Anarchists Watch THE ANARCHISTS ON HBO

A thread for the HBO series called The Anarchists, though most of the people aren't really anarchists. Obviously, any ilxor can post here, you don't have to be an anarchist.

most of these people are libertarians tbh? I had flashbacks to when I was a teenager and was defending what was actually "punk" ... I spent the majority of episode one thinking "these people are horrible and all my anarchist friends would think they are horrible" ... like, their biggest issues are "central banking" (with an alt-right dash of anti-semitism), "mandatory public schooling" (the people complaining about this are all white), and one of the dudes was/is an income tax denier.

The community begins as centered on this conference in Acapulco that looks super douchey. It reminded me of the soul-destroying tech conferences I had to do AV for in the late 90s, where I experienced being "the help" and which cemented my anarchist values.

I try not to be precious about labels but this is embarrassing. they already stole libertarian and now this. probably should have seen something like this coming though

HBO could have gotten ahead of the labeling complaints by simply stylizing it as The "Anarchists"

most of these people are libertarians tbh? I had flashbacks to when I was a teenager and was defending what was actually "punk" ... I spent the majority of episode one thinking "these people are horrible and all my anarchist friends would think they are horrible" ... like, their biggest issues are "central banking" (with an alt-right dash of anti-semitism), "mandatory public schooling" (the people complaining about this are all white), and one of the dudes was/is an income tax denier.

The community begins as centered on this conference in Acapulco that looks super douchey. It reminded me of the soul-destroying tech conferences I had to do AV for in the late 90s, where I experienced being "the help" and which cemented my anarchist values.

― sarahell

ohhhh they're ancaps, yeah fuck ancaps

Lily and her bf John, who we see more of in episode 2 are the closest to "my people" ... they do food pop-ups on an able-to-pay basis, they let the damaged people live with them, they complain about the douchey people at the conference, they bring up the fact that the conference is not organized in a manner consistent with anarchist organizing principles, they put together an alternative event to the conference because they believe in taking action ... also the Bitcoin ATM incident was hilarious.

xp - Kate - I had never heard of an Ancap until watching this. I was watching them talk about the influential thinkers/writers and going "who?" "who?" What about Marx? What about Paolo Freire? What about Gramsci? Deleuze? Emma Goldman? Guy fucking Debord? ... and then Ayn Rand comes up and I was like, "ooooooooooooh .... ewwwwwwww ...."

i mean i can see the appeal of a tv show about ancaps, a tv show about the literal worst people in the world sounds pretty fucking entertaining.

This sounds like one of those "Love Island" reality shows that I'd rather not know about

Aynarchists

idk, I have recently watched that Netflix series that had episodes about neo-Nazis, another Netflix show about the Revenge Porn guy, and the Showtime miniseries The Comey Rule ... the ancaps are nowhere near the literal worst people compared to the subjects of these shows, and there was only so much I could stomach at once.

The ancaps might be on par with Comey himself, but compared to the Trump people? ... I struggled with the Comey doc when he talked about the great history of the FBI and how people who worked there should be proud of its legacy, much in the same way as I struggle with these ancap people talking about how central banking is the root cause of all the problems, and how crypto will solve things, as well as taking advantage of the lower cost of living in Mexico without acknowledging why that is.

this is my friend's favorite thing on TV right now because he thinks it's hilarious. I only watched the first episode but couldn't muster the enthusiasm to hear more about most of these assholes and my wife left the room saying she didn't get it. But, I'm inclined to go back for more.

did this ancap rebrand of anarchism start with nozick of "anarchy, state, and utopia" fame?

from wikipedia:

Anarcho-capitalists and right-libertarians cite several historical precedents of what they believe to be examples of anarcho-capitalism,[20] including the Free cities of medieval Europe, Medieval Iceland, the American Old West, Gaelic Ireland, Somalia from 1991 to 2006, and law merchant, admiralty law, and early common law.

OK Corral gunfighters and Somali warlords, something to really aspire to

(Medieval Iceland actually had a parliament)

this is my friend's favorite thing on TV right now because he thinks it's hilarious.

episode 2 is better -- it was funny in parts -- but in the way that Some Kind of Monster is hilarious

the really horrible art on the ballroom stage in the conference in episode 2 ... I could do with a lot fewer clips of media talking heads talking about crypto though. So far the only likable people are Lily, the vegan restaurant owners, and the black woman. ... of course this is only after watching 2 episodes.

meanwhile, there are a couple new members of the anarchist community center I was helping for a little over a year who want to make a documentary about the place, and I am watching this show thinking about that ...

I assume these people have some interesting opinions about pinochet

Adding "pump and dump tweets about our new NFT line" to the chore wheel

sarahell, do you know anyone who was in the Diggers? I mostly know about them from Emmett Grogan's Ringolevio: A Life Played For Keeps. They gave food away in the Haight etc.:got donations from food places, dumpster dove, stole it. One of Grogan's colleagues in there is the actor Peter Coyote (also maybe the basis of Joni Mitchell's song "Coyote").

I have met at least one former Digger ... they were influential on a lot of counterculture stuff in the Bay Area in the following decades, so I am somewhat familiar with their history.

Good Diggers interview here:
https://diggersdocs.home.blog/2022/03/05/we-had-a-far-more-profound-effect/

Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down is a great read on the original (17th century) Diggers (and Levellers and Ranters and etc.)

Cool thanks yall!

Also, several years ago I read a dispatch from a war correspondent embedded with the Kurds in Syria: these are not the PKK (Marxist) Kurds, although Ertgun hates and wants to bite them all. These are inspired by the writings of an American libertarian, I think Murray Rothbard, or another Murray? They want nothing or as little as possible to do with what they agree with Ralph Nader is Corporate Socialism, also corporations with private armies, anything corporate, which comes from contract law and the courts, and is another form of Big Government anyway.
(I've seen some American believers at FreedomFest, or whatever that thing is on C-SPAN some years: tending to live in the woods, emerging to sell handcrafts etc., bartering whenevr possible.).
So the Kurds in Syria, the ones that this correspondent was with, were tribes, coming together to fight Isis and keep prisoners. When Americans left, the Kurds fled, because Ertegun, and the prisoners escaped. But the Kurds made a deal with the Syrian Government, who protected them from the Turks, while they reeled in as many Isis as possible. Dunno if part of the deal was also going against the Syrian rebels, or how any of that's going now.

I don't know how this relates to governance of the Kurdish Enclave in Iraq.

I'm pretty annoyed about this show's title. People already generally have no clue what anarchism actually means or what anarchists actually believe. It's annoying to see a legitimate political ideology with a centuries long tradition of philosophy and theory reduced to "punk kid trying to be badass", or "January 6th rioter", or "crank who thinks nothing in society should follow any form of organization". This just muddies the waters further.

idk, I have recently watched that Netflix series that had episodes about neo-Nazis, another Netflix show about the Revenge Porn guy, and the Showtime miniseries The Comey Rule ... the ancaps are nowhere near the literal worst people compared to the subjects of these shows, and there was only so much I could stomach at once.

― sarahell

yeah i was just exaggerating there, sorry about that

rojava was ostensibly inspired by murray bookchin who for all his flaws was a genuinely left wing libertarian socialist (he'd probably hate that) who'd have no time for these clowns- rothbard is a very different proposition

rojava/AANES not doing great atm afaict but it's not their fault

It's annoying to see a legitimate political ideology with a centuries long tradition of philosophy and theory reduced to "punk kid trying to be badass", or "January 6th rioter", or "crank who thinks nothing in society should follow any form of organization". This just muddies the waters further.

the punk kids can be okay, they are mostly action without theory, but the other two categories ... wrong philosophy and theory.

xp Left -- Bookchin! Now that's a familiar name I had expected to get dropped.

Meanwhile ... Chicago dude who was sponging off his wife complains that his house actually is property of the community in terms of building and land use regulations ... which, yes, there are a lot of problematic things about building permits and land use regulations, but I strongly doubt that the problem he had with them personally was a symptom of "statist" oppression, as opposed to the many many ways these systems contribute to the affordable housing crisis.

I think if I watched this I would become unhealthily enraged

enraged + triggered tbh

rojava/AANES not doing great atm afaict but it's not their fault

― Left, Friday, July 29, 2022
update:https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2022/08/26/what-are-we-still-doing-in-syria-00053898