American Revolutionary Vanguard and Attack the System were founded at the turn of the century for the purpose of reclaiming the position held by anarchism a century earlier as the world’s principal revolutionary force, for unifying and synthesizing the various anarchist currents, for organizing resistance to U.S. imperialism within the mother country of the empire, for challenging the global plutocratic super class, for moving past the doctrinaire leftism of many contemporary anarchists, and for engaging in outreach and discussion with opposition movements from all across the political spectrum.

  Pan-anarchism is oriented towards the purpose of opposing and overthrowing statism, capitalism, and imperialism, and replacing these with, for example, autonomous municipalities (Bookchin), decentralized cooperative economics (Proudhon), libertarian law codes based on the non-aggression principle (Spooner, Tucker, Rothbard), non-imperialist militia defense systems (PKK/YPG/YPG and CNT/FAI), and self-determination for cultural, ethnic, and religious communities (Bakunin, Landauer, Rocker).

  Pan-anarchism recognizes the legitimacy of the many different types of anarchism and prefers to emphasize the commonalities of these rather than their differences. Likewise, pan-anarchism regards the many differences of opinion among different types on anarchists on a wide range of topics to be a matter of in-house debate.

  As for the relationship of pan-anarchism to other movements and ideologies, it might be argued that pan-anarchism is compatible with other movements and ideologies to the degree that these embrace some degree of libertarianism, decentralism, anti-authoritarianism, anti-statism, anti-capitalism, or anti-imperialism. For example, those wishing to form libertarian-capitalist “seasteads” are to a great degree compatible with pan-anarchism. Those wishing to form autonomous “neo-reactionary” city-states are to a great extent compatible with pan-anarchism. Those wishing to form religious communes functioning independently of liberal consumer society are compatible with pan-anarchism. Ordinary liberals or conservatives wishing to form regional independence or secessionist movements are likewise worthy of engagement and dialogue.

  Pan-anarchism does not endorse one particular cultural model. While many anarchists have adopted a “hard left” cultural outlook, pan-anarchism does not regard this as necessary or mandatory, nor does pan-anarchism seek uniformity of agreement on ordinary contentious public issues, but instead encourages freedom of speech, inquiry, opinion, and association.

  Lastly, pan-anarchism holds to a populist conception of political struggles in the form of the people versus the elite, the individual against the state, and the producers against the exploiters. The purpose of pan-anarchism is the formation of anarchist and populist federations on the local, regional, national, and international level for the purpose of carrying out revolutionary struggle.

  The Rise and Fall of the Shining Path

  Lessons for North American Insurgents

  Throughout the 1980s, few guerrilla groups around the world were more feared or notorious than Peru’s “Sendero Luminoso”, or Shining Path. The group had its roots in a split from the Communist Party of Peru in the late 1960s led by a philosophy professor named Abimael Guzman, who provided an eccentric variation of Maoism as an ideological framework for the movement. Throughout the 1970s, Shining Path built a following for itself among student radicals in Peruvian universities. Around 1980, the group began an armed insurgency against the Peruvian government, having assembled its own militias in the process of its growth as a movement. Over the course of the next decade, Shining Path came to control much of the rural territory of Peru and began advancing towards the capital city of Lima. Despite its initial successes, the movement began to fall apart in the early 1990s.

  A principal problem was the cult-like organizational structure of the Shining Path. A cult of personality had developed around Guzman and his capture in 1992 had the effect of decapitating the insurgency. Another issue was the alienation of the peasant population from the insurgency due to its disrespect for the traditional culture of rural Peru and the extreme brutality of Shining Path attacks on its perceived enemies, the ranks of whom included rival leftists and community organizers as well as the Peruvian ruling class and government itself. The alienation grew to such a degree that the peasants would often back the government’s efforts to repress the insurgency until the government’s atrocities began to overshadow even those of the Shining Path. What can North American radicals learn from the example of the Shining Path? There are two essential lessons. First, an organizational structure that is capable of surviving the death, capture or incapacitation of its leadership is indispensible. An interesting example of this is the Nuestra Familia crime syndicate which thrives in spite of the incarceration of all of its leaders in maximum security American prisons, in complete isolation from one another. While leadership itself cannot simply be done away with, the body of the insurgency must be able to operate even in the absence of the head. The organizational structure commonly referred to as “leaderless resistance” would appear to be the appropriate model, with individual militants operating within the context of clandestine networks set up for the purpose of sharing intelligence and coordinating mutual activities.

  Another important issue is the necessity of maintaining an attitude of respect for the institutions and cultures of local peoples. Ordinary Americans may well look the other way when System Pigs and their stooges become targets so long as they do not feel threatened in the process. However, “citizens” will not accept violent crimes committed against ordinary persons or threats to their livelihoods or things that they hold sacred (for example, affronts to their various religions). As the insurgent militia, paramilitary and guerrilla organizations evolve in the United States and Canada, and as the armed struggle commences, it will be essential that the insurgents conduct themselves properly within the territories that fall under rebel control. The best plan is to simply leave ordinary people alone and let them go about their business, in the process seizing the holdings of enemy governmental and corporate institutions and placing them under popular control and setting up common law courts or arbitration panels for the sake of settling disputes arising from common crimes or economic rivalries. Unnecessary massacres of the type that occurred at Oklahoma City or the World Trade Center should be avoided at all costs in order to prevent popular alienation. The average Joe needs to believe that he is either better off, or at least no worse off, under the rule of the insurgents than under the rule of the present regime.

  The elimination of the present regime should occur with as little disruption in the daily lives of ordinary people as possible. Electrical and other utility services should continue except in cases of military emergency. Television and radio programming should continue to operate on schedule except where necessary to silence enemy propaganda or communications systems. The ideal situation would be one where everyday people continue to go about their business, traveling about from work to school to the grocery store to the beauty salon to the drinking hole and so on, all the while the insurgents are pulling the rug out from under the System Pigs, shutting down police departments in favor of revolutionary militias, eliminating the state’s court system in favor of our own common law courts, releasing prisoners and eradicating the prison-industrial complex, turning corporate operations over to consumer coops, dismantling enemy governments and setting up our own revolutionary councils, allowing different cultural, religious and ethnic factions to go their own way and form their own private associations, seizing military bases, armories and nuclear silos and shutting down the imperial war machine and stripping federal, state and municipal treasuries in order to provide reparations or severance compensation to prisoners, social security recipients, dislocated military, police or low-level corporate or bureaucratic workers, and some kind of settlement to America’s historical racial/ethnic conflicts.

  It can be expected that the end-product of such a revolution would be quite “liberal” in the traditional Jeffersonian, as opposed to modern totalitarian, sense. The general level of individual freedom would be considerably higher than at present. However, there might also be a proliferation of a number of relatively or intensely closed communities, particularly among those operating within the framework of some sort of racial, religious or cultural exclusionism or some sort of overtly authoritarian political ideology. Sparta will have to co-exist with Athens and the Puritans will have to co-exist with the Libertines, pluralistically when possible, spatially segregated when not. Furthermore, the majority of the population of North America will not be part of the revolution. The Radical Alliance, even transcending the traditional boundaries of Left and Right, will still be a minority, although a militant minority that is subsequently able to obtain power way beyond its numbers (like present-day Zionists). Therefore, co-existence between citizens and radicals will also be necessary. A polycentric network of governmental, economic, educational and legal institutions will be needed in order to accommodate such divergent interests and separate conflicting elements from one another for the sake of preserving the social peace and avoiding counterrevolution. Following the Revolution, there will likely be a new insurgency launched by remnants of the former regime that could result in a civil war that would last for decades. The achievement of ultimate victory by the Revolution will require political leadership of the highest caliber on the part of the revolutionaries. The System Pigs are primarily fools and incompetents, and their counterrevolutionary efforts would likely be inept and involve considerable terrorism against civilian targets. The citizens must come to realize that Anarchist rule will be “just” and “tolerant” as conventionally defined, indeed even more so. Ultimately, we must also win the war for “hearts and minds”, not because we are do-gooders or humanists, but because we are faithful Machiavellians.

  Rightism without Jingoism, Leftism without Political Correctness

  Martin Van Creveld’s masterful work “The Rise and Decline of the State” argues that the nation-state system as it has been known since the time of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia is on its way out. As the twenty-first century progresses, conventional states of the kind that began to emerge several centuries ago and fully established themselves in the 19th and 20th centuries will be challenged by regional autonomist movements, transnational federations, separatist breakaway movements and fourth generation private armies and sources of authority outside the state.

  If this is true, then the next wave of political radicalism will be the precise opposite of the radicalisms that arose in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries-liberalism, socialism and nationalism-all of which aimed towards more concentrated political authority. More than a century and a half since Proudhon first proclaimed himself an anarchist it is time for anarchism to achieve its moment in the sun. What would a 21st century revolutionary anarchism look like?

  It would draw on the history of classical anarchism and other pre-existing forms of anarchism, but modify these to make them more compatible with the times.

  It would attack the Left, i.e., Liberalism and Marxism, as its primary enemies, particularly in North America, given that North America has no historical attachment to the Ancient Regime and the traditional Right. Instead, the enemy to be assaulted is modern bourgeoisie liberalism (internationalist, social democratic, corporatist, multiculturalist, therapeutic, managerialist)

  It would specifically embrace movements, causes and groups ignored by the Left establishment, focusing primarily on the lumpenproletariat, petite bourgeoisie, rural agricultural population and the déclassé elements from all class backgrounds.

  It would crossover to the radical Middle with a populist-decentralist economic outlook standing in opposition to both Big Government and Big Business.

  It would crossover to the vast culture of right-wing populism recognizing the many economic, foreign policy, civil liberties, decentralist and cultural rights issues raised by these milieus.

  Its primary strategy would be the creation of alliance of local and regional secession movements spanning the cultural and ideological spectrum but united against the common enemies of State, Capital and Empire.

  The leadership corps of such movements should ideally be hard line revolutionaries with a commitment to radical action and an understanding of the major issues.

  Aside from a populist-decentralist economic platform, such a movement would assemble coalitions of constituent groups at the local and regional level with grievances against the state and in favor of the decentralization of power.

  Such a movement would seek to establish alternative infrastructure so as to reduce dependency on state services and to transfer responsibility to non-state services following the demise of the state.

  Such a movement would recognize the legitimacy of armed self-defense against the ruling class, and so seek to establish private defense forces independently of the state.

  So what would the endgame be?

  Limited, decentralized and federative political institutions and the elimination of the gargantuan states of modernity.

  Cooperative, decentralist economics outside the modern fiefdoms of State-Capitalism.

  Non-interventionist foreign policy in opposition to both neoconservative global democratic revolution and leftist human rights internationalism.

  Defense of civil liberties and individual freedom across the board, whether on seemingly right-wing populist issues like the right to bear arms or seemingly left-wing counterculture issues like drug decriminalization.

  An authentically pluralist approach to social and cultural matters, where the basis of social organization is autonomous ethnic, religious, cultural, familial, linguistic, sexual, commercial, aesthetic or other such particularist enclaves.

  So how do we get started?

  To some degree, we see the beginnings of such a movement in the Ron Paul campaign, a grassroots revolt against the neocons’ foreign policy agenda, Kirkpatrick Sale’s and Michael Hill’s alliance of neo-secessionist factions, the emergence of the New Right as a genuine intellectual challenge to Liberalism and Marxism, the resolutions local communities have issued against the Iraq war, the Patriot Act and other abominations of the present system, the success of popular referendums in favor of medical marijuana, the rise of the militia movement in defense of the 2nd Amendment in the 1990s, the rise of the anti-globalization movement a few years later, the economic scholarship advanced by Kevin Carson and other contemporary decentralists, and many other things that serve as prototypes for what might be done in the future. I favor a trickle-down/trickle-up, inside/outside strategy. This means at the top level we need a new generation of scholars to emerge that challenge the hegemony of neo-conservatism and reactionary leftism in the cultural and intellectual realms. At the bottom level, we need street fighting radical activists devoted to the kinds of ideas that have thus far been outlined.

  We need those who work on the outside (like citizens militias confronting agents of the state when necessary or feasible) and on the inside (lawyers and lobbyists fighting the system on its own turf like the ACLU or the NRA).

  Obviously, there is much work to be done.

  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 American Revolution and the later Southern War of Independence. Secessionism is often associated with political conservatism, given the greater regard of conservatives for American traditions like states’ rights and the conservative nature of the Southern secession of 1861. Indeed, pro-secessionist rumblings have emerged in the mainstream Right recently. Such developments are a welcome thing, of course, and no doubt a future pan-secessionist movement would have a strong right-wing and radical center constituency behind it. As the middle class continues to sink into the ranks of the underclass, and as the vast array of cultural groups associated with right-wing populism continue to come under attack by the forces of political correctness, no doubt an increasing number of people, including many former jingoists, members of the religious right and one-time neocon sympathizers, will realize that the centralized liberal-managerial regime is their enemy, and decide that a political exodus is their best bet. Certainly, a mass army of secessionists in the rural areas, small towns and red states will be a welcome addition to our cause.

  However, I do not think that it is on the Right that the crucial political battles will be fought. The Right represents an agglomeration of political, cultural and demographic factions that are losing power and shrinking in size. Instead, the crucial battles will be fought on the Left. The dominant center-left that is now consolidating its position is a liberal Left that espouses liberal internationalism, universalism, humanism and human rights imperialism, and expresses itself in the form of the therapeutic-managerial-welfare state. However, there is an emerging radical Left that is oriented towards pluralism, postmodernism, cultural relativism, pro-Third Worldism and anti-Zionism. Eventually, there will be a sharp split between these two lefts, as the former is capable of cooptation by state-capitalism, but the latter is not.