(Last) Weekly Roundup: The United States Of Anarcho-Tyranny Plus Edition

"No man is completely useless; he can always serve as a bad example." That's about all you can say for the "Patriot Front" group who got rousted out of a U-Haul near a "pride parade" in Idaho. Apparently, they were going to attempt some sort of sabotage, maybe keep kids from "seeing public nudity and kink", who knows. Presumably about half of the 31 people in the U-Haul were Feds, as has been the case with right-wing groups for the better part of six decades, and one of them managed to get an "anonymous tip" placed with the local cops before he got in the box truck. Cue pictures of various goofy dudes in zip ties and attempts by the media to frame this as some sort of heterosexual Reconquista.

Assuming the whole thing wasn't some sort of glow-op designed from the jump to give the existing power structure more excuses to accumulate and exercise additional power in the cause of defending against it, right down to the use of a U-Haul in tribute to the Oklahoma City bombing, it was certainly stupid. If you have some sort of racist/fascist/supremacist objection to having your children exposed to public nudity and/or kink, you'd be better off praying for rain, which apparently worked. Groups like the "Patriot Front" aren't just ineffective; they are actively harmful to the causes they espouse, because they accomplish nothing but a strengthening of their opposition. They're like vaccines (the old-school kind that work, mind you) against a return to 1950s America.

All of the above being said, however, here's the question that came to my mind as I watched these idiots kneeling on the ground before the FBI: exactly when did it become illegal to make plans to cause havoc downtown? More precisely, when did it become illegal again? Because we all watched a full summer of intricately organized groups doing everything from burning police stations to setting up "autonomous zones" for rape and murder -- while the existing power structure smiled benevolently on their actions and members of Congress offered excuses for their actions. Were the morons of "Patriot Front" going to burn a building? Rape anybody? Do anything other than throw their (single) smoke grenade and yell? Probably not. So why are they in zip-ties while their across-the-aisle counterparts in BLM are dropping seven figures on real estate?

The answer, of course, is anarcho-tyranny plus.

Wikipedia helpfully tells us that anarcho-tyranny is "a Hegelian synthesis when the state tyrannically or oppressively regulates citizens' lives yet is unable or unwilling to enforce fundamental protective law." The phrase was coined by a militant right-winger so it's a bit samizdat, but we all intrinsically understand what it means. The whole state of California has gone full anarcho-tyrannist, "decriminalizing" everything from drug use to aggressive encampment on other people's property to flash-mob theft while at the same time ratcheting up enforcement on "hate speech", EPA compliance in homes and private vehicles, and legally-owned firearms.

Anarcho-tyranny is when you allow career criminals to do whatever they want, because fear of crime makes citizens more subservient to the police and ruling class, while at the same time using the full might of the law on random normies, because fear of aggressive enforcement makes citizens more subservient to the police and ruling class. There's no actual contradiction in anarcho-tyranny. It's a coherent philosophy with tangible results that serve to preserve the existing power structure.

Anarcho-tyranny is the norm around the world in places as diverse as Brazil and Australia. It's easier to list the places where you won't find it: Singapore, Switzerland, a few tiny principalities. China is busting its collective ass to dig out of its Deng-era anarcho-tyranny, while Canada is going in the other direction. You'll find it everywhere you look. More precisely, you'll find what I call anarcho-tyranny plus. The plus comes from the government making deliberate and thoughtful efforts to enforce the laws differently for different groups people on the same social level.

Morally speaking, all "street protest" groups are basically the same, because adults make moral judgments based on predictable effects rather than intent. If I throw a penny off a skycraper without meaning to hurt anyone, that's still reprehensible because any sane person knows that's dangerous. Patriot Front and Antifa disagree on everything but the methods they want to use, yet that commonality is what defines them. This was the great insight of Gandhi, who was about as far from a saint as you can get but who eventually realized that his movement would be judged on the world stage by the violence of its actions rather than the justness of its cause.

In America, however, we let ideological orientation determine how our street protestors are treated. If you throw a Molotov cocktail into a cop car for the right reasons, the Feds are going to suggest reduced sentencing. If you're a "Proud Boy" and you punch someone who threw a bottle at you, you're going to do the maximum. This is how the country works now.

And that's why the idiots of Patriot Front got zip-tied before they could get within a mile of the "pride parade". Can you imagine a headline that reads "Antifa members arrested on their way to protest downtown?" It's never happened, and it likely never will. The principle of anarcho-tyranny plus dictates that police buildings can be burned to the ground with impunity but the cops will go full Minority Report Pre-Crime on the U-Haul crowd.

History tells us that societies are allergic to anarcho-tyranny and that it eventually undermines the regimes it is intended to protect. But the cure is often as bad as the disease; just ask anyone who grew up in Argentina after the Second World War. Eventually the humiliated victims of anarcho-tyranny select a strongman to enforce the laws in universal fashion. In the meantime, all most Americans can do is to adopt the attitude of a middle-class Brazilian: close your eyes and walk the tightrope between being murdered for your watch and sentenced to life imprisonment for acts of lèse-majesté. Good luck. And if someone asks you to get in their U-Haul, the answer is always no. At best you'll be zip-tied; at worst, you'll have to help them move.

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For Hagerty I wrote about my rural retreat and an imaginary Supra coupe.

At the Washingon Examiner I examined a truck to please the power structure.