From the view from below:
The next time you get caught in some relatively minor bureaucratic nightmare, consider the case of Paul House. House is very literally rotting away on Tennessee’s Death Row for a crime he didn’t commit.
Two posts from RadGeek I’d urge not be missed…
Avoiding points of conflict between anarchists and minarchists means either studied silence or mumbling prevarication on issues that ought to be absolutely central for any anarchist worth her salt — among other things, the right of (state, local, neighborhood, individual) secession, the moral illegitimacy and practical futility of appeals to the Constitution, the arrogance and abusiveness of monopoly police forces, the illegitimacy of any and all forms of taxation, the fundamental problem with any form of government military or intelligence apparatus whatsoever, etc. Devoting your time and energy to a political organization whose messages are specifically adapted to be compatible with the minarchist program on these issues means frittering away a lot of energy fighting what goes on in the palace — while leaving untouched the pillars that hold the damned thing up. I would certainly agree that market anarchists should be willing to work together with coalition partners on particular issues of concern — the drug war, corporate welfare, the war on Iraq, etc. — whether those coalition partners are minarchists, or state Leftists, or whatever else. But who you’ll work with in issue-based coalitions is a different question from whose movement you’ll participate in, or what formations you’ll make the primary venue for your broader organizing and activism. I think it is long past time that we stop shelving our anarchism and indefinitely deferring our explicit anti-statism in order to fit in with limited statists in organizations like the Libertarian Party or Chairman Ron’s Great Libertarian Electoral Revolution.
In which I fail to be reassured
Meanwhile, limited governmentalists are just full of suggestions for how anarchists can help the cause of anarchy by … not talking about anarchy, and spending their time and energy on building up limited-government organizations instead. Apparently wanting to work on promoting your own cause, rather than other causes with fundamentally different ideas about ultimate goals, is a sign of a self-destructive fetish for purity.
I don’t know which is worse…
The painful irony of this sort of Dolchstoßlegende crap, considering the context, or…
The demagogic implication that Virginia Postrel is somehow the ideological plumbline of all who might dissent from the party line of the paleo-libertarian vanguardists.
“Frankly, to admit to being ‘inspired’ by politicians is a lot like confessing that your nipples get hard when you watch a mugger kick a victim bloody in the gutter.” — J.D. Tuccille
As Wired reported on Wednesday:
“A loose confederation of online troublemakers who call themselves Anonymous have declared war on the Church of Scientology by flooding its servers with fake data requests, describing the attacks as punishment for the Church’s alleged abuse of copyright laws and alleged brainwashing of its members.”
The original declaration of hostilities was delivered over YouTube. Follow this link or you can watch it below.
With the matter receiving increasingly widespread attention, Anonymous has also seen fit to release a second message directed to (and critical of) the mainstream media. Follow this link or watch it below.
As noted above, critics of Scientology have made a variety of negative allegations about it over the years. The problem for the normal person that has no personal involvement in such a dispute is that it’s difficult to assess the veracity of such claims if they have not received a great deal of media attention. I don’t have a variety of investigative resources and the opportunity to use them. You probably don’t either. The so-called mainstream media, though, certainly does.
That these allegations are now offered as the rationale for attacks on the Church of Scientology means that careful attention must be paid to analyzing them in the context of the libertarian non-aggression principle. This will determine which party is in the right.
Here’s what I think can be said about the matter from a radical libertarian perspective…
I certainly stand by and support anyone’s natural right to hold their own religious beliefs, whatever those beliefs might be. That certainly includes Scientologists, regardless of my personal opinion of their beliefs.
I also stand by and support the right of anyone to act on their religious beliefs, provided such actions violate the rights of no others.
I don’t have enough reliable information to evaluate claims of Scientology “human rights violations”. The seriousness and persistence of the allegations certainly causes me to hope those allegations receive more widespread scrutiny.
What can be known with certainty, IMO, is that the Church of Scientology has used copyright law to suppress criticism, in violation of the rights of its critics (in terms of natural law & natural rights).
From a libertarian perspective, it is this overt use of state violence, in particular, that has made Scientology’s communications infrastructure “fair game” ethically. Attacks on it are not an initiation of force, or aggression, but a response to aggression instead. They are thus permissible under the libertarian non-aggression principle.
I support the efforts of all to exercise their rights and to defy or attempt to thwart injustice — regardless of whether such efforts violate any of the state’s so-called “laws” or not. Thus, I support Scientology in its struggles against the IRS, for example, and I also support Anonymous in its efforts at retribution against Scientology, provided those efforts remain proportional to the wrongdoing they are a response to and do not otherwise violate the libertarian non-aggression principle.
If you’re curious about the particulars of the attacks, LinuxHaxor has the rundown on them. The official soundtrack is reportedly provided by Raidchan via streaming audio.
UPDATE: Events sometimes move fast. In the time it took me to write this blog post, Anonymous also unearthed information documenting the CIA ties of Scientology head David Miscavige.
You might ask why I would say something like “the fight for open borders is the fight for everyone’s freedom”. I’ll tell you why. Just for starters, immigration officials are now detaining and deporting American citizens.
Congratulations to the unknown parties that made notably judicious use of explosives to bust down the Gazan border wall and let starving people peacefully trade for food. Heroic! Coverage from the Jerusalem Post and the BBC.
Sign it: Petition to Abolish the Government of the USA
You can also promote it on Digg.
If we assume a need to build the Molinari Institute into a left libertarian / left market anarchist alternative to the Mises Institute & LewRockwell.com, yet comparable in scale of operations & resources, how do you think the best way to go about doing that would be?
J. Neil Schulman’s classic novel of agorist revolution, Alongside Night, is now free to read online in its entirety through Google Books with permission of the publisher! That may have been the case for a while now, actually, but I only just now discovered it myself.
Those who might wish to purchase a hardcopy can do so via Amazon and the PDF edition is available for paid download through Pulpless.com. If you can make that PDF edition purchase, please do so as it would be a great way to thank Neil for making the book available free online.
UPDATE: My mistake, folks. The entire book is NOT available through Google Books after all. The preview Google Books has is very extensive, but with several missing pages. It was enough to fool me into thinking they posted the whole book after giving it just a quick look. You can get a complete electronic copy here, though, for $6.95 via Paypal to download.
