Some thoughts on what it would take for “anarchist success” to be achieved.

A good point of reference is the history of revolutions.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a wave of revolutions (American, French, 1848, etc) that essentially pitted the Enlightenment against the Ancient Regime, resulting in the growth of democratic republics and science-driven industrial capitalist societies.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, the major conflict was between industrial capitalists and proletarian labor, resulting in the eventual growth of modern welfare-managerial states, and the incorporation of the labor parties and trade unions into the system, along with the expansion of the middle class. In the 1960s and 1970s, the basis of conflict became the traditional in-groups vs traditional out-groups (minorities, women, gays, students, youth, etc). Much of that has subsequently been institutionalized as well with the bourgeois bohemians, newly rich, new class, minority middle class, political correctness, gay marriage, etc. It seems like that what it would take for anarchists, libertarians, anti-statists, ant-authoritiarians, etc to get their moment in the sun would be a political alignment along the lines of liberty vs. power. Regrettably, things instead seem to be going in the direction of nativism vs globalism (hence, Trump, Farage, Le Pen, etc). M

Libertarians and anarchists are now divided into ,

Anarchism seems to appeal to youthful rebelliousness or idealism, but it seems difficult to sustain as people get older and get more settled into life. Instead, most anarchists just drift towards whatever conventional form of politics suits their preferred hyphen, i.e. an-caps become “free market conservatives,” an-coms become social democrats, etc. My own participation in various “far right” camps has largely been about pushing the argument that says “Okay, if you folks don’t like the prevailing liberal cosmopolitan values of the globalized elite and the related radical demographic change, the decentralist quasi-anarchist enclaves are your most viable option.” (Plus, the far right is the only camp where you can be anti-PC and “anti-American” at the same time.) Of course, many anarchists freak out over that because as I said above many of them regard social conservatism or “reactionaries” to be a greater enemy that the state itself, capitalism, imperialism, the global elite, etc. Of course, I have made comparable arguments to the Left as well.

These two videos by Sargon of Akkad summarize the most problematic issues concerning both the Alt-Right and the Progressive Left.