In the UK, you're looking for JTRIG, Institute for Statecraft/Integrity Initiative, and the 77th Brigade, and probably tens to hundreds of smaller organizations.
It’s made clearer in the text, but the conflation of “citizen” and “resident” here is a common irritant that makes it really difficult to understand just what non-citizens are entitled to.
The issue here isn’t that they were sent to non-citizens (I am not a citizen and received a stimulus I’m fully entitled to) but that they were sent to non-citizen non-residents. I wouldn’t be surprised if this persistent mistake contributes to animosity towards immigrants.
The current geopolitical situation prevents anarchists from living in their desired society because there is zero (or practically zero) free land to create such a society without it existing within a state that is not anarchist. This should be obvious.
That's my question! How is "free" land is different from any other? It's just a convention established by the government i.e. if you try to settle on somebody's land then eventually armed people will show up and make you go. So how is it different from the anarchy? Who will provide the "freedom" of the land and is incapable to do it now?
Consider a world where society lived by the anarchist principles. In that hypothetical world, most people self-organized in a large group where:
- They decided to democratically appoint representatives that flesh out large-scale agreements and called it law
- They decided it is necessary to have people dedicated to securing the lands where they live from both internal and external threats
... and so on and so forth, until they effectively self-organized into the equivalent of our current society.
Is there any difference between that world and ours? Why can't an anarchist assume that this is what actually happened (there's some merit to the idea) and be happy to live in an anarchist world, our world?
This is one explanation. The question I have is more of the "what are you going to do when some people will get together and apply concerted violence to you (not dissimilar to the way the government works right now)?". I have not seen a single attempt to answer this in the few hundred comments. It appears most anarchists do not even realize this possibility even exists.
Right-flavored anarchism (eg anarcho-capitalism, cryptoanarchism) addresses this question directly - a plurality of competing defense companies that would be incentivized away from actually fighting as it would be unprofitable.
Peasants didn't have much mobility between lords, therefore they were seemingly coerced. Would anarcho-capitalism as stated necessarily play out similarly? Who knows.
The core of anarchism is the heuristic of rejecting hierarchies and coercion. A negative doesn't make for a compelling mass movement, hence all the different flavors are attempts at imagining structures that could replace the current ones. They all have obvious potential failure modes, but the core remains - downsizing the structures of arbitrary authority.
This is exactly my impression too. E.g. the OP article begins with characterizing anarchists as out of touch dreamers: Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. Judging by the name of the site it appears to be a positive characteristic too, which adds to confusion.
That said, I agree with your criticism of communism / anarcho-syndacalism: if you remove capitalism, you are moving power into party politics, which creates even greater inequality to what we have today and explains the horror of communism we've seen in the past century.
They most certainly are not. Some right-libertarians have convinced themselves that they are anarchists so that they can pretend to be radicals but that does not make it so. Anarchism and capitalism are incompatible, anarchism is a left-wing ideology that among other things, seeks the end of capitalism.
I don't know why you interpreted my comment as being a criticism of communism or anarcho-syndicalism (it was just a probing question to understand what somebody thought anarchism would look like), and neither does your criticism of those ideologies make much sense. I don't think you actually know what anarcho-syndicalism is if you think it involves party politics.
"“I do get advice from them,” she said. “But that’s the end of that.”
She eventually explained that there are several private Twitter DM groups where discussion goes on “all day”, with new pro-Corbyn lines posted alongside anti-Tory memes — which are often taken and repurposed from Facebook groups.
Asked whether Labour officials were in the groups speaking to the pro-Corbyn accounts, she said “Maybe”, smiling."
It was tangential to my point, but Corbynite trolls were just as nasty and just as organized as the right wingers. Everyone not for Corbyn was neoliberal scum, or a 'yellow Tory'. In the end this only serves to shut down real debate and polarise each bubble.
Your implication was that Seamus Milne, or his team, command a sort of "troll army" through WhatsApp. This is substantially different to disseminating talking points to friendly media faces (which is something all parties do, and is normal in political campaigning).
When you got trolled, it wasn't because of a secret WhatsApp group conspiring against you. It was because you said something that a large number of left wing people disagreed with, and Twitter worked the way it usually works and encouraged an organic pile-on. I can assure you that the UK left-wing network on Twitter has no need to get marching orders from a mythical WhatsApp group. If somebody says something that the left disagrees with, pile-ons will happen naturally.
Ironically, by dismissing people who disagree with you as commanded by Seumas Milne, you are shutting down debate yourself.
I'm sure they could finagle a job description to say this and maybe even get away with it, but unfortunately the job description they did use was unambiguously "spying on labor organizing", which makes it an open and shut case.
