The Endgame of White Punk's 'anarchism'

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/03/nirvana-krist-novoselic-praises-trumps-strong-and-direct-protest-speech wrote:Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic has praised Donald Trump for the “law and order” speech he gave on 1 June in response to protests sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

In a post on Facebook, Novoselic wrote: “Wow!!! I know many of you can’t stand him, however, Trump 'knocked it out of the park' with this speech. I agree, the president should not be sending troops into states – and he legally might not be able to anyway – nevertheless, the tone in this speech is strong and direct.  Most Americans want peace in their communities and President Trump spoke to this desire. Never mind the legal details that few understand – Trump said he would stop the violence and this speaks to many.”

Novoselic alleged that the violence “appears as a leftist insurrection”

“As an avowed independent, I don’t endorse a major party or candidate.  I don’t support an authoritarian state. I believe in a civilised society and that we all have to work toward that.” Novoselic describes himself as an “anarcho-capitalist socialist moderate I-don’t know.” Since 2014 he has appeared on Libertarian websites to discuss "Punk, FairVote, Dumping the Dems, & Why the GOP Should Embrace Anarchy."

Novoselic dismissed a fan’s query about whether this was a parody account, and said it was “certainly not a partisan echo chamber. I prefer to think for myself, thank you.”

Novoselic, the son of Croatian immigrants, clarified that "I don’t support fascism."

In this interview by the Liberatarian Fonzi, Novoselic explains "why he fled the anti-World Trade Organization demonstration in Seattle (27:51)"
It is worth the time to see his shocked face as he recalls someone yelling 'fuck you' at him after he was 'tsk-tsk'ing the spray-painting of a McDonalds.
What a precious and fragile bunch these libertarian-anarchists  
I remember getting seriously chased by riot cops in Toronto because I slowed down to right tipped over mail-boxes. I disagreed with some vandalism in multiple ways and sometimes at serious risk to myself.

But if the sanctity of a McDonalds is all it takes for an “anarcho-capitalist socialist moderate I-don’t know” to run off in tears, then you never understood what was being fought for and why it was being fought that way. Listen as he weasels that "I don't even eat at McDonalds, you know" (to maintain some type of credibility?!) His division of "good" and "bad" protest is amazing: past protests = good, current protests = bad.

It is easy to sit back and want "peace", it is harder to make America stop killing Black men in daylight executions.  
It is easy to want "reform", it is hard to get capitalism to budge an inch if it hurts profit.

I'll switch off my moralizing now but it really shows that "moderates", "independents", "centrists" are right-wingers in a form self-denial.

But let's not forget the Good Libertarian...Scott Horton!



https://libertarianinstitute.org/mance/426/

sigh......

I really liked Scott Horton. With his slight Southern accent and rowdy attitude he was a semi-reincarnation of Bill Hicks to me. A skateboard punk from Democratic parents turned hardcore Libertarian and the voice of Antiwar.com at a time when any voice against he madness of BushII were vital voices.  Few spoke better on police brutality and the stupidity of empire. But like all Libertarians he luvs his capitalism. Liberatarians are inverted Communists always blaming every social problem on the lack of purity of their ideology -  their solution to hyper-capitalism is ultra-capitalism -  which brings us to the paradoxical cowardliness of Libertarianism: 90% of their demands to dismantle the State are happily embraced by our TechnoCorporate Overlords.   The 10% of their demands that bother our Overlords - those focused on dismantling the Police & Military - are so fantastical that they are either ignored or embraced as calls for more private mercenaries!

I looked forward to hearing Horton's take on current event so discovering it is only slightly better than Novoselic is disappointing.

Horton begins well: The protests are justified and are separate from the "opportunistic looters" - but he quickly blurs them back together saying the looting has discredited the protests, and then states that even 'blocking roads' is taking the protests too far ('what happens someone misses a flight to a funeral'), in fact, he is only OK with violence toward government institutions. I agree with his analysis that the media coverage of the protests makes Trump into a re-electable 1968 Nixon but the difference is that Horton is part of the 'silent majority' of capitalists who agreed with Nixon that human blood is worth less than 'private property'.

He seeks to re-gain some credibility by then attacking Trump but his target is Trump's cowering in the White House's bunkers, like a girly man, rather than "grabbing a 9[mm]" to defend the White House if the "hippies" some how got past the "mini-guns".

At this point I stopped the podcast.

The "one good libertarian" had nothing but the usual liberal capitalist's admiration for  'law & order' and psycho-sexual contempt for Trump's lack of manliness.

I still have a debt to Scott Horton's radio show, it was an oasis of sanity and rage in the rough first decade of the 21st Century, but Libertarianism's best proponent reveals it to be little more than chest-thumping capitalism.
Novoselic and Horton know, morally and intellectually, that protests can be justified -  but only ones in the past or in other countries or maybe some perfect protest in the future - as long as they doesn't damage a McDonalds or block a road. Novoselic talks about how brave the Civil Right protests of the 1960s were and the same with Stonewall in the 1970s, then trashes the 1990s anti-capitalist protest, and now salutes Trump's police-state crushing BLM because it is what "most Americans want".

They also share an instinctively American love of domination. I can still see the look of shocked outrage when the McDonald defacers told Novoselic to "Fuck Off!"

Somehow I don't think the ideology of desperately needed change is a bunch of middle-age males tongue-clucking and pearl-clutching over broken windows and spray-painted McDonalds....

Guess I'll tack this on here ---

Stockwell Day wrote:Day went on to compare the bullying he endured as a child with the discrimination faced by visible minorities across the country. "Should I have gone through school and been mocked because I had glasses and was called four-eyes and because of the occupation of my parents?" Day asked. "Should I have been mocked for all that? No, of course not. But are Canadians largely and in majority racist? No, we are not.

Apparently Stockwell Day's parents both worked as "artificial clown inseminators" so it must have been hard on him. You know what school kids are like....

Did Stockwell Day grow up watching people with glasses executed on-air about once a month?
Were people with glasses kidnapped from another continent and brought to North America?
Were people with glasses the original occupants of North American until they were starved into submission?

ALL the WHITE PEOPLE together NOW: "But what about mmmyyyyyyyyyy suffering!"

It's weird to watch a country where all the government law-enforcement twitter accounts are full of people unironically posting videos of protesters in 2018 chanting "George Soros Where Are Money?" as evidence of "terrorist activity". When someone points out "they missed the joke", they start ALLCAPS.

Meanwhile

Evan
@evan7257
It's kinda funny that the key example of someone in Houston getting Soros money is the incumbent DA, and she's asking for constitutional flexibility on how long protestors can be held before charging them with a crime

Radley Balko wrote:It's disappointing to see so many of my fellow libertarians deriding and blithely dismissing calls to defund or abolish a government entity (an inherently coercive one with a well-documented history of abuse) because the very idea is crazy, or extremist, or unrealistic. I mean, if any group should be able to understand the value of pushing an extreme position, even if you suspect it's never going to happen, in order to move the Overton window and make room for other ideas, it should be us.

(To be clear, I'm not suggesting that activists calling for abolition or defunding are disingenuous. Only that libertarians who mock those demands for being out of touch or nuts or unfeasible might reflect on how our own ideas have been characterized over the years -- including many that are now mainstream.)

Essential Employee wrote:Literally having this argument right now, with multiple people advocating incrementalism or telling me that abolition/defunding are not politically feasible, so maybe we should just do some feel-good measures. This from folks who have previously advocated privatizing all roads...

Ford Fisher wrote:Here's the thing about Trump talking about "the radical left" and "anarchists" and framing them as aligned with Dems:Leftists and anarchists hate liberals.
The Democratic Party has vastly more in common with Republican Party and Trump than they do with anarchists and leftists.

Adam Bates wrote:What about libertarians in aggregate isn't disappointing right now? Everything we've ever warned about is happening right before our eyes and half of us can't decide whether we actually object to it or not.

It is good to see this sort of self-reflection.

But as long as the Libertarians main concern in periods of revolt against authoritarian police-states is that "the public roads be kept clear" or "jesus! the rest of these liberatarians are just Republicans!" I think we can safely say they are 'all hat, and no cattle'.