The element of ‘stick to your own kind’ tribalism that really steams me is Preston’s ‘magnanimous’ offer that people not welcome in respectable communities are welcome to their own enclaves. History is *very* clear about what this means in practice: ghettos, segregations, bantustans. Which of course is the known agenda of the white nationalist herd Preston attracts as allies. I’ve lived in de facto segregated conditions (primarily due to massive transphobic housing discrimination) and know exactly what that’s like- it means being treated like roadside litter and losing any chance to use your talents. It means being barricaded off into a miserable hive of broken souls. It means having your hands tied by loss of social access and then being blamed for not being able to produce, thus confirming the stereotype that you’re no different from the members of ‘your group’ who have already been defeated. It means forced association with those with whom you share nothing but common pain, and consignment to a culture objectively defined by that pain. It means eternal public definition as ‘one of those’ and nonexistence as an individual in the outer world’s eyes. It means that everyone ignores your mind and spirit in favour of ignorant projections of who they insist that you are, and being addressed to your face with collectivist insults designed to steal your name and your individuality.

And tribal society is *not* inevitable. Keith seems to believe that clannishness is so hard-wired and inevitable that anti-racist and anti-patriarchal expectations are neccesarily totalitarian. He seems to think that prejudice against LGBTs are what (heterosexuals? hetero men?) naturally feel and that this is just an inevitable fact of life(+). This, of course, is provincial drek- the entire world, thank goddess, isn’t Richmond. This kind of prejudice is rare enough in Wellington and Auckland to be no more than a nuisance- people just don’t feel the hate which those raised by hateful pedagogy in hateful subcultures consider natural. Ditto for the parts of Australia and Thailand I’ve visited. Sorry, Keith, but not everyone feels that the expectation that you treat people with different genders and skin colours with human respect is an absurd demand for ‘totalitarian humanism’. If *you* feel that asking people to step out of their village fascism comfort zone is too much to ask, then that’s *your* problem, not human nature’s. Why don’t you try changing yourself and your friends instead of trying to destroy what we have of a cosmopolitan society? Is the effort to think and feel more broadly really that difficult for you?

Those who tell us that people are incapable of treating each other as individual persons rather than collective races and sexes are merely telling us rather distasteful things about themselves. Yes, it is best that we deal with such prejudice by means other than coercion. Yes, people have a right to publish filth such as Holocaust denial, and laws forbidding bigoted speech are a serious affront to the principle of an open society. But the proper answer to anyone who gives you a wink and a chuckle and starts spouting off about ‘the Jews’ or ‘the queers’ is a silent stare of chilling contempt. It’s a theory for idiots, and the demand that we run society according to the convenience of idiots is a grotesque form of leveling below the level of the worst kind of Communism. And I’m not making this up- go to racist sites like vdare.com, and you’ll read racists explicitly whining about the injustice of a society which oppresses low-on-the-bell-curve people by expecting of them a cosmopolitanism alien to their own needs and wants. The same people who are appalled by affirmative action and social wage legislation on the grounds that it steals from the ‘productive members of society’ openly demand a redistribution of influence from intellectuals to dullards. Move over, John Rawls: your egalitarianism can’t hold a candle to these populists, whose inner fire doesn’t burn fiercely enough to light the wick.

Preston implies that the values of tolerance and liberality are merely special pleading by cunning outgroups- tricks of universalist rhetoric to get host societies to shut down their natural barriers and thus betray their group self-interest. This is a theory straight out of classic anti-semitism; liberal individualism as a plot to destroy our volk or our ‘way of life’. It appeals to those who are willing to give up their own autonomy in exchange for the gaurantee that they’ll never have to see anyone doing anyone differently and thus mortifying their myth-induced tribal pseudo-self-esteem. It’s a theory that’s never grasped the concept of spiritual freedom and can only see its advocacy as a power play by another tribe- because that’s all we are: collectivist animals.

Of course, Preston claims that *he* is different- that *he* is an ‘anarch’ or superior soul who rises above the tribalism in which the rest of humanioty is so deeply embedded. *This* from a man obsessed with group distinctions and given to spitting bile and prejudice as rhetorical warfare!?! Nietzsche went through an emotional crisis after his disillusionment with Wagner, precisely because he was appalled at Wagner’s confusion of spiritual greatness with petty convention and small-minded racist nationalism. Nietzsche’s last madly scawled words were ‘I am now having all anti-semites shot’. One shudders to think what he would think of Keith Preston.

Anyone- white or black, male or female, straight or queer- who wants a world where they can choose how to live for themselves should recognise that this fascist worldview is utterly poisonous to their own existence. It doesn’t matter that this desire for group sovriegnty over individuals can be advanced through forms of authority whose coercions are local and which don’t call themselves the state (tell the difference to a premodern housewife whose legal personage is dissolved into her husband’s, or to a aerf or slave bound to private planation). And anyone who might think that getting rid of the state in favour of an archipelago of airtight little mud-puddle collectivisms which won’t come for *them* is setting themselves up to become a good German. Anyone with a mind and will of their own would rather be a street vendor in a free-society that a patriarchal chief in a closed one. If the group and not the individual is the basic unit of society, then everyone is a slave- even the king. But then the slave-soldier ethic of hard contempt for happiness and self-expression can see no better human possibility. Anti-statism without the development of individual consciousness can only lead to different names for the same collectivist tyranny.

(+) Apparently queers are to understand that it’s totally unreasonable to expect bigots to repress their natural loathing for them, but it’s totally reasonable for the rest of the world to demand that queers live in lifelong repression of their sexuality and/or sexual/gender identity. Nope, no transparently supremacist double standards here.

I think that it is entirely possible to attack ideas, by which I mean arguing against or propagandizing against them. And I think they are difficult, but not impossible, to identify.

The state exists as it does because ideas allow it to take the resources it needs for the gain of it’s leaders’ political power. Right now the most powerful military in world history is unable to subdue the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. How can ideas not be an influence on these events?

>These are a little harder to nail down as an activist project, and ameliorating these phenomena will take longer and require different tactics.

Agreed. But, as I hope is clear from what I wrote above, I think it’s worth doing. Social authoritarianism is not only bad (sometimes deadly) in itself, but it is inextricably linked to the problem of political authoritarianism.

Let me also add that ideology is a major determining factor of strategy. We have to work or fight for what we want if we expect to get it. The more we tug people in our direction, the closer they will come to contributing to a world that we would like.

Also, I think that a global anarchist revolution will take a longer time to accomplish than than would the achievement of anarchy in several regions. So it is important to think local and see what the locals of various regions are generally into including the harmful facets of the dominant local ideas.

I do think Preston is on to something. I don’t believe that revolution will follow anyone’s party line exactly, and that we have to be accommodating to some degree. However, I think he’s too eager to work with tendencies that I do not see as being in my best interest. I’m definitely not interested in a revolutionary vanguard, as it goes against what I see as the good parts of decentralization/polycentralism. However I should probably hold off on saying more about Preston’s ideas until I’ve spent more time reading him.

When people use the word “converting” in a positive way I’m instantly turned off. I want to influence people, but “convert” is way too cult-like, which might be something libertarians have problems with.

I don’t agree that the present system “makes it impossible to not be a hypocrite”. To live philosophically “pure” is impossible, but as long as you’re making a positive contribution to seeing your values greater realized I don’t see hypocrisy. Some kind of consistency between means and ends is of course essential.

Regarding pan-secessionism, I’m partial to the view that the nation-state will decrease in importance over the next few decades as non-state and localized actors become more important (I’m definitely picking up another Van Crevald book soon.) If there is a realistic possibility of this, then the enclaves formed by secession will be the future centers of political authority, and will have the capability to as a whole kill as many people as the American empire does today. Hence the pressing strategic need to spread the ideas of individualism and anarchism as widely as possible.
(will continue below)

I see both sides; converting the masses to our ideology is not a practical goal (even in the long term, perhaps), yet I don’t think that means we need to just appeal to whatever bigotry exists out there. To me it’s about understanding the difference between our philosophical agenda and the actionable agenda. The former is the meat of what motivates us and allows us to see the world as a systemic rather than chaotic phenomenon. The latter is constrained solely by real world conditions that comprise the set of possible activist projects.

I like Derrick Jensen’s quote along the lines of “the genius of our present system is that it makes it impossible to not be a hypocrite”. This is how I feel about pan-secessionism; I have no doubt that the project has unintended consequences since I am not perfect and do not see all things. We learn as we go; in the interstices, I’d like to see real progress in breaking up institutional concentrated power. If this doesn’t perfectly align with my philosophical agenda, well, it’s not supposed to. I have many beliefs, but I engage in activism and politics to effect the material world.

(2) The whole point of decentralizing power to localities is to allow people to part in peace when they do not agree on how to organize society. I see nothing in pan-secessionism that says you necessarily are going to be forced into a culture against your will – at least, no more than in the present, and much less in all likelihood.

(3) I agree with you, except that I don’t think you CAN attack ideas – not directly. The point of activism is to change the material world, to make it more just and sane and free. People’s thinking is a means to that, but it’s not the only one. I agree that we should attack the enabling ideas by any means appropriate – to the extent that it’s possible that we can identify these ideas at their most fundamental and articulable level. But I have doubts about whether we can do that, so it doesn’t seem inappropriate to advocate for training our guns on the manifestations of these ideas, the largest on of which is the state.

One other point I make is that there’s nothing essential about the state as a target, other than that it is a focused point of legitimacy that is easily identified. Patriarchy? Racism? These are a little harder to nail down as an activist project, and ameliorating these phenomena will take longer and require different tactics. The state is just a big target to hit, and it promotes a lot of what we disdain.

> I’ve long been against multiculturalism
> because it rests on the expectation that
> we ought to respect cultures equally
> regardless of their respect for us as human
> beings, and because it reinforces divisions
> among humanity

I don’t think this is true of all versions of multiculturalism. For two (somewhat different — from each other, I mean) defenses of multiculturalism that I think are broadly defensible, see Bhikhu Parekh here and Jacob Levy here.