{"id":11786,"date":"2011-10-25T09:42:28","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T13:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=11786"},"modified":"2012-07-11T09:32:09","modified_gmt":"2012-07-11T14:32:09","slug":"for-strong-personalities-the-hyper-egalitarian-mantras-of-anarchism-act-as-a-smokescreen-for-authoritarianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/10\/25\/for-strong-personalities-the-hyper-egalitarian-mantras-of-anarchism-act-as-a-smokescreen-for-authoritarianism\/","title":{"rendered":"“For strong personalities, the hyper-egalitarian mantras of anarchism act as a smokescreen for authoritarianism”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Kay<\/a> discusses the contradictions of Julian Assange and his dictatorial control of WikiLeaks and uses the Occupy Wall Street “anarchists” to explain why anarchy usually turns into dictatorship:<\/p>\n

\n

In a fascinating report filed last Thursday, New York Magazine<\/em>\u2019s Alex Klein found that the protesters had splintered on the question of music. Many of the Occupiers, apparently, have been passing their time with daily 10-hour drum sessions. The tom toms help keep up morale, apparently. But they also anger those protesters who are trying to sleep, and have disrupted classes at a local high school.<\/p>\n

So, the leaders of the Occupy Wall Street \u201cgeneral assembly\u201d — a sort of self-appointed protester executive body — decreed that drumming shall be limited to two hours a day. The general assembly has also imposed a 50% tax on the donations that drummers earn from passersby.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re imposing a structure on the natural flow of music,\u201d complained one drumming protester. \u201cWe\u2019re like, \u2018What\u2019s going on here?\u2019 They\u2019re like the banks we\u2019re protesting,\u201d said another.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not all. The general assembly is also ordering protesters to clean up their camp sites in advance of a local community board inspection. In some cases, they\u2019re taking down tents and sending people away, so that new protesters can set up shop. Fist-fights have ensued. But Lauren Digion, a leader of Occupy Wall Street\u2019s \u201csanitation working group\u201d isn\u2019t phased. \u201cSomeone needs to give orders\u201d she told Klein, after barking commands about who could use the communal sleeping bags and who couldn\u2019t. \u201cThere\u2019s no sense of order in this f\u2013king place.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s anarchism in a nutshell for you. It\u2019s all drum circles and \u201cnatural flow\u201d and \u201cconsensus\u201d — until the time comes to actually get something done; at which point the self-appointed dictators start emerging naturally from amidst the protesters, like mushrooms after a week of rainstorms. For strong personalities, the hyper-egalitarian mantras of anarchism act as a smokescreen for authoritarianism.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Kay discusses the contradictions of Julian Assange and his dictatorial control of WikiLeaks and uses the Occupy Wall Street “anarchists” to explain why anarchy usually turns into dictatorship: In a fascinating report filed last Thursday, New York Magazine\u2019s Alex Klein found that the protesters had splintered on the question of music. Many of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,10,53],"tags":[756,835,720,644],"class_list":["post-11786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-liberty","category-politics","tag-anarchy","tag-occupymovement","tag-protest","tag-wikileaks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-346","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11786"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15972,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11786\/revisions\/15972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}