Perverts Versus Preston
It’s hard to take a guy seriously when he sets himself up as the worldwide web guru of the American Revolutionary Vanguard, a big tent of revolutionaries attacking the system, then goes out of his way to obnoxiously exclude revolutionaries from the vanguard because they act too gay in public.
But sometimes you gotta throw down for your friends, even if it’s over the internet.
In the essay “Is Extremism in the Defense of Sodomy No Vice?” (you need to ask?), Preston lays out his anti-racist cred and notes the gays he reads, then says that different types of people as he defines them should have separate institutions. But rest assured, Keith knows more minorities than you do. He also whines about the “censorious” culture of calling people out when they’re being assholes.
And then he pulls this out:
As for the rest of us in the anarchist milieu, I say it’s time for a purge, if not an outright pogrom. Does the spectacle of a bunch of white college students crying about “racism, racism, racism” and pretending that they’re Black Panthers do anything to actually increase the number of Actually Existing People of Color in our ranks? It hasn’t yet after decades of trying. The typical convert to anarchism is an angry, young, white, male from an upper strata working class to upper middle class socio-economic background, one who possesses above average levels of intelligence and education, and an interest in history, philosophy, political science and related fields. Do we really attract more people into our ranks by having so many self-hating whites, bearded ladies, cock-ringed queers, or persons of one or another surgically altered “gender identity” in our midst? Is this really something the average rebellious young person wants to be associated with? Could we not actually attract more young rebels into our ranks if all of this stuff was absent? I believe we could. For instance, I’ve been amazed at how fast the “national-anarchist” movement has grown in the short amount of time it has been around. And it is largely due to the efforts of Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard to purge libertarianism of precisely this kind during the late 1980s and early 1990s of thing that eventually made possible the Ron Paul movement and the post-paleo movement that has followed it. Does the average young rebel really want to join an “anarchist” movement that is only going to tell him what a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, transphobic sinner he is? No, he can go to church or take university humanities courses for that.
As for the feminism thing, I suspect the absence of such “feminist” elements will actually increase the number of actual female participants in our ranks. In my experience, right-wing political groups and even fundamentalist churches tend to have at least as many women participants as left-wing groups, if not more. I mean, let’s be real. What confident, intelligent, secure, emotionally stable woman with a keen sense of individuality wants to join a movement of pissed-off, man-hating, dykes with an excess of body hair? I really doubt that many of our stereotypical angry young male anarchists really, in their heart of hearts, want to belong to such a movement. I recall a conversation with a female friend of mine, a 23-year-old bisexual anthropology student. I was criticizing the “gay rights” movement as having no real message other than: “We suck cock, and we deserve merit badges for it.” Her response: “Yes, exactly. That’s a perfect description.” As for homosexuals, let them be evaluated according to what they actually contribute to our movement rather than simply for their status as homosexuals. We need the likes of Justin Raimondo or the late Alisdair Clarke. I’m not so sure we need some of these others.
What the fuck is this shit? It’s an attack on individualism, an attack on the very values that underlie liberty. A consistent application of individualism is how I got to libertarianism and anarchism. Why the fuck would I want to build a world that excludes people because their public queerness annoys the higher-ups? Making sure the right demographic doesn’t have to face anything in the movement that makes them uncomfortable is a recipe for wimpy reactionary bullshit. And this kind of posturing machismo is supposed to bring freedom?
As an angry rebellious young man, I’m really tired of self-appointed leaders telling me what I’m attracted to or what I need. What is he, a guidance counselor?
I’m not a movement-archist. I’m an individualist. Movements exist to put ideas into practice, and when any movement or group advocates values destructive to individualism, it’s time to dissolve the group like snow getting pissed on, and plant flowers in the spring. Being impressed with numbers over substance is a recipe for failure.
I think that freedom movements will build themselves organically when the enabling ideology is distributed widely enough, and the marketplace of revolution will bring more liberty-oriented results than would following the leader. We don’t need to fight over who gets to be the main act in the circus tent when a thousand small tents or other metaphorical devices are more effective.
As much as using the word “purge” can make you feel big, let me say this: I’m not wishing Preston banishment to Siberia. But if he expects me to work with him or to recommend that others do, he needs to shape the fuck up. Those whiney, government-loving, authoritarian “national anarchists” on the other hand, can step in front of a segregated bus speeding back to the 50s for all I care.
And just to straighten everything out I’ve always been way more into women (seeing as they have boobs and all) but I’m not going to pretend like I’ve never found gay stuff sexy just to keep whatever macho cred I have among homophobes.
And now we know where I stand.
May 21st, 2009 at 7:20 pm
>Preston lays out his anti-racist cred and notes the gays he reads, then says that different types of people as he defines them should have separate institutions.
Yeah, ’cause “separate but equal” worked so well the last time around.
Thanks for throwing down.
May 21st, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Well said. /endorse.
May 21st, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Darian, thanks for posting this!
May 22nd, 2009 at 7:35 am
[...] Perverts Versus Preston by Darian Worden [...]
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:16 am
Also discussed at Forums of the Libertarian Left and Mutualist Blog.
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:21 am
When I said: “I think that freedom movements will build themselves organically when the enabling ideology is distributed widely enough, and the marketplace of revolution will bring more liberty-oriented results than would following the leader”, maybe “freedom-building networks” instead of “freedom movements” is a better way to think of it.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:39 pm
“Those whiney, government-loving, authoritarian “national anarchists” on the other hand, can step in front of a segregated bus speeding back to the 50s for all I care.”
Your vitriol is charming, but your ignorance, is not.
For revolution,
Andrew Yeoman
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:18 am
Thank you for your enlightening response. I’m glad you’re charmed by the way I describe you and your lame video.
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:56 am
Sorry guys, it had to be done.
http://libertarianleft.freeforums.org/is-extremism-in-the-defense-of-sodomy-no-vice-t342-25.html#p4937
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Darian,
I warrant that the promotion of child endangerment at events like the Folsom Street Fair and Up Your Alley events is lame. Your laissez faire attitude towards this is corrupt, not enlightened. You have more in common with the Mayor and Senator of San Francisco than what any self described anti-authoritarian should feel comfortable with. Your blanket support for people who use sex acts for advancing a political agenda is a failure of ideology to generate the inspiration necessary for a revolutionary agenda to take hold against the system. Unless of course Folsom Street Fair represents what you had in mind all along. Because it seems that what you and the San Francisco government endorses is realized in Folsom Street Fair it’s clear that what goes on there needs to be shared with a broader audience. Since I’m part of a growing movement opposed to the way the city I live in is represented, the anger that I and the growing number of people that learn about this event feel will never be laissez faire. What’s interesting is that all I have to do is show people what goes on and then mention the ideologies that endorse this as acceptable civic behavior and people like you will be thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the public. All I can say is thanks for choosing to champion an issue that makes my job easy and for simultaneously shows the world that the Bay Area National Anarchists were the first to demand children be prohibited from those events.
For revolution,
Andrew Yeoman
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:53 pm
I warrant that the promotion of racial and sexual segregation along the lines of towns and neighborhoods, and the worship of “culture” and “identity” that demeans our capacity for unbounded intelligence and empathy is lame. Your attitude toward this is corrupt, not enlightened. You have more in common with the Mayor or Prime Minister of Rome than what any self described anti-authoritarian should feel comfortable with.
Of course, making any sort of appeal to the safety of “the children” in order to curtail public self-expression also gives you more in common with secular nanny-state liberals than you should feel comfortable with, either. As an anarchist, that kind of talk instinctively makes me reach for my Glock.
Yes, I read your article and saw your youtube video on the subject. So far the only argument that stands out from the vague but tangible sense of discontent with the atmosphere of the event is the idea that children aren’t equipped to understand it. Granted, so what? Children aren’t equipped to understand calculus. Do universities across the nation need to shut their doors for fear that some 7-year old might stumble in and ask what it’s all about?
Most people grow up with some vague idea that sex “exists out there” before being physically or emotional mature enough to really know what that means, and they’re no worse off for it. They’ll be no worse off knowing that people with identical junk do it too (even with toys or while wearing leather *gasp*).
What actually causes harm, at least to queer folk growing up, is the kind of shaming and heteronormative double standards surrounding any level of PDA that you’re citing to lend your opinion a sense of legitimacy. You pander to existing sentiments in a society that clearly isn’t anarchist or libertarian (“national” or otherwise), and claim that constitutes proof of offense. Is there anything about national anarchism that isn’t based on the relativistic worship of constructs?
For humanity
Death to identity,
Soviet Onion
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Bay Area National Anarchist:
Huh? I don’t know how Darian Worden supposedly endorses child endangerment.
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Soviet Onion,
Thanks. I’d also mention that many queer teenagers lose their families and their homes as they come out. Trans children are sometimes subjected to quack therapies, and trans teenagers often have trouble obtaining needed medical care at the right time. Patriarchy, homophobia, and transphobia kill children.
May 23rd, 2009 at 4:06 pm
“I warrant that the promotion of racial and sexual segregation along the lines of towns and neighborhoods, and the worship of “culture” and “identity” that demeans our capacity for unbounded intelligence and empathy is lame.”
Your pontification is completely off topic. But good for you. Really. I’m glad that your faith in contemporary American liberalism (“unbounded intelligence” that’s hardly genius, but it’s certainly not Folsom bound) or a relativistic humanity makes you feel satisfied with yourself. National Anarchists have higher standards of quality control then you or any other nation-state modeled after the French Revolution. Don’t bring your pistol to the rifle range.
Andrew Yeoman
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Wrong on that count, buddy. You and the multi-culturalists are just two variants of the same pathological identity fetish, and have more in common with each other than either of you do with me.
Oh? And just who exactly are these “unqualified” people, and what makes them so worthy of exclusion? By what anti-authoritarian methods do you seek to “control” the “quality”, oh anarchist comrade? Other than encouraging them to go found their own ghetto somewhere.
May 25th, 2009 at 7:53 am
“Of course, making any sort of appeal to the safety of “the children” in order to curtail public self-expression also gives you more in common with secular nanny-state liberals than you should feel comfortable with, either. As an anarchist, that kind of talk instinctively makes me reach for my Glock.”
Seconded.
BANA, I’m formerly of San Francisco, and I can tell you that I and thousands of people I knew there deeply loved the city as it was, as it might be, and as it ought to be. There are very few cities on the North American continent towards which so many people feel such a deep and fierce and personal attachment. That love has absolutely nothing to do with the city council or the government and has everything to do with FREEDOM, a word which you may abuse but will never understand or experience. That you seek to destroy the res publica of San Francisco as a sacred shore of refuge for those who flee bigotry and intolerance, and to seek to destroy it precisely because of those virtues, is a barbarism as black as the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
You, as a national anarchist, are a fascist. The name of your philosophy is deliberately half shared with National Socialism. And the other half is just a clever excuse for small men with smaller ambitions to delude themselves than they are anything other than the Nazi they have to face each day in their tormented mirror.
You’re a Nazi. One does not argue with Nazi any more than one argues with a less intellectually pretentious thug who at least has the courage to try to kill you for something as rational as your wealth. But you, you don’t even want something of actual use to you. You’re out to destroy people’s lives for no other reason than to preserve the pathetic fiction that the colour of your skin, the names of your ancestors, and the prayers chanted by your tribe gives your miserable lives some imitation of human purpose.
Let me be precisely clear. You have the right to freedom of speech. You have the same human right as I to stand on the street outside Folsom (and which I attended twice, under contract) in your cowardly masks and preach your hateful lies. You have a right to liberty, to property, and to your bitterly wasted life. But I want you to know that if you were to die, painfully, of natural causes, for instance by swallowing a nail in your next glass of water, that I and many, many of my friends would raise a glass of red wine in guiltless celebration of your death.
The concept of national anarchism is a defilement of the human ability to reason. Your advocacy is a desecration of the human capacity for speech. That I came to know that your philosophy even existed was one of the more horrifying experiences I’ve ever known. And I’ve seen a few things.
ANTIFA
May 27th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Soviet Onion:
We really need to have an in depth conversation about identity. We seem to agree on how important it is. But I can’t wrap my head around our disagreement, since I don’t advocate group identities per se.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Thanks Aster,
I think that this part . . .
. . . is the funniest response I’ve seen so far, given that they’re mainly attracting trash their presently existing tribe doesn’t want. Higher standards of quality control? More like “lowest common denominator within the boundaries of a few passive traits”.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:42 am
[...] blogosphere (see Kevin Carson, Royce Christian, Mike Gogulski, Charles Johnson, Brad Spangler, Darian Worden, the ALL Forums, and now me with a belated ditto – go read ’em, at least they’ve [...]