Is Anarchy Always Against the Mainstream 2? [Updated Version]

Some time ago I blogged something called Is Anarchy Always Against the Mainstream?

It began: "Supposedly, we live in a country threatened with chaos, and this chaos results from a lack of public order. In my opinion, this is only partly true. In reality, I think much — if not most — of the world’s chaos comes from people (be they influential or otherwise) trying to impose their perception of order on things." I also emphasized this wasn't meant to be "a vague, blanket condemnation..."

I went on to note how many, if not most, of our problems are caused by "the system" itself trying to impose itself on the world. However, in the current political environment, I realize there are more than ever before who would hate such talk. They want me to believe that groups like "Antifa" and "Black Lives Matter" are causing all of the chaos we're seeing. Furthermore, these same people would assert that everything I say is stupid.

Ironically, many of these same people (overwhelmingly falling under the "conservative" banner) would claim these are things I have the right to say while supporting a President who clearly thinks I don’t have the right to say them. President Donald Trump wants these types of people to actually fear such talk as coming from a "radical leftist" or "anarchist" who wishes to spread chaos. He specifically rails against all protesters as violent, and he has plenty of loyalists who celebrate when they get brutalized at protests. Then some of these people express dismay when protesters get rowdy in response.

What This Reminds Me Of

It reminds me very much of America's wars overseas. If you invade a country, treat them badly, bomb them, shoot them, torture them, etc., why would you assume everyone will greet you as a hero? If police brutalize people in large numbers, then society keeps pretending it is not a major problem, how do you reasonably expect that to turn out?

To those who doubt this reality, I encourage you to take a few days off and watch a bunch of police brutality videos on Youtube, or any other relevant social media sources. You will find a seemingly endless supply of videos that make the police look bad. In fact, you'll even find a surprising amount of relatively nonviolent police videos which, bizarrely, seem as bad as the more violent ones. For example, these juvenile delinquent-like cops going around slashing many car tires could be out of a John Carpenter movie.

By a certain point, you will surely also recognize that there is a problem. And when I say spend a few days doing this, I don't mean half-ass it. I mean spend a tremendous amount of time at it (to borrow one of Trump's favorite words).

However, let's make no mistakes here: The looting and rioting the conservatives so condemn is ultimately a symptom of bigger problems, including how our system increasingly looks AND ACTS like nothing but a violent, disgraceful sham itself. It is increasingly corporatized and militarized.

Yes, we have seen the death of George Floyd and cries against awful police abuse and the totally unpunished police killing of minorities. However, don't let some leftists convince you that's the whole of it. In its simplest form, here is what's going on: You put chaos in, you get chaos out.

Chaos is the System

Let's be honest about riotous behavior during protests. Yes, some of it does indeed come from leftists. I'll be honest enough to admit that, just as we should acknowledge apolitical rioting (such as sports fans rioting when their team wins!). However, some of this behavior is definitely coming from right-wing agitators and, of course, police officers themselves.

Many of us have seen some uproarious footage, which includes things like police antagonizing the press, beating people out of nowhere, pushing people, even charging at them with their police cruisers. No honest person can look at that and say, "Gee whiz, why are these protesters so upset?!"

There are also agent provocateurs, acting surreptitiously to rile people up to invalidate causes. For example, there's a now-famous piece of footage from Minneapolis showing a strange man carrying an umbrella smashing windows at an AutoZone. He looks so out of place that other nearby activists immediately find him suspicious. He is almost like an alien presence and is oddly antagonistic when confronted by a black activist (if this was a BLM activist, why would that be the case?)

Agent provocateurs are nothing new, either. There were agent provocateur cops at Canadian protests in 2007, trying to make otherwise peaceful protests appear violent. The government eventually admitted they were cops, which was hard to deny when they were revealed as all having uniform boots.

I could go on and on with the example, but you surely get the picture by now, right?

What Does it Mean to Consider the System at Fault?

Now that I've accused the system of creating much of the chaos, what do I offer as a solution? First of all, I am not saying "The people in power are turning everything into chaos, therefore it's inevitable that we have to kill everyone in charge." You can relax. I don’t want to kill anyone. I am not an extremist like that. Sure, I'm not exactly a pacifist, but I try to stay within that terrain.

However, I should ask: Would the system mind seeing you or I killed? No, not really. It might not outright kill us, but we are all expendable, interchangeable, and otherwise valueless unless we make a certain amount of money, and assorted criteria those in power consider valuable (though it is overwhelmingly about the money). If not, they'll increasingly throw you out on the street or into a concrete cell, or a grave, all in the name of freedom. This tendency is ultimately what I want to end.

Basically, if you were a homicidal maniac or, at the very least, extremely suicidal, you would see this system as something entirely benign. It is not, and it's increasingly unstable, to the point where it resembles a kleptocracy with internally proto-fascist tendencies, and external violent bouts of patriotic, flag-waving, country-invading mania.

We also elected a plainly racist, likely rapist, egocentric, myopic, reality TV star President whose primary source of wealth was being born rich, who uses his sociopathic tendencies and cult-like followers to stay that way.

Summary

Something else I'm ultimately trying to say is very simple: Those people who vilify violence against monuments and federal buildings by a few obviously have been propagandized into supporting the extremist tactics employed by the system, which occur on a much grander scale, even killing far more people than, say, Antifa (which, to my knowledge, has not even killed a single person, especially when the group technically does not exist aside from an umbrella term for self-described anti-racist activists).

So yes, some people at protests can indeed behave badly, and I won't bother excusing everything people do at these widespread protests. However, the idea that they're deadlier than the system itself is laughable. Most are not threatening to kill anyone in their presence, and plenty of the violence being attributed to activists doesn't truly fit.

In fact, I recently commented on a Youtube video comment that tried to blame BLM for random shootings. I stated: "I was in a BLM protest and there wasn't a single person carrying any weapons that I could tell. Use some common sense here. This was more likely either a gang-related or sociopathic crime or, if it was political, someone trying to make the protesters look bad. BLM would have no logical reason to shoot randomly at apartments and make themselves look bad. I would be very surprised if BLM arranged this or any other shooting, which would immediately be used by conservatives to discredit them."

If you want, I will educate you on this subject further. We can do a deep dive into history, and I can note how EVERY political persuasion has used violence to get its way. In the grand scheme of things, a little bit of property destruction, or even the occasional death, is nothing new. This is what happens when people try to impose their views of "order" onto things. If our political system refuses to change sufficiently while inflicting harm on people, it is creating chaos for itself.