As long as they were against the people you claim to hate: Southerners, white people, Christians, Jews, Republicans, people with more than 3 kids, people who drive SUVs, midwesterners.

I don't really know what this is all in aid of cabdriver. I'm not a violent anarchist, nor do I subscribe to the idea of "propaganda by the deed", or even violent protests. To be honest I personally think most street actions are a waste of time and energy that could be better directed towards local productive action. (Wishy washy perhaps, but I'm thinking working with the poor, providing aid and offering self-empowerment to those who are interested or in need.)

I also fail to see how any manner of social organization, anarchist or otherwise, can be compromised by both working on the nitty-gritty of day to day existence and the conceptualization of long-term ideas. Surely we all think of the future, whatever our beliefs. I recognize that immediate rebellion is an impossible and frankly immature idea. Yet I also think that our current state of being is not the best that humanity is capable of. I believe (this is a faith thing of course), that human beings can learn to exist in a more inclusive, collective and much less violent, short-sighted and frankly stupid fashion.

The idea that there is some form of "authentic" anarchism is a pretty silly one in my opinion. Semantics and definitions are one of the favorite games of anti-statists. Unfortunately, (or perhaps fortunately), there isn't a set definition for what constitutes it's tenants. Therefore a rambling psychotic such as The Joker can claim to be an anarchist, as well as George Carlin, Alan Moore etc etc. Your idea for what is an authentic anarchist is valid of course, but it's as valid as my idea of what one is.

The issue arises from the inherent "shagginess" of the idea of anarchism. Are we rejecting ALL hierarchies? What about the family unit? Our pets? Relationships? What even constitutes an "anarchist"? Does Ron Paul owe something to anarchism? It's a sticky issue. The word is pretty unwieldy and of course is nowadays a pretty misunderstood term, with a hell of a lot of baggage on it.

in the Twin Cities demonstrations around the Republican convention I read that 200 "anarchists" in black balaclava to match their black attire marched as a unit formation in one of the demonstrations ...

I found that image chilling and off-putting -- brown shirts come to mind.

If I were a bystander it would both frighten and anger me, feeling that they were trying to intimidate me. Bad as nazi's bad as Klan -- and -- that they were cowards who would not show their face, would not own their politics.

During the civil rights movement, the American Nazi Party showed up regularly, but they always showed their faces.

Accessories are us.

anarchist ... with wild eyes, wild hair, who throw (badly) a badly made bomb into a crowded cafe and succeeds only in killing a couple of people and wounding a few more ... an incompetent doufus, in other word ... and anachronistic portrait ... not too far removed from the "old" image of middle eastern terrorist, scuff, dirty, rude, crazed, etc.

... which went along with our generally racist attitudes to all arabs, muslims and all non-europeans as "not valuing life like we do" and capable of "ANYTING" (which as we have seen in our own behavior in Iraq, applies to equally) ...

We love our lone gunman and our crazed unibomber types ... we refuse to acknowledge that there are american policial prisoners. Democratic losses have increasingly marginalized progressive third parties. (The right has a number of third parties as well).

I was encouraged by the willingness to "get out there" that was shown in Seattle ... I've wondered many times how many of those in attendance are still politically active. I'm doubtful many swelled Obama's ranks ... I have no idea.

There are always "jokers" who take advantage of the anonymity of crowds to act badly -- break windows, spit at cops, etc. The danger is if they gain imitators or otherwise create confrontation (protesting loudly when arrested, staging improptu ill-advised sit-downs, etc.)

They exist in many groups ... particularly those with a large number of young men of a certain age and inclination ...

Thank god Elf seems to have realized the error of its ways.

I wrote a short letter regarding the mess in Seattle in 99 due to "anarchists" at the WTO rally. Contrary to what some around that scene thought then and still do, people being rounded up and put into holding pens does not reflect success and made all look like the crazies/terorists in masks throwing rocks.

After place my letter in the pile, I see the header was added to with the business of-"hey, it kinda worked in France."

Really not such a good thing if you ask me.

I see someone commented on the film about it and am sure it was romanzed b.s. as had not scene it. Still, that incident sd. be a warning how large demonstrations can turn into a big mess.

Any sort of advocating the use of violence/"bomb" the middle-class is simply stupid-unintentional or not. People and publications such as this need to be a lot more careful with the words they use.

So there is no misunderstandings, Violence, killing, blowing stuff/people up bad, not good, not an option. Anarchists stupid and organizations sd. be aware of their presence at meetings/rallies. Do not allow them to destroy your message, rally, efforts as was done in Seattle in 99 at the WTO meeting.

2 corrections to the Catch-22 synopsis provided above:

in the brothel scene I sketched out above, the American wasn't a bomber pilot- he was a navigator. And the old man wasn't a "spetugenarian"- he was 107 years old.

(How could I have forgotten?)

One of the best works on practical anarchism is, of course, Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

For the benefit of those in the Lurking Audience who have yet to read the Masterpiece, I'll try to cover a few of the key concepts, hopefully without giving away too many spoilers.

Like a lot of 20th Century American novels, Catch-22 can be read interpretively in terms of the interaction between the protagonist, Capt. Yossarian Y. Yossarian, and the book's Culture Hero, a buck-toothed Midwestern kid named Orr.

Yossarian and Orr have a problem in common, along with everyone else in their Army Air Corps bomber squadron, stationed at a base off the coast of Italy during World War Two-

they keep getting stop-lossed, on the orders of the commander of their squadron, Colonel Cathcart. The name of the stop-loss order is Catch-22. (It's also the name appended to an awful lot of other orders.) Colonel Cathcart is the local Petty Tyrant atop them in that Weberian Bureaucratic Pyramidal Hierarchy known as "the military.' And within Cathcart's realm of control, he's decided that the key to his Advancement in the Hierarchy is to make a name for himself, as the most get-it-done bomber squadron commander in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, if not the USAAF World. That's why he keeps stop-lossing his plane crews- so they'll fly more missions and drop more bombs than anyone else in the running. On Whatever, as it develops.

And most of the book deals with how Yossarian and Orr learn how to cope with that situation- both as comrades, and on their own, as individuals.

There are a lot of minor characters in the book, too- so many that Heller names each of the numerous chapters in his sprawling book after one. One of them is called only by his last name, Clevinger.

Clevinger is, well, your typical self-absorbed left-wing intellectual dweeb. He's perennially trying to get the other soldiers interested in Political Activist Social Concern, despite the fact that everyone else on the entire air base is determined to spend what free time they have available- between getting blasted by deadly flak on bombing raids- by Recreation. Slacking off; getting drunk; getting laid; trying to get laid; trying to avoid sinking into existential despair; sinking into existential despair anyway; drinking tepid coffee and chasing fire engines to find out what's happening where the fire engines are; buying, selling, bartering on the black market; along with the occasional antisocial type who prefers to boob-trap mousetraps by rigging them to lightbulbs and blasting away the hapless mice with a Colt .45 automatic pistol loaded with specially crafted dum-dum slugs. The usual slice of life on this planet among those of quiet desperation, going for the gusto between bouts with the Unendurable. Like I said, it's a sprawling book.

The thing is, none of those people has any time for Clevinger, with his agendas. Nothing personal, really- although he does get on their nerves after a while. But mostly, everyone else in the squadron is bent on living their lives, and the overwhelmingly prevailing sentiment is that doing so mixes very poorly with developing chronic political obsessions. As if they have the time, anyway.

You'll have to read the book to find out the rest. (Forget about the movie, it sucked a rock. Nobody's fault. Structural limitations. There may be some hope in a well-scripted mini-series, although the book will always be deeper. Guaranteed.)

But I'm not giving much of anything away by mentioning that just because Clevinger's efforts at politically organizing his comrades meet with disappointing results, that doesn't mean that there's no resistance. Along with alienation, suffering, death, scarring, PTSD, hedonism, and weirdly potentuous philosophical exchange in a Roman brothel between a whore-lovestruck American bomber pilot and a gnomic and cynically wise dirty old man- a sepetugenarian Italian pacifist who has taken up residence in the whorehouse, as his preferred idea of a clean well-lighted place.

Teach ya more about how the world really works than Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Gramsci, and Marx combined. Read it.