You speak of the violent French anarchists of the 1890s as the Western world's first terrorists. Yet the Ku Klux Klan had been active 20 years before in the United States, and I'm sure most people would consider that a terrorist movement.

When your aims are the complete destruction of abstracted power and the end of capitalism as we know it, you can't really go through the usual channels.

If I thought that "abstracted power" was all that terribly oppressive to me in my daily life and fortunes, and what was portended to The Future...personally, I'd just get a modest stake together and move. To Alaska, or someplace similar.

The goal of "the complete destruction of abstracted power" is, after all, a concept that reifies and empowers "abstract power", of a sort, in and of itself.

You imagine that it isn't, because it's pitted against another sort of "abstract power" that you oppose, and presume to be fighting.

I think that's a profound error.

On a related note: I share few points of agreement with Ted Kaczynski's critique of modernity, as presented in his manifesto, Industrial Society And Its Future [linked at my signature].

But I find most of the actions he took in support of his stance to be admirable and respectable.

With the notable exception of the bombs.

If it weren't for the bombs, I would have considered Kaczynski's integrity unassailable.

He ruined it all with his grandiose ego trip of violence, mayhem, and murder. But the rest of it was noble and honorable. Ted Kaczynski didn't just idly dream of renouncing modernity and industrial technological society, or offer a double-minded hypocritical denunciation of it, meanwhile indulging in the affluence and comforts it conferred. He took action. Self-reliant initiative; not an easy, pre-programmed path.

Other than the bombs.

(I don't like bringing that up again, but I can't leave it out.)

Returning to your second point, Falhaar:

I'm don't yet feel prepared to address any comments re: your support for the theoretical concept you've foggily expressed as "the end of capitalism as we know it", because I don't know what you're talking about.

You'll need to provide at least a modicum of clarifying explanation for what it is you're specifically referring to, because that phrase either provides me with too much for me to "get", or not enough...and when considering questions of politics and economics, I need more definition than that. As much as I can get. As much as someone is up to providing- although that still may not be enough.

A N A R C H Y

Usually , articles on LEFTIST violence include reference to this word, ANARCHY or ANARCHISM.

Why haven't we looked at the possiblity that true anarchy is non-partisan.

Equadistant to left and right.

The Wahabiist-jihadists do not want "An Archos" "Nothing above"

They want Scharia Law.

Tim McVey wasn't interested in "Nothing Above" He wanted revenge for Koresh's Waco (self immolation).

Ted Kaczinsky wanted a purity of social values minus the overdone technologies (I guess).

The Seattle Kids and the Genoa, anti g-8 rioters are outright leftists of some sort.

The Haymarket rioters were Socialists.

John Brown, an abolitionists, radical Christian (He wanted God's Law "Above".

Luddites wanted hand work-only "Above" the machine.

In short, most examples of anarchy involve an ideological agenda becoming "Above"

Even Georg Elser and Graf Von Staufenburg and the White Roses wanted something else "Above" Hitler. Von Stauffenburg wanted his megacorp friends to run Europe- The kids from White Rose wanted some kind of democracy to return to replace the 3rd Reich.

Ideals- something above the status quo; replacements.

New Boss different from the old boss.

Either we find another word for what these extremist activists are doing or else we change the definition of what words we already have.

"Anarchism" is just to problematic a word for this subject.

Well that's the inherent problem of dealing with all political concepts isn't it? If enough people believe it, it becomes the reality. If enough people believe that the guy in a suit on TV is President, then he is. It's not like biology where if you believe really hard in breathing underwater, you'll still drown. I suppose we could all just ignore it, but the reality is that a lot of people do believe in the state and to turn them away from it you have to refer to their object of attention. I suppose you could ask if an atheist is inherently religious if they refer to God in an argument.

It's true, as an anarchist I or many of my compatriots could move to the boondocks. And a few do. The central issue is that we wish to transform a majority human life for the better. Moreover, most of us believe that without a radical restructuring of our political and economic processes humanity is largely screwed. I suppose the same question could be asked as to why the American Revolutionaries didn't just move west instead of bloodily fighting the English.

Personally, I want to try and spread the word as to what anarchism can be. Not just bloody nihlism, but also love, equality and freedom. Sounds pie in the sky and I'll probably never see it come about in my lifetime (barring some awful catastrophe), but I believe it's a goal worth fighting for.

This is not relevant to the discussion as such, I know, but...but...but please can we stop with the "Dr. Guillotine invented the guillotine?"

Dr. Guillotin (no "e" dammit! Is it okay to refer to you as "O'Heir?")had nothing to do with the machine that bears his name. A member of the Constituent Assembly, in 1789 he proposed changes to the penal code governing how criminals, and especially the condemned, were treated by the state: one of the six articles stated that the condemned were to be executed in the same manner, regardless of social station, and that manner was to be decapitation.

That's it. He doesn't even specify how people were supposed to be decapitated. A Dr. Louis actually designed the modern guillotine--and indeed the machine was sometimes dubbed the "Louisette." However, "guillotine" happens to rhyme with "machine," and the demands of doggerel seems to have determined who got to be immortalized.

Also, Robespierre was most definitely not the Revolution's greatest speaker. I don't think he'd appear on anyone's top ten list, either, depending of course on how you care to define "great orator." You want an emotional connection with the audience, a real rabble rouser? You'd want, say, Desmoulins, or Mirabeau, or Danton ("il nous faut de l'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace"). Robespierre? Not so much. His strength was in his rhetoric, his ability to craft an argument--people would nod thoughtfully after he was done, not take up arms.

And then there's this: far from "crowds flocking," attendance at executions dwindled throughout the nineteenth century in France, largely because this form of execution didn't provide the kind of emotional release that other forms of execution did. The guillotine didn't give the audience a "good death," a morality tale for what happens when citizens move beyond the social pale. I don't believe the condemned ever gave scaffold speeches exhorting the audience to be good and learn from the their mistakes, and there was no physical suffering (which was a way to be seen expiating sin). Even worse, it was over just as soon as it had begun.

In other words, it was crashingly dull. The French state conducted executions in public until the 1930s, finally bringing them inside the main prison in Paris because the crowds were so small that it just wasn't worth the expense and bother.

Facts matter. By just blithely repeating received wisdom, we end up with canards like, "everyone knows Social Security is teetoring on bankruptcy and won't be there when you retire." Okay, getting the basic facts wrong here are not nearly on that magnitude, goddess knows, but it is part and parcel of the same problem.

The French Revolution has been studied by two, maybe even three scholars. They have between them produced a handful of monographs and several excellent journal articles. Maybe you could look at one of them before you feel the need to throw in some facile references because they seem so clever (viz., the Revolution's greatest orator being unable to speak any last words because his jaw was half gone. Nice conceit, but no.)