Attack the System

by Keith Preston

  [173] Barclay, People Without Government; Peter Kropotkin, “Anarchism,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910, http://attackthesystem.com/anarchism/; Homer, Iliad, 2.703; Herodotus, Histories, 9.23; Malcolm Schofield, The Stoic Idea of the City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism (London: Freedom Press, 1996), 8; Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2004), 8; William E. Foster, Town Government in Rhode Island (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1886); Murray N. Rothbard, “The Origins of Individualist Anarchism in America,” LewRockwell.com, 2006, http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/real-american-history/ (accessed July 2, 2008); Murray N. Rothbard, “Pennsylvania’s Anarchist Experiment: 1681–1690,” LewRockwell.com, 2005, http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard81.html (accessed July 2, 2008).

  [174] François Richard, Les anarchistes de droite (Paris: PUF, 1997 [1991]).

  [175] “Reply by Several Russian Anarchists to the Platform,” http://attackthesystem.com/reply-to-the-platform-synthesist/.

  [176] Michel Maffesoli, The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society, trans. Don Smith (London: Sage Publications, 1996).

  [177] Democratist ideology has been thoroughly destroyed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe in Democracy: The God That Failed (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001). See my “Democracy as Tyranny,” http://attackthesystem.com/democracy-as-tyranny/. Similarly, the “social contract” theory behind constitutionalist justifications for the state was demolished by Lysander Spooner’s individualist anarchist classic No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority.

  [178] For a general discussion of this, see Kevin Carson, “The New Class’ Will to Power: Liberalism and Social Control,” http://attackthesystem.com/liberalism-and-social-control-the-new-class-will-to-power/.

  [179] The origins of the Cato Institute are described in Justin Raimondo’s biography of Murray Rothbard, An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray Rothbard (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000).

  [180] Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (New York: Harper and Row, 1974) by Stanley Milgram is a classic study of the human psyche’s natural relationship to authority. They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955) by Milton Mayer describes how ordinary Germans during the Hitler era perceived their society.

  [181] It is of course necessary to differentiate between the classical Bakuninist concept of a revolutionary vanguard, based on the concept of natural leadership, and the Marxist-Leninist idea of the “vanguard party,” utilizing coercion and treachery as a means of obtaining state power.

  [182] For example, all of the nations of Latin America, save Cuba, now have elected civilian governments. This exportation of democracy to the Third World has produced even sorrier results than those to be found in the wealthy, technologically advanced nations. “Democratic” Mexico is so economically depressed that its southern region wants out of the country and millions of its citizens pour across its northern border annually in search of economic refuge. Likewise, “democratic” Argentina is in the midst of a depression after a succession of elected governments ran its economy into the ground. “Democratic” Columbia is a death-squad regime that has lost forty percent of its territory to Marxist insurgents. “Democratic” India elected a fascist government that sanctions mob violence against its Muslim and Christian minorities. South African “democracy” has resulted in little more than the replacement of a tyrannical white fascist regime with a tyrannical black communist one. As for “democratic” Israel, the less said the better.

  [183] Particularly disgusting has been the support of some Objectivists and “libertarians” for the state of Israel. It seems inconceivable that a racist, theocratic, imperialist, national socialist military dictatorship could be defended by ostensible champions of free market economics and the intellectual ideals of the Enlightenment. Do Palestinians or Lebanese have any “natural rights”?

  [184] The “prison-industrial complex” is no myth. See Joel Dyer, The Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits from Crime (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000).

  [185] See Joel Dyer, Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City Is Just the Beginning (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), and James Bovard, The Farm Fiasco (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1989).

  [186] I am not sure this total rejection of political action is consistent with anarchist history. Both Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Johann Most served in the French and German parliaments respectively. One of Proudhon’s fellow deputies was the proto-libertarian and free-market economist Frédéric Bastiat, whose book The Law remains an anti-statist classic. During the era of classic Spanish anarchism, anarchists were regularly elected to mayoral positions in local towns and villages. During the Republican era, anarchists participated in Spanish national elections when it was strategically advantageous, although they never fielded candidates of their own. During his 45-year career as an anarchist, Murray N. Rothbard paid careful attention to both national and local elections, ran for governor of California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket in 1968, endorsed Norman Mailer’s New York Mayoral campaign in 1969, initially supported the Libertarian Party and wrote much of its platform, and even endorsed major party candidates with antiwar leanings, including statists like Adlai Stevenson and nationalists like Patrick Buchanan.

  [187] For excellent commentary on military matters, see Bill Bridgewater, “Armed Revolution Possible and Not So Difficult,” http://attackthesystem.com/armed-revolution-possible-and-not-so-difficult/.

  [188] Reactionary, theocratic, monarchical France declared war on behalf of the colonies hoping to see its rival England undermined. Similarly reactionary Spain provided enormous assistance to the American revolutionaries for the same reasons although formal support was not declared for fear of inspiring similar revolutions among Spain’s colonies in the New World. Holland also declared war on England during this time. Probably the best sources of international support for an antigovernment movement in the United States would be nationalist, separatist, anti-imperialist, and anti-globalist tendencies in all nations, whatever their ideology, and rival states to the US regime such as China. Britain’s “National-Anarchist” movement has developed the best ideas thus far on the question of international alliances against US imperialism and globalism.

  [189] For a comprehensive overview of modern terrorism, see the following sources: Anthony M. Burton, Urban Terrorism: Theory, Practice and Response (London: Western Printing Services, 1975); Christopher Dobson and Ronald Payne, The Terrorists: Their Weapons, Leaders and Tactics (New York: Macmillan, 1979); Jay Robert Nash, Terrorism in the Twentieth Century (New York: M. Evans and Co., 1998).

  [190] Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 9–64.

  [191] Martin van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 126–54.

  [192] Ibid., 1–58.

  [193] Ibid., 57.

  [194] Ibid., 59–117.

  [195] Ibid., 127–54.

  [196] Ibid., 184–88.

  [197] Ibid., 170–83.

  [198] Ibid., 189–204.

  [199] Ibid., 205–62.

  [200] Ibid., 262.

  [201] Geoffrey Nunberg, “Head Games, It All Started With Robespierre; Terrorism: The History of a Very Frightening Word,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 28, 2001.

  [202] Burton, Urban Terrorism, 17–34.

  [203] Paul Eltzbacher, Anarchism: Exponents of the Anarchist Philosophy, trans. Steven T. Byington, ed. James J. Martin (New York: Chip’s Bookshop, Booksellers and Publishers, 1958 [1900]).

  [204] Marie Fleming, “Propaganda by the Deed: Terrorism and Anarchist Theory in Late Nineteenth-Century Europe,” in Terrorism in Europe, ed. Yonah Alexander and Kenneth A. Myers (London: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1982), 8–28.

  [205] April Carter, The Political Theory of Anarchism (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).
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  [206] Richard Suskind, By Bullet, Bomb, and Dagger: The Story of Anarchism (New York: Macmillan, 1971).

  [207] Frederic Trautmann, The Voice of Terror: A Biography of Johann Most (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980).

  [208] Suskind, By Bullet, Bomb, and Dagger, 45.

  [209] Burton, Urban Terrorism, 27.

  [210] Suskind, By Bullet, Bomb, and Dagger, 1–17, 44–59.

  [211] Michael J. Schaack, Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe (New York: Arno Press, 1977 [1889]), 688.

  [212] George N. McLean, The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1972 [1890]), 267.

  [213] Robert Graham, Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, vol. 1, From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939) (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2005).

  [214] Patrick J. Buchanan, “America’s Ideologue in Chief,” Vdare.com, September 10, 2006, http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/060908_chief.htm.

  [215] Email to author via Yahoo! discussion list, September 10, 2006.

  [216] Van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State, 263–331.

  [217] Dennis Pluchinsky, “Political Terrorism in Western Europe: Some Themes and Variations,” in Terrorism in Europe, ed. Yonah Alexander and Kenneth A. Myers (London: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1982), 40–78.

  [218] Stephen E. Atkins, Terrorism: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1992), 99–136.

  [219] Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, The Silent Brotherhood: Inside America’s Racist Underground (New York: Free Press, 1989).

  [220] Charley Reese, “Let’s Get Real,” Populist Party of America, December 2, 2006, http://www.populistamerica.com/let_s_get_real.

  [221] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

  [222] Jane Corbin, Al-Qaeda: In Search of the Terror Network That Threatens the World (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003).

  [223] William S. Lind, “Forcing the World to Be Saved,” Antiwar.com, January 21, 2006, http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=8422.

  [224] Joel Dyer, Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City Is Just the Beginning (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 191, 247.

  [225] William S. Lind, Keith Nightengale, John F. Schmitt, and Gary I. Wilson, “The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation,” Marine Corps Gazette, October 1989, 22–26.

  [226] William S. Lind, “Understanding Fourth Generation War,” Antiwar.com, January 15, 2004, http://antiwar.com/lind/index.php?articleid=1702.

  [227] Mao Tse-tung, “On Guerrilla Warfare” (1937), in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. 9, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1937/guerrilla-warfare/. See also Cecil B. Currey, “Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers,” Journal of Third World Studies, October 2003, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3821/is_200310/ai_n9337860.

  [228] Nir Rosen, “Hizb Allah, Party of God,” Truthdig, October 3, 2006, http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/200601003_hiz_ballah_party_of_god. See also William S. Lind, “The Summer of 1914,” On War #175, July 18, 2006, http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_7_18_06.htm.

  [229] Carmen Gentile, “Drug Smugglers, Rebel Join in Hand,” Washington Times, April 26, 2005.

  [230] William S. Lind, “More on Gangs and Guerrillas vs the State,” Military.com, April 28, 2005, http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Lind_042805,00.html.

  [231] Van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State, 336–414.

  [232] Ibid., 415–21.

  [233] The Expanded Quotable Einstein, ed. Alice Calaprice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 18.

  [234] The figure of six million has been independently arrived at by a number of scholars including Peter Dale Scott, John Stockwell, Johan Galtung, and Noam Chomsky.

  [235] Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2003) by William Blum is probably the best introductory work to the murderous effects of US foreign policy on the citizens of the Third World. The works of Noam Chomsky are a virtual cornucopia of information on these matters.

  [236] The writings of James Bovard document in much vivid detail acts of repression carried out by the US regime domestically. Thomas Sowell has described efforts by the state to breed ethnic conflict. See also Democracy: The God That Failed (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001) by Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

  [237] Contrary to conventional wisdom, the First Amendment to the US Constitution has not been a reliable protection for free speech. During the First World War, Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment for criticizing the war. Two nineteen-year-old girls in Colorado were sentenced to five years hard labor for handing out antiwar pamphlets. The US Supreme Court never applied the First Amendment with anything even remotely approaching consistency until the middle part of the twentieth century—about the same time that the mass media (publishing, television, and radio) started to become a powerful interest group.

  [238] For a description of the parallels between the early days of Nazi repression and current political conditions in the United States, see Nazi Justiz: Law of the Holocaust (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995) and Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), both by Richard Lawrence Miller. Another interesting general study is William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960). In the 1950s Shirer remarked that the US would be the first nation to go fascist democratically.