The Anarchist Bogeyman Strikes Again

Apparently a patriarchal, hierarchical, authoritarian society, such as ours, has today, and throughout history, always considered the anarchists in society to be the gravest threat of them all. This can be seen as the Republican convention comes to New York, and the media once again gets hysterical over the threat posed by that greatest of all bogeymen, as the anarchists once again bring their special brand of ruinously destructive chaos to the streets of what must be a terrified New York City. It is worthwhile to review how anarchists have always been regarded as the most dangerous of heretics, even in times long past, and so not much has ever changed and truly there is nothing new under the sun.

The operation to defend the homeland is about to swing into action as some of the most dangerous anarchists are heading for the streets of New York and once the fearful apocalyptic end of the world as New Yorkers have known it once again threatens the city.

New York on High Security Alert for Republicans ... Nearly 300 people have already been arrested in weekend protests against the policies of Republican President George Bush, most notably the Iraq war. The majority of the arrests came on Friday night during an unauthorised rally, when 5,000 protesters on bicycles brought chaos to city streets... The New York Daily News reported this week that 50 leading anarchist activists are heading for the city to stoke violent protests. Madison Square Garden is ringed by police, some armed with sub-machine guns... "Any attempts of a terrorist will be frustrated and repelled by multiple layers of security that they will encounter all around the city, and for that matter all around the region," (Tom Ridge) said."

The story goes on to suggest that the various protest groups are going out of their way to distance themselves from the anarchists, and the mayor has promised them discounts on hotel rooms, restaurants, and so on, these discounts being available only for good protestors, and not the bad ones. There is also a suggestion, that despite the ban on assembling in Central Park, and outside of the official protest pen (is that where they will be handing out the discounts), nevertheless some dangerous anarchists were planning to defy authority once again and assemble in Central Park, where no doubt they will ruin the grass, since that is a lot worse than the concerts and other events that take place in Central Park, making this just one more example of the destructive chaos New Yorkers can expect these co-travelers with the terrorists, the anarchists, to bring to their fair city.

We are also told that the anarchists might hurt the electoral chances of John Kerry and the Democrats, which I am sure is bound to break the heart of any true anarchist. Apparently the anarchists are planning to make the stay of the Republicans in New York ‘as miserable as possible' and are planning "harassment and to disrupt daily life in every way possible." And, really, can it get much worse than that? Now they are really getting bad, those anarchists. I mean, when you stop and think about it, when you think about things like, oh, say, the vastness of the universe, and the almost incomprehensible nature of cosmic time, eternity behind us, eternity before us, well then you can understand just how important it really is that we avoid any disruption of daily life, since such things really are just that important. Now as for the dangerous threat posed by the trashing of the constitution and the bill of rights, well that is not as troubling, and no cause for hysteria, since these really destructive things are being done by the proper authorities, just as is typically the case, and that is alright (even though the wholesale destruction caused by these ‘authorities' over the course of the last century is more abominable than some frustrated anarchist kid (or some cop dressed as an anarchist) busting a window, and thus disrupting daily life (at least until the glass repair guy can get there).

As just one example of these sorts of things you might consider the whole sale massacre of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians during the year of living dangerously (CIA and state department block report on U.S. involvement in Indonesian coup ... Quote : "The embassy reported back to Washington at the time that "We frankly do not know whether the real figure" of communists who have been killed "is closer to 100,000 or 1,000,000 but believe it wiser to err on the side of the lower estimates, especially when questioned by the press." The communiques also address the possibility of public disclosure of U.S. covert action and involvement in the massacres by noting that "The chances of detection or subsequent revelation of our support in this instance are as minimal as any black bag operation can be." end quote). Now that black bag operation of theirs was a lot more destructive (and disrupting a lot more daily lives) than any black bloc operation, and this is just one example of so many others of authorities in high places, such as Washington, D.C., who have spent the last century repeatedly committing crimes against humanity, and escaping prosecution, or even criticism (have you hard about that black bag operation? If not, then I have made my point).

Anarchists hot for mayhem ... Fifty of the country's leading anarchists are expected to be in the city for the Republican National Convention...Police said each of the 50 have up to 50 followers..." Among the ‘mayhem' they are planning are such things as ‘sit-ins', attempting to block delegates, and some of them might wreck a McDonald's or a Starbucks. The narachists "have police concerned they will recruit others into dangerous confrontations. "The older radicals are interacting with the newer anarchists and it's a bad mix," said one police source." We are told that the cops have seen these impressionable younger anarchists being trained in the use of weapons, receiving training in firearms and small handguns from older, more experienced anarchists, and are also known to be loading up on bricks and Molotov cocktails. Along list of famous anarchists from the past are known to have come out of retirement to corrupt the youth and lead them down the wrong path as they seek to spread their philosophy of violent chaos and malevolent destruction so as to bring about the great apocalyptic end of civilization and day to day life which, of course, is the dream of all true anarchists, as everyone knows.n Among the terrorist groups known to be heading for New York are SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (guilty of intimidating Huntingdon with "blitzes of E-mail, telephone calls and faxes to menace Huntingdon Life Sciences." International Solidarity Movement (ISM), among its most well known members was Rachel Corie, and others who act as a type of ‘human shield against the Israel forces. Describes itself as a Palestinian-led movement of activists working to raise awareness of the struggle for Palestinian freedom...the story tells us that police sources say that they have been known to meet with suicide bombers just before they strike, although they deny involvement.

Poetic Justice

It is the essence of the reigning philosophy of Right Wing Authoritarianism that violence is alright, and so is destructive chaos, provided that is sanctioned and then committed by high authorities. Terrorism is also acceptable, as you can tell by the campaign of blowing up hospitals, clinics, and terrorizing civilians practiced by the Nicaraguan contras, this particular counter insurgency having been planned and then (illegally) financed and executed from the White House. Declassified documents also reveal White House and State Department involvement in the torture and slaughter of tens of thousands of young activists in Argentina (the sons and daughters of the Mothers of the Disappeared). A memo sent to the military junta by Henry Kissinger, expressed sympathy with the cause, stating that Washington understood what they were doing and why they were doing it, but at the same time Washington wanted the despots to hurry up and finishing torturing and killing kids before Christmas of that year, since it was becoming increasingly difficult for the White House to keep the dirty little operation out of the American press.

What this indicates is that destructive chaos is, in and of itself, not a bad thing, if it is being done by the proper authorities. After all the White House did a lot worse than busting a few windows of vandalizing a Starbucks in places like Nicaragua, Indonesia, Argentina, and so many, many other places over the course of the previous century. Right Wing Authoritarians do not get hysterical over destructive chaos in high places, reserving their venom for those who protest, and who, God forbid, might get real angry and bust a window, an act which is now being equated with terrorism. The destruction of the constitution and the bill of rights should also be a concern, since such documents were created for the supposed purpose of reigning in the violent chaotic destruction caused by kings and rulers, who throughout history have cut a swath of destruction across the planet, leaving heaps of corpses in their wake, and if they are lucky are then celebrated with statues and the title ‘the Great', along with detailed discussion of their psyhco-pathogical ‘achievements' in school history textbooks. They routinely crush the poor, leaving the corpses of tens of thousands of small malnourished babies littering the planet each and every single day, as they pour untold trillions into the pockets the military industrial complex and also protect and reward the very rich, who in countries around the world horde the majority of the land and the wealth, while the military, with funding from Washington, oppresses the rest of the population.

Now one could say that there is no justice in a world such as this one, but it is a curiosity that in some very strange ways the universe as it unfolds seems to be able to deal out poetic justice at the end of it all. For example we find the state apparatus hunkering down for a convention, while the fear of the terrorists they themselves created and financed fills their official media organs.

Those with some historical memory will recall how Washington, D.C., spent billions funding both the Taliban and Al Queda a little over twenty years ago in Afghanistan. Now as Shakespear said, a rose by any other name is still a rose, and I am referring here to Osama bin Laden and the Mujahadeen, which was the name given to that particular rose of Afghanistan back in those days, before they decided to change their name to Al Queda in the early 90s, around the same time that they decided to change their target, and terrorize the world's other remaining super power, the United States of America. Well that was a fine example of ingratitude, when you consider that Washington literally spent billions on the Taliban and Al Queda. They knew that this rag tag group of Muslim fundamentalist terrorists would never be able to topple a super power (Russia) in a traditional military battle, so Washington established those camps in Afghanistan (the same ones that got bombed out later) where CIA specialists trained Al Queda in the techniques of terrorism, guerilla warfare. Al Queda was trained to operate a loose, decentralized organization, so that even if one autonomous cell was compromised the rest of the organization would survive intact, making Al Queda just about impossible to penetrate or eliminate, something required if Al Queda was going to make war on a Super Power, and survive and eventually prevail. It is also known that Al Queda received CIA training in the fine art of psychological warfare. The idea here is that this one rag tag group of guerillas and terrorists would wear down the super power, looming larger than life, and due to their unconventional tactics would instill constant anxiety and fear, since no one knew where they might strike next, and given how small an operation they really were, this psychological advantage would give them the most bang for their limited bucks. Based on what I am seeing, it would seem that Osama bin Laden must have kept his notes from the classes he was taking in those days.

Now we do need to understand why suddenly Washington's pupil became Washington's number one enemy, the most wanted terrorists, the notorious Osama bin Laden and Al Queda (the name means ‘the struggle', describing the long drawn out battle planned against the United States...the previous name, the mujahadeen, meant ‘the warriors of God'). In order to understand this we need to remember that once ‘communism was destroyed' and thus it was ‘the end of history' (which means no more revolutions, and nothing but the status quo forever and ever amen), the United States became more and more filled with arrogant hubris. Even before the Soviet Union had crumbled, policies were already being put in place that brutally afflicted the populations of the third world (referred to as ‘restructuring', these policies led to the destruction of support programs for the poor, huge job cuts and growing poverty as industries were down sized ready to be privatized, usually at fire sale prices). These policies, which everyone knew were increasing poverty in the poorest countries in the world were referred to as ‘painful adjustments'. The United States was not afraid, since the Soviet Union was dying and would soon be dead, which meant no more danger of revolution, and thus the very worst type of robber baron capitalism was imposed on the third world (policies no American would tolerate at home, since they are still considered much to barbaric, although the clock is slowly being turned back to the time of Charles Dickens in America as well, since what comes around goes around).

Now these policies did not piss off Osama bin Laden, since Osama is an extreme right wing hawk, and the painful restructuring of the third world in favor of robber baron capitalism was taking place about the same time that Osama was cashing American cheques. But with the final collapse of the Soviet Union Washington became even more full of arrogant hubris and thus is not afraid to do what they have began in the early 90s (the occupation of the world's last remaining untapped reserves of petroleum, both in Iraq, and in the countries around the Caspian, and what was once the Southern Soviet Union, these oil and gas fields having been occupied during the invasion of Afghanistan). Now both Iraq and these other strategically important oil reserves are all Muslim countries. So you can see that after Osama did Washington a favor and did his part in bringing about the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington repaid its former hired hands by beginning to move, now with a free hand, into the Muslim countries. It turns out that all Osama was doing was getting rid of the Russians so the Americans could double cross him and his friends by moving in, much as Al Capone might take over the rackets on the east side once his ex-rival, Bugsy, had been fitted with a pair of those concrete shoes.

All this was bad enough, from the point of view of Al Queda, but to then have the Americans literally involved in the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis was the last straw. Documents reveal that Washington understood that by deliberately targeting such non-military targets as the drinking water supply, the end result would be the spread of water borne diseases and many deaths, especially of children. The destruction of the water system was also a criminal offense, under the Geneva Accords, and according to the constitution of the United States treaties signed are American law, which makes many of the current members of this administration, who were the ones who planned this among other criminal acts, un-prosecuted war criminals.

Speaking of the deliberate war crimes committed by members of this current American administration, we are told that ...

the coordinator of the United Nations programs, Denis Halliday, a highly respected UN official who resigned under protest because he was being compelled to carry out what he called "genocidal acts," as did his successor Hans von Sponeck...The simplest line of argument to justify the sanctions was presented by the Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. You'll recall, I'm sure, that she was asked on national television a couple years ago about how she felt about the fact that she had killed half a million Iraqi children. She didn't deny the factual allegation. She agreed that it was, as she put it, "a high price," but said, "we think it's worth it". That was the end of the discussion,"

It was both the move towards the oil fields of the Muslims combined with the horrors that befell Iraq, not to mention the humiliation of the weekly bombings (that lasted for over a decade) that radicalized Al Queda, and that is also responsible for the remarkable hatred of Americans and the ferocity of the armed resistance movement in Iraq, since you see, people just don't forgive and forget that easily.

Osama bin Laden released the following fatwa in the late 90s, describing the reasons for the formation of Al Queda, and the reasons why Al Queda was now turning against its former teacher and benefactor, and thus this relates directly to the so called ‘War on Terrorism' (which is actually an oil grab, which will be known historically as the Peak Oil Wars, assuming we survive the reckless age of the nation states so as to have some history to remember...it is also interesting to note here that for decades every attempt to move to alternative fuels has been stymied, in favor of oil profits, and oil companies were even allowed to purchase and then sit on patents dealing with alternative energy, a practice that should have been illegal, and all this has contributed to the terrible dilemma the world faces today, which is the true motivating factor behind this so called ‘War on Terrorism' ). You will notice how prescient Osama bin Laden in the following statement, in that he accurately predicted a coming wave of plundering of the oil reserves of Muslim nations, spreading outward from the Middle East, which is just what happened. This does not make Osama a prophet, since anyone with any common sense and the proper cynicism could have predicted as much.

For over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples. If some people have formerly debated the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, still they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation ... Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries ... On that basis, and in compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it ...

The Peak Oil World War

And so there you have it. More American war crimes, more crimes against humanity, such things being typically referred by the tactful nom de guerre as ‘American Foreign Policy' (which is actually a description of an assortment of immoral, criminal acts that have been accumulating over the course of the previous century). And now the betrayers are themselves betrayed by their own creation (having created the monster they now claim to be fighting, this now being, it is said, the justification for endless warfare that will last long past the lifetime of this current generation)...Now this is what I call poetic justice, and it works on so many levels.

There may be those who call themselves ‘pragmatists' who do not see why it should be the case that morality should prevail in human affairs. After all, you just have to be realistic, pragmatic as it were. And a fine fix it has got everyone into at the end of it all. The current ‘War for Peak Oil' has bi-partison support (with the Democrats criticizing the Republicans from the right), and what is now taking place is simply the culmination of decades of corporate greed and bad energy policy, which cannot be understood in isolation, but rather is just one symptom of a much greater illness, a system which has piled up one immoral policy after another, and in the end finds itself with its back against the wall, fighting what will become one of the nastiest world wars for oil, which it seems could very well destroy the entire nation, and spread destruction far and wide over the planet as such world conflicts always do.

And despite that American hubris, it turns out that it was not the end of history after all, no, there is still some history to be made here as America lurches towards becoming a full fledged Right Wing Authoritarian fascist state which is forced to bleed rivers of blood to hang onto her prize. If we assume that American politics had not been totally corrupted by the corporate wallet, it might have been the case that alternative energy options might have been explored which would have led to a different outcome. As it stands the Americans will now bleed for their government's history of accumulated outrages against common decency, with no end in sight, as the constitution crumbles, and the youthful flower of the nation is more than likely destined to be called up by draft boards, since there is no way that the American powers that be are going to lose this Peak Oil War. As the situation gets worse, and terrorism and guerilla war fare against the American Powers intensifies, the American Powers will risk it all on one toss of the dice.

The average American will meanwhile have their heads muddled with bullshit about a ‘war against terrorism', while the clear link that exists between Washington, and their protégé, Al Queda, is sent deep down into the memory hole (this matter was not investigated by the 9-11 commission). Voting Democrat certainly won't salvage this sorry situation, for the Democrats have already reassured the American elite that they will continue the Peak Oil Wars, while perhaps dressing the thing up a little better than the ham handed Bush administration (since the American elite are becoming alarmed and divided over the ham fisted methods employed by neo-conservative hawks, while at the same time supporting the eventual goal, which is the fighting and the winning of this, the Peak Oil World War.)

The Mythology of the Authoritarian State

Now that the bad policies of the Authoritarian State are getting people into deep, deep trouble, and now that these same authorities find themselves with few options to deal with the disasters they themselves have created, it seems to me to be an opportune time to initiate a discussion on the topic of authoritarian mythology, as opposed to anarchist history.

It is one of the characteristics of Right Wing Authoritarian thought that its arguments are supported by a variety of falsehoods and mythology. There is nothing wrong with mythology, per se, except when these myths are presented as historical fact, this only becoming necessary when the historical facts are inconvenient, and thus it is then required that people just make something up, something that will work in that unlike the real history, the fraudulent history supports that right wing authoritarian cause.

It is typical of those who support the hierarchical organization of the state, with vast differences in inequality and power concentrated in the hands of ‘authorities' to claim that this arrangement is ‘natural'. The argument can take various forms.

In the past we were told about the ‘divine right of Kings', and we were told that it was God who had selected and empowered Kings, and so therefore to resist or disobey the authorities was the equivalent of rebellion against God. (See the discussion of the right wing authoritarian political treatise known as Paul's Letter to the Romans for a discussion of the classic formulation of this political doctrine, all dressed up in the language of mythology, as befits theology, since theology is just politics dressed up in the language of mythology).

In the modern world people are less likely to respond to religious myths, and adjust their politics sharply to the right in response, and so therefore it has become necessary to bring the mythology up to date and to use science (or better said pseudo-science) as a tool to support right wing ideology. We can be told that the state is natural, since authoritarianism is the product of human evolution (the mythological doctrine known as ‘Social Darwinism', where science, in particular the science of Darwin, replaces the older and obsolete doctrines of the crumbling, discredited, dying Book of Romans, since a culture can only remain loyal to a myth when the mythology remains relevant, and when such is no longer the case, it is time to move on...Unfortunately the mythological history presented in Romans has been revealed by the increase of human knowledge to be an obviously erroneous fraud, and to be useful for political purposes, mythology must be believable, so as to replace actual history, and thus the mythology of the book of Romans has now fallen into irreversible decline...all the torturous arguments of Biblical Creation Scientists will never be able to stop the rapid decline and ruinous collapse of Pauline Christianity, based as it is upon a fraudulent so called history of the human race, where Biblical mythology was literally interpreted as history during the long age of ignorance during which the Pauline Church was able to flourish simply because no one knew any better at the time. This decline and collapse has been proceeding apace throughout the twentieth century, as knowledge increases and at the same time Paul's general ignorance and superstition is finally fully revealed.)

According to the mythology, perhaps God created the state and invested the authorities. This mythology can still hold sway over the thoughts of a shrinking minority of the population (those who despite the problems inherent in doing so, remain followers of Paul and his doctrine of ‘salvation from Adam's sin'). For the rest of us, the newly emerging mythology presents us with another historical falsehood, the doctrine which teaches us that humanity evolved along authoritarian lines, and thus the current state of affairs is ‘natural'.

The truth of the matter is that the authoritarian state is a recent development in the very long history of human culture, having arrived on the scene only about four thousand years ago. For the majority of human history people were what we might call today ‘anarchists'. Fortunately they survived the long ages of destructive chaos, no doubt just barely, and, thank God one must assume, they barely escaped destruction thanks to the timely development of the institution of the state, and the institution of concentrations of political power, this development becoming the salvation of all human humanity (‘God save the King!'). Those who hold to the religious mythology, which masquerades as history (for political purposes) would have to explain why it would have been the case that God created anarchy, and only after a long time had passed did God get around to creating the state powers. If anarchy was a mistake, and God had no choice but to correct this tragic error, then God can make mistakes (and it seems unlikely that these religious types would ever want to admit such a thing). If we were to argue that due to the original sin, God's plan for anarchy had to be abandoned for practical reasons, then we must explain how God created a universe with sin, which would bring into question God's absolute power and ultimate control as well as God's foreknowledge and understanding. If we don't want to go there then we must explain how it was the case that an allegedly holy God was the inventor of sin, making it available as an option for Adam, thus making it possible for Adam to have ‘free will', as its called, which means that God created evil, and on purpose to, and that God knew that Adam would fall before Adam fell, which means that it must have been the will of God that Adam should fall, and the will of God negates Adam's free will, since apparently Adam was only under the delusion that he had free will, when actually he was just doing what God had willed...if this true, and God is in complete control, then it means that the original sinner must have been God, not Adam, since it was God who invented all evil...but, once again, I digress...the point to made here is that the right wing authoritarian religious argument is internally inconsistent and just does not make sense..

Anarchism in the Bible

The mythology of the ‘Divine Right of Kings' and the mythology of the ‘Divine Creation of the Authoritarian State' (the doctrines promoted by the book of Romans) are both supported and refuted by the Bible. The reason for this curious situation is that the Bible is a document composed of many different sources, and these sources were then chopped into small pieces and woven into a single document, by a redactor (an editor of sources) to create a composite work. The end product then represents the point of view of the redactor, but the original sources can still be discerned (it is for this reason that you often hear that the Bible is ‘contradictory').

Among the many sources of the Bible are an anarchist and a royalist tradition which are then incongruously woven together through the complex process of redaction to create a third composite work (and in the process creating more of those inevitable Bible contradictions, since the political philosophy of anarchism and monarchy are diametrically opposed).

The source materials in the Bible are very ancient and so we find that the Bible describes the early history of humanity as organized according to the principles of what we would today call ‘anarchism'. This was then followed by the rise of the first states and then the rise of the first empires.

A royalist source, found in the book known as Judges tell us of this early history of humanity, pointing out that before the time of the state, the world was organized around the principles of anarchist philosophy.

Judges 21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel; every person did what ever they themselves thought was right.

This description of society was written by a monarchist, as you can tell by reading the source materials, and so what is written is not advocacy (a longing for the ‘good old days). It is interesting to note that the monarchist admits that throughout human history, going back into the distant past, human beings lived according to the anarchist principle, and yet anarchists are portrayed by the monarchist as being extremely violent, dangerous and threatening. The phrase is repeated four times in the book of Judges, and each time it accompanies a story about the dangerous, violent anarchists. In one story the anarchists actually come to a city where they practice harassment and disrupt the every day lives of the citizens with their violent anarchy, and how much more modern could a piece of propaganda be, given what we are reading in the press these days. Truly there is nothing new under the sun, and the more things seem to change the more they actually just stay the same.

We know that modern humans appeared on the scene somewhere between 50 thousand and 100 thousand years ago (there is still some controversy over the exact dating). What this means is that somehow,. through a miracle no doubt, humanity managed to survive somewhere between 45 thousand and 95 thousand years as anarchists without destroying the whole planet, or threatening to destroy it with their harassments and violent chaos, making monarchism necessary for the survival of humanity. Now if this was true, and it is the monarchist argument being put forward in the Bible, and in today's newspapers, then one must wonder why for 90 to 95 per cent of human history ‘there was no king in those days' and how it could have been the case that this required king would only exist for about 5 or 10 percent of human history. As for the argument that this King was required to ‘protect us from those violent anarchists', well from what I have seen, the King is much more violent, and has destroyed many more human lives during his brief reign on the planet, and personally I would rather take my chances with the anarchists, since humanity survived for tens of thousands of years as anarchists, but just a few thousand years of that King and we find ourselves teetering on the brink of various forms of ruination and chaotic destruction, making the supposed argument in favor of that King invalid.

One of the most interesting anarchist sources in the Bible is found in the book of Samuel. Here we find another one of those documents where the source materials have been chopped into little pieces and then woven together by a redactor into a crazy quilt. What this means is that document is complex, and it is not just a simple matter of reading the anarchist source and then reading the monarchist source, because the two have been combined by the redactor to create a third document, which attempts to straddle the fence. (I say attempt, since this policy of forcing divergent sources together creates notable contradictions and inconsistencies in the finished product...for an example of the complex tossed salad redaction of Samuel, see the page on David and Goliath where the glaring contradictions are the clear result of the weaving together of multiple versions of the legend. The same practice has caused the anarchist source to chopped into pieces and then stitched together with the monarchist source.)

The original sources can still be retrieved from Biblical documents using the technique of political analysis of the various stories and verses we find merged in the final redacted versions. For example the following passage clearly represents the point of view of the tribal anarchists who were resisting the process of the creation of the world's very first state governments about four to five thousand years ago.

1st Samuel 8:5 Now appoint for us a king to govern us like all the nations." But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to govern us." ... you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them. So Samuel said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your menservants and maidservants, and the best of your cattle and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day." But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; and they said, "No! but we will have a king over us." ... you have this day rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses; and you have said, ‘No! but set a king over us.' Now therefore present yourselves before the LORD by your tribes and by your thousands."

As you can see that anarchist argument against the establishment of the first state was based upon a doctrine of egalitarianism, which they insisted was only being violated by this new doctrine of having a ‘king' and a ‘state' for reasons of economic exploitation. So the state was created for the purposes of creating economic inequality through the exploitation of the population, they insisted. Their second argument might sound a little strange, in that by rejecting anarchism and choosing monarchism, the tribal anarchists were insisting that the people were rejecting God, and you just don't hear anarchists talking like that today, so their reasoning can seem puzzling.

There are two ways to interpret this doctrine that come to mind. First is the argument from nature. As the Bible frankly tells us, for all of history people lived as anarchists. Therefore it must be the case that this was natural and if it was natural it was the will of God so to reject anarchism in favor of monarchism and the state was to reject God.

The second way to understand this doctrine is to view as a piece of irony, and in order to appreciate the irony you would need to understand that monarchist argument. Their argument has always been two fold. First we are told of the violent anarchists, this argument being used in both the Bible and in your newspaper today. Second we are told that it was God who chose the King and it was God who instituted the monarchy, and since God is an authority, this authority then passes on to the anointed King and the state itself. The King was a Royal person, very special and not like anyone else, having been endowed with the superiority required to be a monarch by an act of God.

Samuel 10:23 When he (the king) stood among the people, he was taller than any of the people from his shoulders upward. And Samuel said to all the people, "Do you see him whom the LORD has chosen? There is none like him among all the people." And all the people shouted, "Long live the king!" Then Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship; and he wrote them in a book and laid it up before the LORD. Then Samuel sent all the people away, each one to his home.

The above represents the pro-Monarchy source in Samuel (as I said you can disentangle the various verses of the Bible using politics as the template, which is more complex than reading most other books, but is required due to the editing of the documents). Now if you read the anarchist source it clearly contradicts the royalist source as you would expect, and we find that God did not authorize a King at all. In this source the Samuel character is portrayed as talking to God and God says that by choosing a King they were rebelling against God. To paraphrase the anarchist writings, speaking of the monarchists now, God is given to say such things as ‘They hate me, says God, and that is why they want a King. Well every since the time those people came out of Egypt they have always hated me and never listened to me and they have always been a rebellious and stubborn people. And now they want a king and a state government. Well its not surprising given how much they have always hated me. Well, alright, given their hatred and stubbornness let them go right ahead and have their king and follow after their own evil ways.'' Now keep in mind that the monarchist argument is right wing authoritarian, centered upon the notion of ‘obedience to authority' with God being the ultimate authority, and then you can appreciate the irony of the anarchist portrayal of God speaking of such RWA monarchists as a rebellious and disobedient people who really hated God. In the end the anarchist argument of ‘rebellion' is probably a combination of a little of both the argument from nature and the argument from irony.

There is a third source in Samuel, and that is the work of the redactor, for by combining these two sources, contradictory as they were, the redactor attempted to create a type of compromise composite document that straddled the divide between the anarchists and the monarchists. The end product is a document which states that the people wanted to set up the first states and the first kings, and while that may very well have been a very bad idea, nevertheless it happened and so now we just have to make the best of a bad situation. Therefore the best thing to do would be to introduce a system of checks and balances, with that new King being subject to both the law of the country and to God as final authority, with God holding the right to appoint and to dismiss any king. The end result of this compromised fence straddling doctrine was to favor the monarchists, since the argument was that monarchy was now a permanent state of affairs and further resistance by the anarchists was futile, and the ideology created also worked to cement in place the monarchist doctrine of the divine right of Kings, for as long as the King was healthy, the crops didn't fail, then it could be said that the King was ruling by divine right. However the Bible also contains later stories of a King with tumor in his bowels (obviously he had been fired from his job as King by God) and woe to the King if the turnip crop turned moldy or it did not rain in season.

The anarchists however never did just disappear. They just became a bitterly persecuted political group, demonized and ostracized, and damned for their ‘lack of pragmatism' for refusing to concede that the monarchy and the state were now a permanent state of affairs. Even the term ‘anarchist' has been demonized, having been used repeatedly as a synonym for ‘violent, destructive chaos' that its original meaning of ‘absolute equality and egalitarianism' has been completely lost. (For this reason, I prefer the term ‘egalitarian' to the ruined word ‘anarchism' since, to date, no one has yet figured out a way to make the word ‘egalitarian' into a synonym for violent chaotic destruction.)

The Anarchist Heresy

The controversy between ‘anarchism' and right wing authoritarianism was to emerge once again during the early days of the Christian movement, when the right wing authoritarian followers of Paul, and his sin doctrine, waged a fierce battle against the anarchists of the time, typically referred to as Gnostics. It is interesting to note that just as the Gnostics were damned as dangerously threatening heretics at that time, anarchists are still damned and condemned for their ‘heresy' to this very day. Once again, not much has changed.

Now the reason why anarchists are so viciously damned and denounced as heretics can be discerned if we study this early conflict in the church. What this reveals is that anarchism has the more powerful and convincing argument, and anarchism is also the most natural way (something that our ancestral evolutionary history also suggests), and when something is that natural and makes that much sense, well that makes it very dangerous to the status quo, and thus the most damnable heresy.

There are many Gnostic documents that have been rediscovered in the 20th century after having been secretly buried in the desert almost two thousand years ago. So thoroughly was the oppression of the Gnostics that had these documents not been buried not a single copy of their works would have survived (this is a testament to the effectiveness of the police state in the ancient Roman empire upon which the church authorities would have had to rely to enforce the destruction of these books and the crushing of the Gnostic movement).

In a previous piece I discussed the the Gospel of Thomas. I summarized the conflict over heresy in the early church as being a conflict between the egalitarian doctrine of enlightenment, which held that the problem with the world was one of ignorance, and that true enlightenment could be found within each and every person by natural design. Thus all people were equal, and thus we find verse after verse in the Gospel of Thomas which argues against authority and for complete equality and egalitarianism (the political perspective of the Gospel of Thomas could thus be described as Christian-slash-Anarchist). I choose the Gospel of Thomas for the purposes of this discussion because the truest political expression of Gnosticism, and the doctrine of enlightenment must be in the form of what today we would call ‘anarchism' or ‘egalitarian' since if you follow the doctrine of enlightenment through to its logical conclusion you arrive at a doctrine of human equality and an anti- authoritarian position (the reason for this is that it would be impossible to believe that each person can achieve enlightenment from within themselves, without the need for authority figures, without this belief system pushing politics towards ‘anarchism', and this is just one example of how what people call ‘spiritual beliefs' actually have the end result of pushing politics in some direction or another, since it is impossible to disentangle ‘spirituality' and ‘politics', since religion and doctrine are merely forms of political propaganda, since such doctrines always find expression in the social order).

It is worth noting here that there are many different Gnostic documents, and the political message is not consistent or homogenous. The one thing that all Gnostic documents have in common is the doctrine of enlightenment, but it would seem that this similarity is about where it ends. There is a document known as ‘the Book of Thomas'. Note that the Book of Thomas is not the Gospel of Thomas. Not only are the names of the books different, the politics of the document are diametrically opposed. For example, the Gospel of Thomas is Christian/Anarchist in its political outlook, and thus I believe that this document best expresses the correct political orientation of Gnosticism when it is pushed through to its logical conclusion. The Book of Thomas however is right wing authoritarian. What happened in the Book of Thomas is that Paul' doctrine of sin and eternal damnation was incorporated wholesale by some Gnostics, who made one change, in that the original sin was losing enlightenment. Now given how this Book of Thomas follows the schema laid out by Paul in the letter to the Romans it just naturally follows that if you fail to achieve your enlightenment, well then you go to burn in hell. The Gospel of Thomas has a positive view of nature, even encouraging a return to Eden and a healthy attitude towards the naked human body. The Book of Thomas, following Paul, adopts a hostile attitude towards nature and even goes so far as to damn to the fires what they call ‘the filthy animals.' So what is ‘Gnostic' about the Book of Thomas? The doctrine of enlightenment is present, and by blending this together with Paul's doctrine from the book of Romans you wind up with a right wing authoritarian doctrine whereby you are ordered to achieve your enlightenment, and if you do not do this that is a sin which will then get you sent to hell. There is no doctrine of damnation in the Gospel of Thomas, since this is a truer expression of the ideology that should follow from a belief in the doctrine of enlightenment (egalitarian, positive towards nature, positive attitude towards human nudity and sexuality, and so on). I thought it worth pointing this out so that no one might confuse the RWA Book of Thomas with the Christian Anarchist Gospel of Thomas.

The anarchist argument in the Gospel of Thomas is very compelling, just as all true egalitarian arguments must be. For example, using irony, they tell us that if we find an authority figure who was never born by means of a woman's womb then we should worship that authority, which means there is no one worth being an authority since there is no one like that (this is irony). My grandfather was an anarchist of a sort and he made similar powerfully compelling arguments in favor of anarchism. (For example, he would ask me if the powerful authority wiped his ass after using the toilet. Did their shit stink in the toilet. These shall we say, ummm, colorful arguments for anarchy just had a powerful effect on me, and are indications of why anarchism is always said to be the very greatest of all the heresies, since such arguments are compelling because they are impossible to refute. All people are equal, and all supposed distinctions are merely artificial constructs). It turns out that this idea, which truly is our ancestral heritage, and which continues to survive even after a few thousand years of the state, is the greatest heresy only because the inequality of the current system is so transparently false and indefensible that whenever the truth has raised its ugly head, in the past, and today, it has always proved necessary to crush it to dust before it exposes the indefensible rottenness at the core of the prevailing system of false distinctions and artificially created inequality.