I reject the premise that right-wingers can be anarchists. I don’t care what they call themselves. Anarchism is a left-wing movement, fundamentally.
anarcho-capitalism is actually corporate fascism
A bit debatable on the individual level but that’s likely what it would lead to. Some ancaps are weirdly anti-corporate though. They think somehow big powerful corporations were created by the state. Which is true in some cases but clearly not in others.
All corporations are created by the state. Corporations only exist because of the laws that create them. Without that special legal status it’s pretty much impossible to grow to the sizes most corporations do.
The same is true for private-property and capitalism in general, which is why “anarcho-capitalism” is so absurd.
I wholeheartedly agree!
Private property is abolished now guys, surrender it immediately but like at your option because there’s no government or police to compel you 🤡
You got that exactly backwards. You can’t “surrender” something that you have no immediate control over (because if you had, it would be personal property. But no one wants you to surrender your toothbrush).
Private property (and capitalism) needs state enforcement to exist.
So, uh, who do I turn over the deed to my house and title for my car to?
How am I getting to work on Monday? And where am I going to sleep?
I’m not sure I fully agree… some corporate entities are large enough to be self reinforcing. In practice they may end up recreating the state, but I don’t think it’s necessary impossible for large corporate structures to emerge in a stateless society. Of course, the nature of the stateless society is a very important variable here. A society that is hostile to accumulated wealth and social domination would make this much more difficult.
A corporation is a legal construct. While it’s theoretically possible for a single business to grow very large, most of the exploitation and legal cover provided by the simple act of incorporation becomes nearly impossible.
Plus without a state to push down competition, it becomes a lot harder to monopolize a market. Ideally there wouldn’t even be a market to monopolize, but that’s a different discussion altogether.
Incorporation is just a formality required by law. Corporations could still exist through internal cooperation without that, as long as there is no outside force that disrupts them.
In the absence of the state, a corporate structure can pursue its own coercive methods to maintain market dominance. And of course, some markets are naturally prone to monopoly due to the barriers to competition.
Anything the state can do, a large enough corporation can do as well. So this logic just doesn’t add up.
But without a state above them to reinforce laws the corporation would have to enforce them. So they don’t have to follow their own laws, and thus become something else. More like a warband of kingdom or junta.
What do you think is the quality that would make such an organization still be a “corporation”?
Are large street gangs (Crips, etc.) not an example of a huge corporation operating outside the benefits of the law?
A corporation by definition benefits from the law.
Corporations are businesses that have been given the the legal rights of a person. As if they had a body. Or corpus, if you will.
Personally, that just feels like semantics to me. They’re a structured group of people that exists to generate profit. Whether they technically meet the definition of a corporation doesn’t change what they’d be like under anarcho-capitalism.
Yes, shockingly, the definitions of words are semantics!
And to literally ask if something meets a definition then try to dismiss the response as semantic while offering your own incorrect definition is fantastically silly.
Gangs are structured groups of people that exist to generate profit illegally.
Unincorporated businesses are structured groups of people that exist to generate profit legally.
Incorporated businesses are structured groups of people that exist to generate profit legally with the special legal status of personhood.
Part of the point @mark3748@sh.itjust.works was making is that corporations are nearly identical to other organizations, even illegal ones, except they have a legal status that lets them do far more damage.
Same with pirates. They have an internal structure and share profit, but are very illegal.
No. Not all organizations are corporations.
Sometimes states are created by corporations. Eg, Canada and the Hudson Bay Company
Except that they were literally given a monopoly and funding by the British monarchy:
A royal charter from King Charles II incorporated “The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, trading into Hudson’s Bay” on 2 May 1670.[6] The charter granted the company a monopoly over the region drained by all rivers and streams flowing into Hudson Bay in northern parts of present-day Canada.
And the HBC did nothing to induce the state to act in such a way? The King just decided, hey, I like these HBC folks, I’m going to give them an entire nation, because I’m swell.
They had some prominent backers as the article explains, but regardless of that the fact remains that HBC was created by a state with the clear goal to establish a another client state through it (hence the monopoly rights). Britain’s rivalries with France probably also played a role as France was the dominant colonial power in that area at the time.
It’s just latter-day feudalism. Their program is to Make Landlords Lords Again.
Yes, and I think that’s the joke here.
Kind of seems like that’s what they’re getting at but I find this linguistic deception so irritating that I can’t even tolerate the implicit suggestion here that the top dude might be some kind of anarchist.
The people the meme is referring to call themselves anarcho-capitalists, it’s not even implicit. It’s why they have the blue line flag and Gadsden flag, where normally these would be contradictory they lack the critical thinking skills to not polish boots with their tongue.
If they didn’t blatantly steal ideas from the left and twist it to support rich people, where would they get ideas? Have you stopped and considered how mentally bankrupt they are?
Literally I think I’ve seen a handful or fewer conservative memes that weren’t just a shitty spin on a leftists meme.
Back The Blue supporters jamming to Rage against the Machine for decades then suddenly getting upset at the band.
Same vibes as when they got mad at Green Day for trashing Trump. Like they never paid attention at all.
But a punk band trashing a right-wing president? That’s never happened before!
It’s not like their most widely recognized song was written to trash a right-wing president /s
How is it fundamentally a left wing movement? I like lib left ideals, but fundamentally speaking, How can you have centralized economic planning as well as anarchism?
Left-wing does not necessarily imply a centralized or planned economy.
What policy do you hope to see, and how will it be achieved?
abolition of all unjust hierarchy
You’re thinking of the liberal/conservative spectrum as a line, which is common simply because political parties have a stranglehold on things and you vote for representatives instead of directly voting for policy. The side effect of voting for representatives is that it inherently ties social and fiscal policy together, because you as an individual don’t have any choices that diverge from that left/right line.
But political policy is really closer to a graph with an X/Y direction. Social policy on one direction, and fiscal policy on the other. You’re thinking of liberal social and financial policy, which is communism. Socially liberal but fiscally conservative is anarchism.
So what else do you call not-having-a-government-ism?
Anti-statism. Anarchism is against all hierarchy. Including class.
Anarchism. A king is a government.
The terms “right wing” and “left wing” are quite nebulous, anyways.
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You can not be an anarchist while supporting the hierarchical system of capitalism. Full stop.
Yes, well, you can not be an anarchist while supporting the exploitation of animals, either, but look around you.
Fuck yea, animal liberation all the way. Not sure why you’re using that to defend capitalism tho. Doesn’t really feel like a good faith comment to make.
What I am saying is that you are going to have to search pretty fucking hard for a “real” anarchist once you start applying the actual definition.
You’re right that there is a definition of anarchism that nobody will meet, just like there’s a definition of feminism or capitalism or communism that nobody will meet. Those definitions are therefore useless, but that doesn’t mean anything goes.
There’s a difference between self-styled ‘anarchists’ who name themselves after oppressive systems and consciously include oppressive tools in their proposals for change and self-styled ‘anarchists’ who name themselves after systems that can help empower anarchism and that try to include as little archism in their proposals for change as possible.
The anarchist movement isn’t a static definition, it’s a vector force pulling at present-day society. Ancaps don’t pull along that vector. Non-vegan anarchocommunists do.
yes, you can. basically every anarchist who has ever lived has been ok with animal exploitation.
No one said they are the “true enemy”. US “Libertarians” (another stolen term) are largely irrelevant and just propped up by billionaires like Peter Thiel. They are the court-jesters of the oligarchs and deserve ridicule for being so naive and not noticing it. “Natural allies” for what? In boot-licking?
Books banned, women and children forced to give birth against their will, total depredation of the environment, oligopoly, corruption, conspiracy theories, propaganda, and fascism.
Other than the book banning, that sounds like your average libertarian to me.
I’m just talking about word definitions here. If you support hierarchical dominance of some humans by others, you aren’t an anarchist by any reasonable definition.
That doesn’t mean we can’t cooperate on certain issues, though of course I’ll have to use my judgment as far as whether that collaboration does more harm than good, as I do in all cross-ideological collaboration. But our ideological differences are not very trivial so I don’t agree that we are natural allies either.
If you’re tired of having this argument just stop calling ancaps anarchists. It’s not accurate and even big papa Rothbard admitted as much in unpublished writings.
What about anarcho-capitalism?
Ancaps aren’t anarchists any more than buffalo have wings. Anarchism is the rejection of hierarchy, and capitalism is inherently hierarchical.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but I need clarification how capitalism is inherently hierarchical. I know that for example starting from a state where everybody has the same “capital” things tend be be distributed unequally because more capital grows at a larger rate than less capital. But this is more something that emerges from capitalism rather than an inherent property.
Well if it naturally gravitates to inequality, l would call it an inherent property.
capitalism is a system of production in which the means of production are held as private property by a capitalist class. with the abolition of the state will necessarily come abolition of private property, so capitalism cannot exist in anarchy.
Humanity is inherently hierarchical.
That’s a huge claim. Do you by any chance have a review paper on that? I’d guess that if that’s the case there should be plenty of anthropological evidence that early hunter gatherer tribes were hierarchical.
Ancaps aren’t really anarchists, they just coopted the word.
There is sort of a word missing for people who believe in inequality, that the weak should be ruled by the strong and might makes right, who believe in authoritarianism. I mean besides insults like bootlicker. Because ancaps would just flock to the nearest warlord / land baron.
I think the word for people who believe in authoritarianism is “authoritarian”.
Well… touche. But that doesn’t sound like an insult and more like praising them for their great authority.
That’s exactly what was meant.
Amazon’s Human Resources Department buys all the land around where you stand, kills you of you violate the NAP by trespassing, and then barters for your unending indentured servitude in exchange for food and water.
Anarcho-capitalism is like taking the worst parts of feudalism and chattel slavery, but with fewer human rights.
Meth Daemon: “Paris Commune of 1927 or Shanghai Commune of 1928?”
Wagner Moura: “Neither. They both deprived the aristocracy of their rightfully contracted private property.”
Meth Daemon: “Die Heretic!”
Must be Emo
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed that movie.
What movie is that from?
Civil War
Based on Jesse Plemons name above I think it’s civil war 2024
One of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time! Great acting, music, writing, costumes, concept, locations. Proper cinematic experience!
It was insanely good! And no one I know went to see it!
Oh? I saw the trailer and figured it was some bs like that 2012 apocalypse movie. Didn’t think it would be a fun watch.
It wasn’t super fun, but it gave me feelings. Some of them were dark.
The same guy who wrote Civil War also did 28 Days Later, and it shows in the best way.
Disaster movies are almost always bad but they’re also almost always fun.
It was amazing. What
areI mean would the media do while a country tears itself apart?I’m a fan of Alex Garland. I probably went into it a bit too hyped, and still thoroughly enjoyed it.
Have been trying to figure out what movie it is. Can you give me a tip?
Civil War
Thanks! For some reason (and I admit I was barely paying attention when it was released) I had the impression it was to some degree a right-wing propaganda film. I’m guessing if it’s being memed here it’s probably not. 🙂
Will check it out!
I expected it to be a lot more political in focus but it is straight up a movie about war. The grim, the mundane, the absurd and the horror of war. I think the closest inspiration I would say is Apocalypse Now.
Sounds interesting in any case, thank you!
Why is the Gadsden flag placed alongside a thin blue line flag? Those symbols are mutually exclusive. I would also strongly question the intent of the valknut symbol.
Ancaps are not ideologically consistent.
I would hesitate to call this only an inconsistency; it’s really more of an example of cognitive dissonance.
I feel like we shouldn’t bully the dead husk of niche ideology. It must feel terrible to have virtually zero support for your politics and frustratingly pace around in the anonymous niche web communities because everyone in real life would just laugh.
It must be hard to have such views and grasp at straws daily reading some same scraps of Wikipedia with examples where for 56 days the system worked as intended.
I’m not gonna feel sorry for a bunch of dudes who fantasize about being the next Kyle Rittenhouse.
Mind you my comment isn’t exclusive to ancaps. There are tons of ppl screaming in the wind their whole life and dying without even realizing how stupid and misguided it all was. This is tragic, extremism is a cult for isolated from society. The last sliver of hope of a tortured mind
I feel like we shouldn’t bully the dead husk of niche ideology.
Would you mind clarifying exactly what “niche ideology” you are referring to? It’s not immediately clear to me.
EDIT (2024-08-10T19:15Z): I think this comment of yours clarifies that you are referring to ancaps?
I refer to all weird online political views. Bloodthirsty leninists, self righteous ancaps, remote and depressed collapsniks and all else not fitting in the society and desperate for some form of hope in the quasi theological salvation of dusty political manifestos.
You would seldom find them irl unless they already took ar15 and are going for it. A natural extension of school shooters except the whole society is the class. If someone starts to lecture you on some maoism or the like better try to get on their good side
Standard libertarian/ancap combo. Don’t tread on me (the Gadsden flag), tread on my enemies (the thin blue line flag). The valknut signals who those enemies are (blacks and immigrants) just in case the thin blue line by itself wasn’t explicitly racist enough.
Standard libertarian/ancap combo.
The presence of a thin blue line flag and a valknut symbol indicates that they are neither libertarian nor ancap.
You would think that, but no, I see the gadsen flag flying with the the thin blue line flag way too much
First of all, the presence of a Gadsden flag doesn’t necessitate that the individual is a libertarian nor an ancap. Second, by the definition of libertarianism, it is incompatible with a thin blue line flag (assuming that it is interpreted as showing support for giving the police more oppressive power) or a valknut symbol (assuming it is interpreted as support white supremacy). Any one who displays both the Gadsden flag and the thin blue line flag is teetering on cognitive dissonance. The Gadsden flag represents resistance to oppression, and the thin blue line flag represents giving power to oppression.
It is not, ancap thought is perfectly compatible with a privatized police force and white supremacy (Murray Rothbard literally was one). And the Gadsden flag is commonly understood as being against state interference, not other forms of oppression.
Edit: and while I agree that it seems like an odd combination, there are really plenty libertarians out there who think they need to buy out /bribe the local police force to get them on their side should things go their way.
There is a cop, in my city, who has a gadsden flag, blue line flag, and a gold/black ancap flag, on his porch. He also has nazi appropriated norse symbolism tattooed on his arms. These people exist, he is a walking joke, like I would have thought this was some sort of trolling, if I didn’t know he was risking his job over the tatts. He eventually deleted his facebook, and nextdoor, profiles because of how badly he was being made fun of over it, once someone dropped a link to his profile on reddit. He was worried he might lose his job if all that stayed up. He did, eventually get fired, but it had to do with something other than his suspicious tatts, and hypocritical beliefs.
We might as well say those symbols are owned by the far right.
ancap thought is perfectly compatible with a privatized police force
Are you referring to a private police force because of the mention of the Thin Blue Line flag?
ancap thought is perfectly compatible with […] white supremacy
It depends what you mean by “perfectly compatible”. An ancap would believe that the state shouldn’t be able to prevent a person from being a white supremacist.
And the Gadsden flag is commonly understood as being against state interference, not other forms of oppression.
I agree. Perhaps my previous comment was lacking in clarity.
Edit: and while I agree that it seems like an odd combination, there are really plenty libertarians out there who think they need to buy out /bribe the local police force to get them on their side should things go their way.
I would be hesitant to refer to such an individual as a libertarian. At the very least, not without further information.
Any one who displays both the Gadsden flag and the thin blue line flag is teetering on cognitive dissonance. The Gadsden flag represents resistance to oppression, and the thin blue line flag represents giving power to oppression.
It’s only cognitive dissonance if you assume all people are equal and deserve equal rights and freedoms.
A significant percentage of self-described anarchists and libertarians believe all people are not equal - that there are good people, who will use freedom responsibly, and bad people, who will use their freedom to harm others, and it is the purpose of government (cops, sheriffs, border patrol) to protect the good people from the bad people.
Such anarchists and libertarians wave the thin blue line flag unironically and with complete ideological consistency, because they believe police brutality and oppression will be directed at those who rightfully deserve to be oppressed.
Uhm, lots to unpack here, but I think you are mixing things up. Yes, classic conservatives do a divide like that and there is a reasonable argument to be had about the existence of people “bad” people without getting into moral arguments.
But the libertarians do not make this argument. They literally argue that being bad, i.e. acting purely selfish becomes a net positive to society through the invisible hand of the market 🙄
If they support police than that is on the grounds of in-group thinking (“these are our guys”) or more often purely utilitarian as in: “we pay them to protect our interests”.
It’s only cognitive dissonance if you assume all people are equal and deserve equal rights and freedoms.
Correct.
A significant percentage of self-described […] libertarians believe all people are not equal - that there are good people, who will use freedom responsibly, and bad people, who will use their freedom to harm others, and it is the purpose of government (cops, sheriffs, border patrol) to protect the good people from the bad people.
Such an individual would not be a libertarian.
Such […] libertarians wave the thin blue line flag unironically and with complete ideological consistency, because they believe police brutality and oppression will be directed at those who rightfully deserve to be oppressed.
A belief in libertarianism and the display of a Thin Blue Line flag is no longer teetering on, and is now simply cognitive dissonance. They are mutually exclusive.
Any one who displays both the Gadsden flag and the thin blue line flag is teetering on cognitive dissonance.
Indeed
Why is the Gadsden flag placed alongside a thin blue line flag? Those symbols are mutually exclusive.
You should tell that to the endless sea of car bumpers and flagpoles I see flying both those flags and a Trump flag.
I would if I could.
I live in Southern Oregon and it’s gotten to the point that I’m actually a little surprised when I don’t see them side by side on pickups or flagpoles. On the way through Camas Valley or somewhere between the 5 and the coast, IIRC, there is a flagpole that has those, a thin green line flag and a Trump flag, just to really confuse everyone.
It’s truly baffling. Perhaps not that they don’t seem to understand, at the most fundamental levels, what they are so passionate about, but that they are so eager to let everyone know.
I’ve seen this in the wild. I always ask myself “who do you think does the treading?”
The intent of the symbols may be diametric but the stupidity of the right to co-opt and repurpose any symbol is a historic tradition.
It makes sense when you realize that AnCaps are uneducated Anarchists who haven’t read political theory (they generally swap as soon as they do)
Did Nazis co-opt the valknut? I know it’s Norse, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they did, just couldn’t find anything from some quick searching.
I’m not sure. I’ve honestly never seen it prior to this post. My knowledge of its use as a symbol of white supremacy comes from its Wikipedia article, so there’s a high probability of my ignorance on it.
AnCaps are basically Anarchism minus the political theory (aka all the core fundemental values of Anarchism) and with too much economic theory from Murray Rothbard (“free market” capitalism). The best thing I can say about them is that most of them grow out of it and choose an actual version of Anarchism as soon as they’re exposed to theory (at least I did and now I’m an AnSynd).
Great that you made the turnaround, but what you describe is only true for the many confused online ancaps that usually ended up there through the bitcoin pyramid scheme propaganda pipeline.
There is a different group often condidered to have been started by Murray Rothbard that have a well defined ideological basis for which they try to appropriate terms like “Libertarian” and “Anarchist” but which has nothing to do with the original meaning of these words. This group is well funded by oligarchs and serves as the ideological think-tank to justify the massive theft of these very same oligarchs.
These justifications are in turn often uncritically lapped up by the first group.
I’m referring to the ignorant people who blindly follow the capitalists because that’s most "An"caps and right “libertarians”. Many people like myself fell down the pipeline when we realized that the government is fundementally a source of evil and the ideal society is one based on mutual cooperation rather than coercion. The problem therefore is that "An"caps have only figured out half of the problem, they understand the evils of government but not the coercive power of the capitalist class. The group you described can be simply referred to as the capitalist class as they hold no true morals or political ideology.
Can I get a guide to all those logos, please?
The yellow and black flag is the ancap (anarcho-capitalist) flag. The rattlesnake is a libertarian icon and says “don’t step on me”. Bitcoin was built out of a libertarian idea that the government was to blame for the 2008 GFC because they somehow regulated the banks too much, so a decentralized digital currency was the best way to get around that regulation. ETA: the black and white US flag with the blue stripe is the “thin blue line” flag, flown by supporters of the police, typically a symbol used by the right wing of America. The three interlocking triangles form the valknut, a symbol used by ancient Germanic people’s, and currently used by people who identify with Germany and the Vikings; white supremacists make up a large group who fit this description.
The red and black flag is an anarchist flag, a combination of two older anarchist flags: the black flag and the red flag. The ancap flag is descended from this one, replacing the red with gold (because gold is a very old and widely used form of currency, and money good, government bad). The purple and black one is the anarcha-feminst flag, and they also use the pink and black flag, but it’s primarily seen as the queer anarchist flag. I’m sure I don’t need to explain the LGBT+ flag. All Cops Are Bastards (ACAB) is a popular slogan amongst anarchists because cops are the strong arm of the state, and as such Black Lives Matter is a movement that a lot of anarchists strongly identify with and support.
this comment having a single upvote is a crime
Top panel: Gadsden flag (no step on snek!) with anarcho-capitalist black stripe, Bitcoin logo, “blue lives matter” boot-flavored US flag, “better dead than red” anticommunist Gadsden flag, and a tri-something-or-other that’s a Norse symbol co-opted by Nazis who are legally prohibited from using a swastika. Altogether: Ayn Rand’s fanclub.
Bottom panel: black power first, feminist… power fist?.. “all cops are bastards,” self-explanatory BLM, three flavors of anarchism, oddly subdued anarchism circle-A, and a transgender flag with what I think is the same oddly subdued circle-A getting lost in JPG’s chroma subsampling. Even though this is a PNG.
Very helpful, thanks.
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Ah yes, the horseshoe theory.
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“And that’s why I save my labor as dollars and stocks.”
We all remember who the nice guy is
