Trump’s ‘Anarchist Jurisdiction’ Talk Was Mostly Nonsense — But Could Such a Thing Exist?

On January 5, 2021, I wrote on my blog about a peculiar phrase that emerged during the Trump administration: "anarchist jurisdictions." It was used by the Department of Homeland Security to describe cities like Portland, Seattle, and New York — places that had seen protests in response to police brutality or simply didn’t align with Trump’s political narrative. The term, however, made little sense. Anarchism isn’t jurisdictional. It isn’t something defined or confined by government-sanctioned borders, laws, or frameworks. If anything, the concept of an "anarchist jurisdiction" is oxymoronic.

Governments exist to control territory. Their core function is to define, manage, and enforce borders. Anarchism, by contrast, rejects hierarchical control (at least in most circumstances) and resists the notion that authority must stem from formal legal jurisdictions. So, the idea that a government could declare a zone as "anarchist" is not only ironic — it’s fundamentally contradictory.

You can’t have a government-identified area of non-government, at least not in a particularly meaningful way. At most, it could only say "Here's an area no government fully controls" (which they could technically say about any place, as no spot on earth is totally, 100% controlled by these constructs we call "governments"). In this case, it was more of a propaganda term randomly spewed out by fascists-in-training.

But here’s the twist: although governments can’t meaningfully recognize anarchism in a literal sense, they can create conditions that somewhat resemble it, at least in the colloquial sense.

Consider what happens when state infrastructure fails — when the police no longer patrol, when courts no longer operate, when public services disappear — ironically, and paradoxically, situations similar to what Trump's second term is creating.

In such unhealthy vacuums, communities often are forced to organize themselves in decentralized, ad hoc ways. The result isn’t necessarily just chaos, but spontaneous and forced forms of order. Sometimes they compel people to become more anarchic; to rely on things like cooperation, mutual aid, collective defense. You could argue these are examples of ill-defined, spontaneous "territorial anarchies," ironically brought about by the state’s own absence, incompetence, and/or negligence.

Ironically, when it comes to actual anarchic scenarios, the government would most certainly not choose to define them as legitimate, even slightly. They would only be defined as places where governments have not been set up yet ("power vacuums").

In other words, governments themselves would tend to refuse to elaborate on what anarchism entails. They would choose to keep such things deliberately vague, to make such scenarios even more confusing than they might actually be (in the case of Portland, the Trump regime was attacking a semi-"autonomous zone" called the "Capitol Hill Occupied Protest," which did not even last a full month — not quite the national crisis that Trump and right-wing media made it out to be).

More To Discuss?

Want a broader possibility of vaguely territorial "anarchism"? Look at cyberspace.

Borders are increasingly irrelevant in the digital world. Estonian cyber official Margus Noormaa put it bluntly: "To those who commit cyber crimes, national borders are meaningless lines on a map." The same applies to international cooperation, global commerce, or even social media interactions. Parag Khanna calls this evolving map of connections "connectography" — a way of understanding the world through networks, not borders. From this perspective, traditional jurisdiction becomes less important than flow: of data, goods, people, and ideas.

Even the business model of the internet resists old concepts of authority. Net neutrality — once a rallying cry for digital freedom — was based on the belief that no one should control access to information or prioritize content for profit. That ideal has taken a beating in recent years, especially under administrations that sided with large telecom companies. But the conversation is still relevant. What happens when your data becomes a commodity? When your preferences are tracked, bought, and sold? We’re drifting toward a world where your online footprint matters more than your legal standing. Jurisdiction is losing its grip — digitally and ideologically.

That makes the phrase "anarchist jurisdiction" even more hollow. It was never about real anarchism. It was a rhetorical tool, a label meant to discredit political opponents and justify federal overreach.

The Trump administration often uses language this way — blunt, inflammatory, obtuse, and untethered from precision. The substance of the language doesn't matter as much as loyalty; if you believe in Trump's claim, and if you don't question it, then you are MAGA.

So the "anarchist jurisdiction" was another test of Trump's loyalty; Could you start applying this seemingly random legal premise as of it had strict meaning and applicability, at Trump's behest? It was a strange test, and one that Bill Barr was eager to pass.

Meanwhile, the real threats to order — and to democracy — weren’t coming from anarchists. They were coming from within the political system. As Ben Rhodes, a former Obama speechwriter, put it: "One major political party no longer accepts democracy." That’s a far more alarming development than any protest movement. It’s one thing to question authority basically from the outside; it’s another to dismantle democratic norms fundamentally from the inside.

Back to the Main Question...

So, back to the question: could an "anarchist jurisdiction" exist? Not in the way Trump framed it.

But yes — semi-territorial and conditional mini-anarchies are possible, especially when institutions fail or borders lose meaning. The internet is one example. Failed states are another. However, an "anarchist jurisdiction" could not exist solely on the basis that some government declares it.

As America collapses under the weight of its own stupidity — pockets of people compelled to self-sufficiency are creeping realities.

The irony is this: while shouting about "anarchist jurisdictions," the government was missing the point. Anarchy isn’t a threat from the streets. It’s what happens when power breaks down, or when systems grow too rigid to adapt, and when practically all semblance of institutional legitimacy goes out the window.

It’s not about burning buildings — it’s about borders losing relevance, authority losing trust, and people figuring out how to live without either. So, interestingly, and paradoxically, government itself inevitably forces some people to approximate anarchist ideals, and we'll see that as Trump drags America further down.

Pretty weird, huh?