that often demonstrates as much hostility to the liberal and Left establishments as they do to anything on the Right. The Bernie Sanders movement represents the disdain of the progressive Left and the far Left for the centrist-liberalism of the Clintons, and young people in particular seem to be looking for a new political paradigm. A sharp backlash against political correctness has also emerged, and the cleavages among the various constituent groups of liberalism or the Left have likewise become increasingly evident.

  Donald Trump’s campaign strategy is an interesting variation of the strategy that I outlined in “Liberty and Populism” ten years ago. This involves a strategy of appealing to the populist Right with anti-PC issues, appealing to the radical Center with economic and general anti-establishment issues, appealing to Left with issues that the left establishment ignores or sweeps under the rug, and likewise playing to socioeconomic and demographic cleavages on the Left. Trump is essentially doing this albeit for radically different purposes (getting himself elected President) than those of ARV/ATS (overthrowing the government).

  However, it is ironic that during the time that all of this seeming political discontent has emerged, the various movements with an orientation towards anarchism, libertarianism, anti-statism, decentralism or anti-authoritarianism are nowhere to be found. In recent years, there has been some talk about the possibility of secession by various regions of the United States. The left-anarchist writer Kirkpatrick Sale hosted three successive pan-secessionist conventions during the tail end of the George W. Bush years, and yet nothing ever came of these efforts. There was likewise talk of secession by some on the Right following the re-election of President Obama in 2012, and polls over the last decade have repeatedly indicated that approximately 25% of Americans would be sympathetic to the idea of secession by their own region or locality. And yet no leader or movement has come along that has had the effect of awakening this sleeping giant. Even recent efforts towards the development of a secessionist tendency in Texas have proven to be fruitless. Now that the Brexit movement has achieved success, there are once again secessionist rumblings in Texas. But such efforts have not yet proved to be promising anywhere in the United States to date.