Anarchy… or maybe not: ANARCHY.NET / ANARCHISM.net

Posted on April 2, 2008 by @ndy

*yawn*

In addition to the continuing efforts of a small number of advocates of a utopian vision of laissez-faire capitalism — principally in North America but also, to a far lesser extent, Australia — a handful of fascists and racists remain committed to associating their boringly reactionary politics with ‘anarchism’. In Australia, the former category ranges from the comical to the dull and plodding, while the latter is earnest but also silly. More recently, a new site has emerged on teh Interwebs which purports to be ‘anarchist’ but which in reality functions as a dissemination point for various reactionary ideas and tendencies drawn from both of the above two categories.

comrade yuda reports:

In the past few months, a considerable effort has been put into building up a fake “anarchist” website, anarchy DOT net, and making it appear legitimate. A mere shell just a few months ago, this site suddenly includes a blog, a forum with nearly 500 (fake and apparently real) users, a Wikipedia page, a “library”, and even an online store selling shirts advertising the site.

Though the site sports a “copyright” (one of many give-aways!) dating back to 1997, the domain was just a gateway to porn sites as recently as 2005. It is currently registered to “Throne Networks”, someone with a Virginia PO box who also hosts these other lovely sites:

    fuckcapitalism DOT com (“Anti-Capitalism”)
    ihatejobs DOT com (“I Hate Jobs”)
    infoterror DOT com (“Infoterror Internet Activist Promotions, Inc.”)
    antihumanism DOT com (“Anti-Humanism”)
    nihil DOT org (“Center for Nihilist and Nihilism Studies”)
    amerika DOT org (“Al-Qaeda Appreciation Society of North America”)
    corrupt DOT org (“Remaking Modern Society”)
    nazi DOT org (“Libertarian National Socialist Green Party”)
    churcharson DOT com (“CHURCH ARSON”)
    realitynews DOT com (“A look into the real world”)
    juliusevola DOT com (“Julius Evola: Traditionalist Visionary”)
    necrocapitalist DOT org (“Necrocapitalist”)
    pan-nationalism DOT org (“Pan-Nationalist Movement”)
    penttilinkola DOT com (“Pentti Linkola Fansite”)
    hessian DOT org (“The Hessian Studies Society”)
    anus DOT com (“American Nihilist Underground Society”)
    lostwisdom DOT com (“Lost Wisdom”)
    zionists DOT com (“Kahanist National Zionist Party”)
    continuity DOT us (“Continuity Movement”)
    genocide DOT org (“genocide, holocaust, and democide studies”)
    fuckchrist DOT com (“Support the Judeo-Christian Holocaust”)
    burzum DOT com (“The Music of Burzum and the Writings of Varg Vikernes”)
    sataniccoalition DOT com (“The Satanic Coalition”)
    pragmatism DOT us (“Pragmatism Party – Traditional National Democratic Party”)

Most of these sites link to several of the others, and up until very recently, even the new “anarchist” version of anarchy.net linked to at least the first six of them. The links were taken down when commenters on the site’s blog, and posters on its forums, began objecting to their content. But it is clear that the same organization is behind all of them.

Taken together, these sites appear to be a broad net cast at young people in the process of rejecting inherited, official values. Whether they are a front for “third positionist” fascists, a government operation, part of a spam enterprise, or the product of a bored obsessive, what is abundantly clear is that “anarchy DOT net” is not operating in the interests of the anarchist movement, nor indeed of the majority of the world’s people.

If the links with “nazi DOT org” weren’t enough, digging a little on the site itself uncovers an explicitly racist position:

http://www.anarchy DOT net/anarchy/anarchy_library/racism/

Quote: “No one seems to care how contradictory it is for the powers that be that push the ideas simultaneously that
a) all races are inherently equal
b) there is no such thing as “race”
c) some races need special assistance.

It is obvious that there are noteworthy biological differences with different human populations. However, this shouldn’t be either a free ticket to discriminate with great prejudice nor to think that racial gaps should be diminished by interbreeding, because both forms of thinking are very far from what is stable and close to reality.”

The same text was pasted as a comment on a third-positionist fascist blog

http://anarchonation DOT blogspot.com/2007/10/jena-racists.html

in October, by someone calling himself “Postglobalism” and linking to anarchy.net, with the added line “Every nation needs its own culture, rules and space to live.”

The Internet is notoriously full of exactly this kind of bullshit. What makes “anarchy.net” a problem is that it is now pretending to be the “International Anarchists Alliance”, an emerging coalition of actual anarchist groups:

Quote: “Member Organizations
Anarchist-Antitheist Army, (Platformist), North America
BlackStar Coalition, (Underground Collective), North America
Anarchist Brotherhood, (Underground Militant Group), North America
Schuyler’s Army (Black Bloc Coordinator), North America, Europe”

Needless to say, these groups are all either fake or imaginary:

Quote: “The Anarchist-Antitheist Army, based in North America has come forward to be the first organization to become part of the Anarchist [A]lliance.”

Quote: “BlackStar is based in North-Eastern USA and South-Western Ontario. The Coalition’s contact may be reached through one of our staff. ”

Quote: “The Anarchist Brotherhood operates in northwestern USA, Ontario and Quebec. Contact to the Brotherhood is not permitted.”

Anarchists in the US and Canada are forming real organizations. Some are networks that support us in our participation within broader movements for change and resistance in our communities and workplaces; others are specific political groups pursuing collective action strategies. Many are now growing, experiencing a slowly rising wave of social discontent in response to economic anxiety and distrust of government solutions.

But history has proven that lone rebels can be misled. And in the course of a few months, somewhere between dozens and hundreds of visitors to the anarchy DOT net site, many identifying themselves as 13 to 17 years old, have already registered and handed their email addresses over to whoever is behind the site. At the best, this serves as a confusionary diversion. At worst, though, it provides a point of contact for fascist indoctrination, or a fresh FBI file.

ANARCHISM.net is similar to the above site in terms of being bogus, but is administered by a Swedish reactionary named Per Bylund — currently a student in Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri — and concentrates on promoting the virtues of a utopian vision of capitalism unfettered by the state.

About @ndy

I live in Melbourne, Australia. I like anarchy. I don't like nazis. I enjoy eating pizza and drinking beer. I barrack for the greatest football team on Earth: Collingwood Magpies. The 2024 premiership's a cakewalk for the good old Collingwood.
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6 Responses to Anarchy… or maybe not: ANARCHY.NET / ANARCHISM.net

  1. Birthday Pony says:
    April 3, 2008 at 4:46 am

    I agree with Anarchy.net being reactionary, but Anarchism.net is pretty okay. There are certain people on there who are reactionary and would like to tie their beliefs to Anarchy, but Per himself has never seemed to do so. I don’t know much about the website, but I’ve never felt like I’m being duped into reactionary bullshit. Anarchists of all persuasions are welcomed on the board. Far more right-leaning American Libertarians are on it, but the site itself isn’t very reactionary.

  2. @ndy says:
    April 3, 2008 at 2:29 pm

    Happy Birthday Pony!

    That’s odd. When describing the site, Per writes that it’s all about anarchism(s). Anyway, by ‘dupe’, I don’t necessarily mean that ANARCHISM.net (or Per Bylund) is engaged in some kind of vulgar party-trick (it seems to me that, while incoherent, the arguments on offer reflect honest declarations of political perspective), I mean the deliberate attempt to associate support for laissez-faire capitalism with ‘anarchism’. By ‘reactionary’, on the other hand, I mean in reference to the political climate in Sweden, in a narrow sense (opposition to what is often termed ‘the welfare state’),* but also, and more importantly, in a broader sense: that is, principled opposition to redistributive notions of social justice. Obviously, the term ‘reactionary’ is used in a wide variety of contexts, and it’s possible to be against the ideas and practices more commonly associated with ‘reactionary politics’ (various forms of irrational prejudice — such as racism and sexism) while at the same time adhering to some fanciful notion of stateless ‘capitalism’. It also depends on how one understands the left/right distinction, which is similar to, but not strictly the same as, the distinction between ‘progressive’ and ‘reactionary’. So, ANARCHISM.net’s not-OK-ness, from my perspective, has less to do with it being ‘reactionary’ than it does with it being anti-anarchist (although I think the term ‘reactionary’ is a reasonably accurate one to describe Per Bylund’s politics). Finally, whether or not “anarchists of all persuasions” (sic) are welcomed on board or not, and exactly how many “right-leaning American Libertarians” are on it, has less to do with it’s overall perspective than does it’s founder and editor’s purpose in establishing it and the general perspective advanced by it, which I think is fairly obviously ‘pro-capitalist’ (although of a ‘libertarian’ variety). I suppose another way of describing my own opposition is that I believe it’s false to reduce ‘anarchism’ to a simple-minded rejection of a simple-minded (ahistorical and asocial) concept of the state. Further, I think this is a fault intrinsic to the tradition whose real source is not the mass workers’ movements in opposition to capitalism and the state — practical anarchism — but the incoherent ramblings of the Austrian School of economics and its epigones.

    *SL: That point turns on its head a lot of the assumptions the left tends to make about neoliberalism being imposed on countries by the United States. One of the cases where this also was illustrated was Sweden, which had one of the most socialistic welfare states, and where ruling elites forced through neoliberal policies.

    DH: There was a really serious threat to the ownership structure in Sweden during the 1970s, in effect, there was a proposal to buy out ownership entirely and turn it into a sort of worker-owned democracy. The political elites in Sweden were horrified by this and fought a tremendous battled against it. The way they fought was partly, again, through ideological mechanisms. The bankers controlled the Nobel Prize in economics, that went to Hayek, went to Friedman, that went to all the neoliberal figures to try to give legitimacy to all the neoliberal arguments. But then also the Swedes organized themselves as a confederacy of industrial magnates, organized themselves, built think tanks and the like. And every time there was any kind of crisis or difficulty in the Swedish economy, and all of these economies run into difficulties at some point or other, they would really push the argument: the problem is the strength of the welfare state, it’s the huge expenditures of the welfare state. But they never actually managed to make it work too well. So they came up with the interesting strategy of going into the European Union, because the European Union had a very neoliberal structure — through the Maastricht Treaty — so the Swedish Confederation persuaded everyone they should go into Europe, and then it was the European rules that allowed the more neoliberal policies to be introduced into Sweden in the 1990s. It hasn’t gone very far in Sweden because the unions are still very strong and the political history is very strong over social democracy and the like. But, nevertheless, there has been a process towards a limited neoliberalization in Sweden as a result of the activities of these political elites and their strategy of taking Sweden into Europe. ~ On Neoliberalism: An Interview with David Harvey, by Sasha Lilley, MRzine, June 19, 2006

  3. THR says:
    April 3, 2008 at 4:18 pm

    Good post – even on libertarian or economics blogs you can find some neoliberals engaging in haphazard use of the word ‘anarchism’.

    Incidentally, can you suggest any reading material that offers an anarchist perspective on the welfare state? Do you have any thoughts on this yourself?

  4. @ndy says:
    April 3, 2008 at 6:24 pm

    There was a debate on the pages of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Review some years ago (#25, Summer 1999; #26, Fall 1999; #27, Winter 1999) — on the subject, one centred on Chomsky’s espousal of a concept borrowed from social movements in Brazil: ‘expanding the floor of the cage’. The ASR debate — which also featured James Herod, Graham Purchase, Jeff Stein, Mike Long, and Jon Bekken — isn’t available online, but an interview with Uncle Noam by David Barsamian is.

    An extract:

    [NC] …I don’t know if you recall that in a previous interview with you I made some comment about how, in the current circumstances, devolution from the federal government to the state level is disastrous. The federal government has all sorts of rotten things about it and is fundamentally illegitimate, but weakening federal power and moving things to the state level is just a disaster. At the state level even middle-sized businesses can control what happens. At the federal level only the big guys can push it around. That means, that if you take, say, aid for hungry children, to the extent that it exists, if it’s distributed through the federal system, you can resist business pressure to some extent. It can actually get to poor children. If you move it to the state level in block grants, it will end up in the hands of Raytheon and Fidelity—exactly what’s happening here in Massachusetts. They have enough coercive power to force the fiscal structure of the state to accommodate to their needs, with things as simple as the threat of moving across the border. These are realities. But people here tend to be so doctrinaire. Obviously there are exceptions, but the tendencies here, both in elite circles and on the left, are such rigidity and doctrinaire inability to focus on complex issues that the left ends up removing itself from authentic social struggle and is caught up in its doctrinaire sectarianism. That’s very much less true there. I think that’s parallel to the fact that it’s less true among elite circles. So just as you can talk openly there about the fact that Brazil and Argentina don’t really have a debt, that it’s a social construct, not an economic fact—they may not agree, but at least they understand what you’re talking about—whereas here I think it would be extremely hard to get the point across. Again, I don’t want to overdraw the lines. There are plenty of exceptions. But the differences are noticeable, and I think the differences have to do with power. The more power and privilege you have, the less it’s necessary to think, because you can do what you want anyway. When power and privilege decline, willingness to think becomes part of survival.

    [DB] I know when excerpts from that interview we did were published in The Progressive, you got raked over the coals for this position.

    [NC] Exactly. When I talked to the anarchist group in Buenos Aires, we discussed this. Everybody basically had the same recognition. There’s an interesting slogan that’s used. We didn’t mention this, but quite apart from the Workers Party and the urban unions, there’s also a very lively rural workers organization. Millions of workers have become organized into rural unions which are very rarely discussed. One of the slogans that they use which is relevant here, is that we should “expand the floor of the cage.” We know we’re in a cage. We know we’re trapped. We’re going to expand the floor, meaning we will extend to the limits what the cage will allow. And we intend to destroy the cage. But not by attacking the cage when we’re vulnerable, so they’ll murder us. That’s completely correct. You have to protect the cage when it’s under attack from even worse predators from outside, like private power. And you have to expand the floor of the cage, recognizing that it’s a cage. These are all preliminaries to dismantling it. Unless people are willing to tolerate that level of complexity, they’re going to be of no use to people who are suffering and who need help, or, for that matter, to themselves.

    Personally, I think Crass hit the nail on the head, viz, ‘Do they owe us a living? Of course they fucking do!’:

    A Google search reveals the following possibly interesting candidates for further reading:

    ‘Social rights and social resistance: opportunism, anarchism and the welfare state’, Hartley Dean, International Journal of Social Welfare, Vol.9, No.3, July 2000

    Anarchism and the welfare state: the Peckham Health Centre    , David Goodway, History & Policy, May 2000

    — also —

    Anarchy in Milton Keynes, Colin Ward, The Raven, No.18, April-June 1992

    In general, Colin Ward is among one of the more interesting scholars of practical anarchism (in the areas of education and housing in particular), and much of his published work deals with either anarchist approaches to the provision of ‘welfare’ to the general population, especially the working class, in the here-and-now, and/or the history of popular attempts by the (British) working class to establish some degree of economic and political autonomy from the state and market via establishing their own, democratically-controlled social institutions.

    Generally speaking, anarchists attempt to establish and advocate in favour of social institutions under the control of stakeholders rather than the state or the market. One of the problems with this approach is the tendency of such organisations to become institutionalised. For example, the origins of the network of community legal centres that now exist across Australia was in part a result of the efforts by local (Spanish) anarchists to establish a legal centre in Fitzroy…

    One of the antecedents of the legal service was the ‘Free Store’ at 42 Smith Street, Fitzroy, which housed the ultimate display of counter-culture. The store, which stocked clothes, shoes and books, opened in late 1971 and was closed by early 1973. Everything there was free, including from 1972, legal assistance. Managed, if that is possible, by self-proclaimed anarchists, the store was based on the idea that people could give or take goods as they chose. There was no compulsion that things be traded. As one store worker commented, the concept of the Free Store ‘freaked a lot of people out’.

    Vincent Ruiz, who worked at the Free Store, attributes the idea for the store to Margot Nash [sometime member of AS-IF: ‘Anarcho-Surrealist-Insurrectionary Feminists’!], a woman who was heavily involved in the Working People’s Association. It was also at her suggestion that the Free Store began to provide free legal assistance…

    ~ John Chesterman, Poverty Law and Social Change: The Story of the Fitzroy Legal Service, Melbourne University Press, 1996

    The tension between (political) autonomy and (economic) survival is one often remarked-upon in the literature that I’ve read on the subject of ‘social movement organisations’, and I suppose anarchists generally desire both, but in the absence of mass radical movements within which such projects can be sustained it’s a very difficult thing to achieve.

    Keynesianism killed the autonomist star…

    Shit. I’m not sure if that really answers your question, but I guess it’s a start?

  5. THR says:
    April 3, 2008 at 7:29 pm

    It’s a very good start. Thanks @ndy.

  6. Anarchist Instigator says:
    April 8, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    Quote: “The Anarchist Brotherhood operates in northwestern USA, Ontario and Quebec. Contact to the Brotherhood is not permitted.”
    heh an anarchist cult? Now I’ve heard everything.
    Cheers for this info @ndy

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