If you’re like me, when you hear the term “anarchist” the first thing that comes to mind is the 19th century guy holding the bomb that looks like a bowling ball with a candle on top, the kind cartoons depict. These guys, in theory, stood for demolition of all government so that people could build a new society of direct simple democracy and with minimal to no government.
That’s not what today’s “anarchists” are like.
They act the same, they carry around the same sort of symbols, and they pretend they are interested in “smashing the system,” but, at heart, this new breed has nothing to do with anarchism in its truest sense.
From the start, they tend to organize into groups, which by its self is a violation of the principle of anarchy. An anarchist group is as absurd a contradiction as is “jumbo shrimp;” anarchy rejects order, organization and government.
Then there are the rallies and protests. You never see one of these complaining about organized government or calling for simple direct democracy. They’re always rioting over capitalism, attacking corporations, and lately, showing up at every leftist rally – no matter what the event – to show their support.
In England very recently, huge rallies were held, resulting in smashed windows, attacks on police, destruction of public property, and even attacking bank machines. Alan Jones at the Independent explains the purpose of these rallies and the violence involved:
So what we have here are “anarchists” upset that government may be getting smaller.
Let that sink in a moment. These people, claiming to be anarchists after the destruction or simplification of government, are rioting because the government plans to simplify and impact their lives less. Huh?
In other words, these people are not anarchists in any sense whatsoever. They are simply violent leftists refusing to give up the government teat. Five police officers were injured, hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage was done, and all in the name of not having to give up the dole.
This kind of anarchist is just a young person looking for a cause and thinking that donning a black mask and “sticking it to ‘The Man'” is anarchy, without even bothering to understand what the term means or the goals of the effort are. Were they true anarchists, they’d support the reduction of government.
And that’s the dirty secret these “trustafarians” would never believe: anarchy is what happens when you take right wing ideas to their extreme. Anarchy is ultimate distrust in government, desiring to see it torn down to its least structure, with as much liberty for individuals as possible. It is the radical extreme of libertarianism, rejecting all government interference with your personal life, be it positive (welfare) or negative (drug laws, for example).
For the modern faux anarchist, left-wing ideology is what they believe in, which violates every idea the true anarchist originally held and was willing to kill for. Both of them are ultimately destructive to society, because we all need government.
But conservatives and libertarians can agree with that basic idea: we simply believe that government should be as minimal as possible to do its proper job as well as possible.
