Rumminations on Anarchism

I have been an Anarchist for an awfully long time. I have been one since 18, so 23 years. I now loathe to call myself one because of the unfortunate people it results in associating yourself with, these hyper rule fixated blue haired monsters that call themselves Anarchists. But, I am still basically one. All of my solutions to all of my theoretical problems consistently revolve around ideas that are Anarchist if not in name but through application. I’m not even subtle about it. You could call it modus tollens, though the empirical evidence, the conclusion of the if them proposition, never contradicted the premises. To me Anarchism has done nothing but demonstrate how right it was. It’s dead now, but that’s ancient history. That’s the advent of Stalinism without a State of Bookchin over the paleo Anarchists who were much more individualist than that communal abomination Bookchin. He has no flaire for the dramatic. He was Anarchism for the autistic. But, alas, back, then in 2009 the Liberals pretending to be Anarchist while spreading the Stalinist Bookchin, the essentialist CRT, the anti White racism, the now irrelevant current year followers, all the Anarcho Bidenists purged me. How dare I be an individual. How dare I think that even people I don’t like can organize their autonomous commune how they want. How dare I believe:

“If there is one fundamental principle of human morality, it is freedom. To respect the freedom of your fellowman is duty; to love, help, and serve him is virtue.”

• Source: “Revolutionary Catechism” (1866), quoted in Bakunin on Anarchy, translated by Sam Dolgoff, 1971.

Words, they used to mean things, but then again the concept of the proletarian has been ignored so long that I think it’s become alcoholic. What does Left and Right mean when Conservatives are anti war and Liberals are just, trash. The metrics which define Left or Right have changed. A lot of these metrics are related or influenced by Anarchist ideas or problems. One of the new metrics is regionalism versus federalism. Another is individualism versus communal belonging. The rugged rural individualist versus the cohesive monolithic urbanite. Centralisation versus decentralisation. Authoritarianism or a meritocracy. Censorship or free expression. A lot of the new global metrics for what it means to be something you mean to be are related to Anarchist problems and ideas. With the new polarising dichotomies emerging in society solidifying in things like the regional emergence of nationalism, an individualist thing, against the globalism of neoCons/neoLibs and the international rules based order, a communal thing, the issues relate to and can be solved with Anarchism or ideas central and integral to Anarchism. If the question is whether I’m an individualist the answer is self evident. I am. What is my enemy? The federal universal totalitarian state. Which one? Trick question, all of them.

Most if not all of the ideas I have ever injected into one or another political movement I first learned through criticism of one state or another during my time as a decentralist regional parochial child of Bakunin and the romanticism of slow or rapid decay. In a sense Anarchism is a practice in aesthetics. Why? Because on the face of it we seem to be a dream of a ridiculous man. Now they call me a mad man, that would be a promotion in their eyes if I wasn’t as ridiculous as I was before. Everyone misinterprets Anarchism as a crude reduction to lawlessness or associate it with current year Anarcho Conformists who think freedom is a bunch of shit you can’t do. Obviously true freedom is the right to do the opposite, but I’m being specious. And, as I know noone will take my arguments seriously, I either don’t mention where I get them and relate them to whoever I’m talking to’s ideology or alternatively demonstrate my ideology through practice and example. And art? Art is a process of showing things to people. Art is the creation of artistic objects with a multitude of mediums in which to express all sorts of things. Anarchism is aesthetics cause no one takes it seriously enough to engage with it, so it’s seen as a style. I must sell you the image of Anarchism, it’s artistic license, it’s existential value, it’s potentiality. I need to show you it’s possible to be against everything and survive. But me, I defy things on principle and see the praxis of my ideology to be an existential statement of authenticity and principles in an abyss of feckless petty opportunism. I poetically declare a general strike on working. I gilde the lily when it comes to drug addiction, I immortalise and iconographically grovel in the rejection and spite of society for this statement, this rejection of social norms. I am like a Russian Nihilist contraposed to whatever normal is. My life in Anarchism is a metaphor. I am a sarcastic remark quick to be thrust out of my mouth. I am a political cad, trickster being, selling you Anarchism and calling it something else. It’s not a me problem, it’s a you problem:

“If it is right for me, it is right. It is possible that it is wrong for others: let them take care of themselves!”

• The Ego and Its Ownr

My defiance is minimal in practice, destructive in application, derisive, witty, poetic, an existential statement. I am a symbolic iconoclast who takes can’t as an advisory, not a rule. Anarchism is a poem you write and apply to day to day life. The mundane becomes miraculous. Rebellion a sacred form. Disagreement, dissent, chaos, antipathy, aggressiveness, and an identity all rolled up into one impossible dream, that every individual is as divinely sacred as another. Consent, consent is what I resent about the state. I don’t consent to war, I don’t consent to capitalism, I don’t consent to any of it. So, because I was arbitrarily born into this society I have agreed to its rules? There is a social contract that I signed? I would like to see this, my signature about how I agree with my society, it’s policies, it’s underlying theoretical assumptions, its culture and its values, it’s raisson D’etre just because I was shit out one fine day in November, in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. I assure you it’s a real place. I would like to be able to consent to whatever authority rules over me. That’s one of the premises of Anarchism. Voluntary association. We should all be allowed to opt out of society if we do not consent to it voluntarily. That, in Anarchism, forms the basis of the right of an autonomous commune to exist, we want to be somewhere. If you don’t want to be anywhere, you’re in Hell, I guess.

Anarchism is weird in a lot of senses, initially it was a Marxist tendency that said that utopia was possible. Most of the early Anarchists were Romantic artists, literal degenerates, the absolutely impoverished, the lowest of the low in society. Any Anarchist worth his or her salt lives by his or her own rules as a statement of defiance in the face of state censorship and conformity. And, just like you find a lot of murderers in the Army, you find a lot of social outcasts in Anarchism. To the social outcast Anarchism provides the subtext, the script, the justification, the righteousness of their difference from the norm. Like pedophiles as priests, rejects are naturally drawn to Anarchism. And, the believer in Anarchism has a litany of rules, but the praxis of Anarchism starts to erode the meaning of ideology itself. Over the years of anti statist criticism and anti statist activism ideology begins to lose meaning. I wouldn’t argue theory and I still don’t. I demonstrate theory by organizing my interaction with any movement as a periphery exercise on my ability to spread dissent, chaos, fun, excitement, and forbidden ideas. I show up, I information bomb, I try to inspire grassroots change in the observer, I organize laterally without top down authority, I work actively against hero worship, I ask no gain, take no bribes, I use my speech and not violence, I am always defiant, and I succeed at being able to do it. I am a harbringer of all of the rage against the state:

“Why is our flag black? Black is a shade of negation. The black flag is the negation of all flags. It is a negation of nationhood which puts the human race against itself and denies the unity of all humankind. Black is a mood of anger and outrage at all the hideous crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of allegiance to one state or another.”

Citation: Ehrlich, Howard J., ed. Reinventing Anarchy, Again. AK Press, 1996, p. 31.

I believe in freedom of information, hence I claim no boon from activism or make anyone pay me for my ideas. I’m not too hot on conpyright because all information, media, art, religion, and many other things should be free. I don’t believe in top down hierarchic organisations with people designated to do this or designated to do that. I encourage people to organise among themselves, argue whatever they want among themselves, and not to listen to experts past the meaning of the words coming out of their mouths. How do I do that? I, as an individual, wade into a space and I dominate. I spread the myth of Nolan Bucsis, the persistent pernicious troll who says what he wants and fuck the consequences. I don’t brag, unless that’s part of the bit, I just show up, argue, win the argument, leave. How is that inspirational? I just said whatever the fuck I wanted to, survived the censorship, and kept going against the inevitability of breaking. Look, homie don’t shake, you too can not shake friend. I do not place any status, innate skill, motivation, past crimes, or any other qualifiers for participation in what I do. Everyone is welcome, everyone can do it, you should do it, come on, just do it, I do. And, that’s lateral organization. Organization that is organic, fluid, permutates, and is accessible to everyone. Hero worship, it’s a sin in which we give people authority over our consensus simply because of who they are, even if what they do is amazing, it is sometimes, their position does not grant them immutable divine ineffable authority over our lives or for what they say and do. Hero worship is unhealthy and results in aristocratic privilege by which our Idols never experience a Gotterdamerung. Sometimes I get called grifter, but what am I selling? Do I ask for money? What don’t you understand by I do it for free and for the Anarchist protest of wage slavery by providing free services others get you to pay for? I am not necessarily opposed to violence, it has its time and place. I think, for the art, for the Anarchist aesthetic, for the resemblance to a religion, for the poetry, I reject violence and have committed to only using my speech and non violent means of resistance since about 2014. I’m too loud to do anything violent. I would be too obvious of someone to have done it. I tick a lot of boxes. So, why bother? Why do something that would definitely get me arrested? So, I don’t. I am also a pacifist in that I only believe in defensive wars. I’m against all the interventionist blunders the state makes, no matter the context.

On top of that short generalization of my beliefs, I am also anti capitalist and Nationalist. But Nolan, how can you be both communal and individualist? Easy, one they’re not mutually exclusive, i.e. communal groups have great individuals and few great individuals exist alone and by themselves. And, two, as a North American White Nationalist one aspect of our national identity is precisely individualism. The North American man is defined by their individuality, their self reliance, their strong individual will and conscience, Western nationalism if it’s being honest, especially in its colonial form, is rooted primarily, strongly, and convincingly in the individual rights of the nation to their own free speech, conscience, association, religion, etc. The Rights of Man and the constant pursuit of individual freedoms in Europe long before but best exemplified by the Magna Carta demonstrate that individualism is a primary force in Western society. As Bakunin wrote:

“Freedom is the absolute right of every adult man and woman to seek no other sanction for their acts than their own conscience and their own reason, being responsible first to themselves and then to the society which they have voluntarily accepted.”
— The Revolutionary Catechism (1866), as quoted in Bakunin on Anarchy (1971), edited by Sam Dolgoff.

What’s missing? My ideology is not set in stone. Through years of online activism, mucking about, creating guerilla ideologies, classifying things, observing strange people, criticizing people, finding vast amounts of information about the crimes perpetuated against humanity in the name of the state, I learned ideology doesn’t really affect reality as much as need, or material relations/conditions, real politik, the pure exercise of power, the coercive force of the state, what you can afford, etc. Ideology itself can become a spook, in the sense of Stirner, if you disassociate it from praxis. Without praxis ideology is a nothing, an escape, a religion, a delusion, a stupid thought construct. To me my ideology is important as a guiding principle and a general goal, but it has almost no effect on real politics. Not real politik, but actual politics isn’t usually guided by ideology. The people who run the state and its coercive violence, arbitrary authority, communalism, universalism, legal repercussions, etc. couldn’t give a fuck about what ideology guides their behaviour because their behaviours are not guided by principles, morals, or ideals. The actions of the state are guided by its own desire to keep existing. The state serves to preserve itself and its authority above all else. The state will spout any idea as long as you consent to being ruled. The state will stammer all means of threats, use all means of violence, use all means of deceptions, lies, psyops, manipulation, etc. it can to preserve its existence. Ideology? No, Might is Right and we pay lip service to ideals and morals and principles. Don’t we?

No, actually I don’t. While the following is true, should it be? I would say my ideology is flexible, but I do adhere pretty rabidly to a lot of principles I have. I learned from the state that ideology means nothing and everything is an exercise of power based around the accumulation of capital, abstract status. My ideology isn’t really important. The ideology of the state really isn’t important. One of the weird things about Anarchism is that while Marxist and other anti capitalist groups agitprop is oriented around one bugaboo or another like the general strike, or workers issues, or crimes of the bourgeoisie, etc, Anarchist agitprop consists of all sorts of ideologically different people running one or another states committing crimes against their populace. Marxists show you pay indiscretions, Anarchists meticulously prove, cite, and source all the massacres in Vietnam, or the names of the dead, or the DU babies heads, or a massacre, or a covert psyop against people, so on and so forth. For the statist, the Marxist, it’s not the system but the people running the system that’s the problem. For me it’s all states, all systems, and the consistency at which you can be assured that a modern state has committed some atrocity is basically 100%. The state is the problem. The state commits atrocities, the state provides the reason to commit the atrocity, the state starts wars, the state creates weaponized viruses, the state is the criminal in world history that commits all of the crimes in the name of its existence. The ideology of the state doesn’t mean anything. It is the system that is the problem. It is the system that commits imperialism. It’s the system that starts wars. It’s the system that robs you blind. The weirdest thing about Anarchism, finding fascist atrocities, democratic atrocities, commie atrocitities, etc. is that you eventually start to realise that ideology is at best a guiding principle. So then what does it mean to be an Anarchist? To be an anti statist. Against arbitrary coercive authority over the individual, as that is what the state is, the state is the arbitrary coercion of someone in the states’ territory to the states rules on threat of violence. At a certain point if you remain an Anarchist long enough, you become a nothing, because the Liberal butchers and the Conservative butchers are still butchers, and putting humans into the meat grinder is kinda, not cool.

So, how do you resist such a thing? This mind virus mass psychosis where divine individuals feel like they have a right to abduct you on threat of jail and force you to kill other poor impoverished foreigners in some ditch, cause, Canada. I mean, no, that doesn’t sound right. I don’t think I support that. And, how do I, measly little me, pathetic divine individual with a cause that’s mine and not a spook, resist such an omnipotent behemoth as the federal state? With words. I am a fairly good writer. I’ve put in effort into it, I learned how to type fast, respond quickly, be witty, quickly write well worded arguments in seconds, you know, I got better at writing. And, writing is what social activism has become, unless you’re a talking head, but while you lord over your ego and presentation I am in chat. I am couping your superstructure. I fester and bring my own sort of entertainment. And, I don’t care what dissent you have, just that you spread it. Cause, hell, what the fuck even am I at this point? Ideologically, I’m confused I guess. But, what I do know, from telling everyone about the atrocities of things like Gary Webb, Edward Bernaise, and so on, is that the state is the problem.

I’m still an Anarchist, but I prefer to call myself Nolan. I am one person wading in against millions if not billions of dollars worth of propaganda and contradicting it, resisting it with my feeble life and somehow still here. All I do is write, it’s like an impulse, but I have no regret for what I do, I don’t feel like I’ve done anything wrong. All I ever do is say my opinion. If opinions are illegal now, speaking, saying things, then please put me in jail. But, I won’t accept that, censorship. I will protest it by defying it. What better protest to an unjust law is there but the peaceful exercise of words that I’ve trained myself to be able to express myself fairly aesthetically in. I think. While my self interest is petty and vain as it is mine, I think free speech, thought, conscience, religion, association, etc. are very important things to try to protect or subvert for. So, I do. And all the problems I get myself in are based on that one impulse, that my cause is mine, and yours? Well:

“What then is my cause? It is not the divine cause, nor the human cause, not the true, the good, the just, the free, nor any other ideal, but only what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is—unique, as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself! … For me, you are nothing but—my food, even as I am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use.”

Stirner, Max. The Ego and Its Own. Translated by Steven T. Byington, edited by David Leopold, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 162–163.