Tag Archives: anarchy

Thucydides on Catastrophe and Lawlessness

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On the plague of Athens in 430 BC. History of the Peloponnesian War (2.52): “the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or law.” Thucydides continues (2.53, Warner trans.):

In other respects also Athens owed to the plague the beginnings of a state of unprecedented lawlessness (ἀνομίας). Seeing how quick and abrupt were the changes of fortune which came to the rich who suddenly died and to those who had previously been penniless but now inherited their wealth, people now began openly to venture on acts of self-indulgence which before then they had used to keep dark. Thus they resolved to spend their money quickly and to spend it on pleasure, since money and life alike seemed equally ephemeral. As for what is called honour, no one showed himself willing to abide by its laws, so doubtful was it whether one would survive to enjoy the name for it. It was generally agreed that what was both honourable and valuable was the pleasure of the moment and everything that might conceivably contribute to that pleasure. No fear of god or law of man had a restraining influence. As for the gods, it seemed to be the same thing whether one worshipped them or not, when one saw the good and the bad dying indiscriminately. As for offenses against human law, no one expected to live long enough to be brought to trial and punished: instead everyone felt that already a far heavier sentence had been passed on him and was hanging over him, and that before the time for its execution arrived it was only natural to get some pleasure out of life.

The Tinderbox Theory of the Republic

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Glenn Beck favored radio listeners today with excerpts from his email correspondence with Sarah Palin over the shootings in Tucson.

Both correspondents were naturally eager to distance themselves from Jared Loughner’s murderous rampage at the Safeway on Saturday, and say that they abhor violence. They come in peace. “Sarah, as you know, peace is always the answer,” Beck writes:

I know you are feeling the same heat, if not much more on this. I want you to know you have my support. But please look into protection for your family. An attempt on you could bring the republic down.[emphasis mine]

What’s most striking here is not the patently absurd notion that “an attempt” on Sarah Palin’s life would or “could bring the republic down”; it’s the very idea of the republic underlying it.

That is the idea of the republic as a tinderbox. Apparently the place is ready to explode at the slightest provocation. In Beck’s view, or self-serving conceit, most Americans are locked and loaded, ready for civil war. We are teetering on the brink of revolution. Don’t tread on us. In our distressed republic, good people have been pushed to the limit. We are ready to resist tyranny at every turn, or at least before every commercial break, and with every self-aggrandizing tweet.

And all it would take to ignite the tinderbox would be the assassination of… Sarah Palin?

Is this our Helen?

It’s unclear whether Palin thinks her face or her Facebook page could launch a thousand ships, but she shares with Beck the view that her obnoxious behavior and his are of historic importance: “Thanks to all you do,” she replies, sounding vaguely apostolic, “to send the message of truth and love and God as the answer.”

And yet even with good men like Beck out there our future is not secure: “our children will not have peace if politicos just capitalize on this to succeed in portraying anyone as inciting terror and violence”. So peace is always the answer, or at least truth and love and God are the answer, unless, of course, the “politicos” keep picking on Sarah Palin.

And if they don’t stop? Then all bets are off, I suppose; and all patriots should fear for the republic.

Who Are the Real Anarchists Here?

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You would think the bombings at the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome last Thursday would have a sobering effect on some of Julian Assange’s most vocal American critics, especially those who have styled him a “terrorist” or “anarchist.”

The bombers in Rome identified themselves — in a note vowing to “destroy the system of domination” — as belonging to the Lambros Fountas cell of the FAI, the Federazione Anarchica Informale (not to be confused with the Federazione Anarchica Italiana). The parcel bomb they mailed to the Swiss embassy seriously injured a mailroom worker’s hand. A member of the Chilean embassy staff lost two fingers and may not regain vision in one eye.

We are told that the anarchists were striking back after a recent joint Italian-Swiss anti-terror operation led to the arrest of their Swiss and Italian cohorts. The group also aimed to avenge the death of Chilean anarchist Mauricio Morales, who died, in 2009, when a bomb in a backpack he was carrying exploded in downtown Santiago. At least that is the story “according to the bourgeois press”; some of Morales’ supporters counter with the explanation that “the device exploded unexpectedly, and our comrade died in combat” and they point to widespread arrests after Morales’ death to suggest some conspiracy of the authorities against them.

There is no doubt such a conspiracy, but most likely not the one the anarchists imagine. Be that as it may, we are being asked to entertain the idea that these embassy bombings are acts of vengeance, rough justice meted out for perceived injustices, and that these are as it were symbolic or at least significant acts, the Federazione Anarchica Informale having decided “to make our voice heard with words and with deeds.” The allusion here to the “propaganda of the deed” is supposed to dignify or elevate these acts, and accord them some historic significance.

Of course it would be absurd to compare Julian Assange to these anarchists and Wikileaks to the Federazione Anarchica Informale. Anarchists do not always or even usually advocate violent overthrow of government; not all anarchists are terrorists, and most terrorists are not anarchists. These distinctions matter, and it’s not sufficient to use terms like “anarchist” or “terrorist” loosely.

Julian Assange and his supporters have gone to great lengths to distance Assange from the charge that he is an anarchist and to emphasize that no one has been physically harmed by the leaking of diplomatic cables. And — as I noted in a previous post — Assange himself is right to point out that what he is doing is “civil” if not obedient, and certainly not anarchic or violent or a form of terror.

He has also rightly understood the agenda of those who play the terror card when talking about Wikileaks. So when Cenk Uygur recently asked Assange to respond to this loose talk – which we’ve heard from Pete King, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Joe Biden, and a host of other fear mongers and demagogues – Assange didn’t hestitate to call them the real anarchists:

Uygur: Now, I want to give you a chance to respond personally, though, because here Mike Huckabee is making it very personal. You saw that quote we had up. He says, I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty for you. Sarah Palin is saying that you are like al Qaeda and the Taliban and he — you should be pursued with the same urgency.
So how would you respond to Mike Huckabee, who is a top Republican leader, who’s likely to run for president again?
How do you respond to Sarah Palin, a top Republican leader who might run for president again?
Assange: Oh, it’s just another idiot trying to make a name for himself. But it’s a — it’s a serious business. I mean if we are to have a civil society, you cannot have senior people making calls on national TV to go around the judiciary and illegally murder people.
That is incitement to commit murder. That is an offense. You cannot have senior people on national TV asking people to commit an offense.
That is not a country that obeys the rule of law.
Does the United States obey the rule of law?
Because Europeans are starting to wonder whether it is still obeying the rule of law?
And it needs to be very careful.
Is it going to descend into an anarchy where we don’t have due process, where those great Bill of Rights traditions about due process are just thrown to the wind, when — whenever some shock jock politician thinks that they can use it to make a name for themselves?

There may be anarchists among us, but they may not be who we think they are.

Frost/Assange: An Exchange on Anarchy

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Most Americans are probably tired by now of hearing about Julian Assange, but those still paying attention to his story could do worse than his interview with David Frost on Al Jazeera.

Now in his early 70s, Frost is one of the most capable interviewers on television today.

Frost gives Assange ample opportunity to answer his thoughtful questions (without badgering or interruption); he makes no effort to moralize or demand apologies; and he is certainly no tabloid schmuck. Instead of prurience, he offers intelligence, wit and — this is the thing that strikes the American viewer most — seriousness. For 24 full minutes. An interview of this length, on these subjects, would probably never make its way into American living rooms; and if it did, who would be watching?

The conversation even turns, at one point, to the question whether Assange is an “anarchist,” a question I explored in a previous post. Their exchange, which starts around 11 minutes in, runs as follows:

Frost: Do you think of yourself- when you see references to yourself as anarchic, or an anarchist, is that an accurate description of what you are?
Assange: No, it’s not at all an accurate description.
Frost: Why not?
Assange: That’s not what we do. We’re an organization that goes about and has a long record all over the world of exposing abuses, by exposing concrete documentation, proof of bad behavior. That’s not anarchy. That’s what people do when they’re civil, is that they engage in organized activity that promotes justice.
Frost: So therefore it’s — in that sense you’re not anarchic because you’re actually, you’re in favor of authority if it’s doing the right thing.
Assange: Correct. Correct.
Frost: You’re not automatically opposed to authority.
Assange: You know, having run an organization I understand the difficulties in building institutions, having a good institution. Institutions are very important. I mean anyone who’s worked in Africa, as I have, knows that successful civil institutions don’t just come from nowhere. It’s a — you’ll find a difference going between particular African countries or European and African countries well, clean roads and so on don’t just come from nowhere. There is an institutional infrastructure behind this. But secret institutions start to become corrupted in their purpose. They’re able to engage in secret plans which would be opposed by the population and carry them out for their own internal purposes. So they’re not performing the function that people demand that they perform.

The conversation moves on from there to the question who Assange considers his real enemies, but to my mind this exchange is the heart of the entire interview. It all turns on Assange’s distinction of anarchy from civility — and the positioning of Wikileaks as organized activity that promotes justice. He is eager to put himself and Wikileaks on the side of good government and the “people,” on the side of civil “institutions” and good “clean roads and so on.” He’s even on the side of “authority,” he assures Frost, if it’s “doing the right thing.”

You can easily imagine how this line of argument — which positions Assange as a member of the fourth estate, and Wikileaks as a watchdog — might play into the defense at a trial for espionage or subversion. Whether these arguments will ever be heard over the shouting and fear-mongering of the politicians, pundits and Palins is another question altogether.

Assange’s Got Everybody Agitated About Anarchy

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Anarchists are back in the news again. I haven’t tracked down the first newspaper columnist to use the A-word with reference to Julian Assange, or liken him to “the anarchists of the early 20th century,” as Chas Freeman did in his New York Times editorial this past weekend. But the word has suddenly gained new currency. An old specter is once again haunting the world’s ruling powers.

One of the happier, unintended consequences of Cablegate may turn out to be a public history lesson about anarchists and the role they played in American (and European) political life before the First World War. But right now that outcome seems much less likely than another — that all the hysteria over the new anarchist threat may lead to severe restrictions on the flow of information: Palmer Raids for the twenty-first century, with the Security State raiding and policing its own Cyber-State.

This is the view L. Gordon Crovitz takes in a Wall Street Journal editorial today, labeling Assange an “Information Anarchist”:

The irony is that WikiLeaks’ use of technology to post confidential U.S. government documents will certainly result in a less free flow of information. … The Obama administration now plans to tighten information flows, which could limit leaks but would be a step back to the pre-9/11 period.
Mr. Assange is misunderstood in the media and among digirati as an advocate of transparency. Instead, this battening down of the information hatches by the U.S. is precisely his goal. The reason he launched WikiLeaks is not that he’s a whistleblower—there’s no wrongdoing inherent in diplomatic cables—but because he hopes to hobble the U.S., which according to his underreported philosophy can best be done if officials lose access to a free flow of information.

Crovitz goes on to liken Assange to “Ted Kaczynski, another math-obsessed anarchist,” and connects the “philosophy” of Assange’s writings on authoritarian conspiracy to the Unabomber Manifesto. He has to admit that Assange hasn’t mailed any bombs or killed anyone; but Kaczynski is “serving a life sentence for murder.” Ergo – nothing, really; but it sure sounds alarming, doesn’t it?

(The best Crovitz can do along these lines is to argue that Assange has put lives at risk. This is something everyone likes to say; it adds to the drama and stirs people. To his credit, Crovitz offers the example of Dr. Hossein Vahedi, an American citizen who now fears that his relatives in Iran will be targeted as a result of a leaked cable.)

In this view the state would seem justified in concealing its secrets in order to protect lives. The idea here seems to be that the American state is, mutatis mutandis, benevolent, and those who criticize the state or even seek to thwart the power of the state are likely sinister, violent or evil.

Over at the New York Times, David Brooks does not go that far, but he sees Assange as “an old-fashioned anarchist who believes that all ruling institutions are corrupt and public pronouncements are lies.” I doubt Brooks would really want to defend the counter-proposition, namely, that all ruling institutions are not corrupt and public pronouncements are true. But that’s really beside his point, and not what has him and all his fellow columnists so agitated about anarchists.

It’s really very simple. In Assange and in those who revel in the confusion and embarrassment of Cablegate, these self-appointed guardians of the public welfare see someone who wants to “disrupt the established order,” to quote Freeman. Here you may be forgiven for asking whether it is the job of the fourth estate to defend the established order. An “anarchist” like Assange forces them to declare allegiance; and their allegiance is to the power of the American super-state: these are the champions of the Pax Americana.

Still, that doesn’t keep them from reveling in the confusion and embarrassment of Cablegate. Maybe all the antidisestablishmentarianism is merely a hedge.

Be that as it may, there’s nothing terribly wrong with defending the Pax Americana: in many cases, our lies and corruption are certainly preferable to those of others. The trouble comes when those who have been entrusted with keeping the state honest by investigating its secrets and reporting on its activities turn out to be the State’s most ardent defenders, and present us only with a stark choice between raison d’etatand anarchy.