Comment by FrustratedMonky
15 days ago
That's what really blows my mind. Growing up as Reagan Republican. When did Republicans go from law-and-order, to anarchists?
Traditionally anarchism is a left-liberal idea. Now the far-right is same as far-left. Left-Right is now a circle.
> Now the far-right is same as far-left. Left-Right is now a circle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
This is a very strange view of it. Anarchism is extremely far from liberalism. "Anarcho-capitalists" are more or less just extreme libertarians, they share no history or ideology with any other anarchist movements, no other anarchist movements recognize them as anarchists.
The far left and the far right are not the same either where do you even get that! A far left party in the american context is something like democratic socialism, or sure why not actual marxist-leninism. While the far right is proud boys, groypers, literal neonazis, christian integrationists. You may have equal distaste for both but that doesn't mean they share anything else.
"no other anarchist movements recognize them as anarchists."
Once you go down the rabbit whole of trying to define 'anarchist' , there are actually dozens of definitions, and they all argue about who is really anarchist. So, that they don't agree that some other group isn't 'really anarchist', I take it with grain of salt .
These extreme Republicans want to get rid of government. I'm using the highest level gloss over, that No-Government is Anarchism.
I'm sure in reality, humans would re-coalesce up in communes/tribes/feudal groupings, and thus re-form local groups, and is that still Anarchism? At what point of organization do we stop saying something is 'anarchism'. I'm just saying, when the US breaks up because there is no government, it will be anarchy, and that seems to be what Republicans are shooting for..
> Once you go down the rabbit whole of trying to define 'anarchist' , there are actually dozens of definitions
Which is why I avoided providing or using any definition of anarchism, instead describing the actions of people who consider themselves anarchists.
> and they all argue about who is really anarchist.
Yes, but there is only one group who consistently considers themselves anarchists but who exactly zero other anarchist groups recognize as anarchists. All other anarchist movements have at least one mutually-recognized peer movement. I'm not saying this is an absolute or the only definition, but it's very useful in this context. There is something different about ancaps.
> These extreme Republicans want to get rid of government.
They do not! They are not proposing an elimination of the military or police departments or prisons, for example. They are using the DoJ to pursue political enemies, the executive branch to enact and enforce tariffs. In fact exactly the parts of the state that are used to create and enforce hierarchy. I do not know any anarchist movements, other than anarcho-capitalism, that has this goal.
I understand why your view of it is alluring, I find it to be so as well. But I have found that it simply has very little explanatory power for this situation.
The only thing the far left and right truly share I think, is radicalism. By which I mean an intention or acceptance of rapid and comprehensive change to the dynamics of daily life for the whole population. But the actual changes they want have virtually no overlap.
[flagged]
Anarcho-capitalists are not anarchists. They share no history or ideology with any of the other variants of anarchism.
They're extreme libertarians/neo-feudalists.
Yes please, more people spreading this information.
> They're extreme libertarians/neo-feudalists.
The ancient Greeks would have called it Tyranny. All of this has happened before.
How are you not seeing how "extreme libertarians/neo-feudalists" is similar to anarchism?
Anarchists don't want a king. Neo-feudalists want to be the king.
5 replies →
Anarchism is not just “no government”, but rather “no rulers”.
Leftist anarchists are acutely aware that power and capital accumulation go hand-in-hand.
Extreme libertarians are perfectly fine with the unfettered accumulation of capital and seemingly ignore that that results in unchecked power. Or they have faith that a “truly” free economy would somehow check itself before becoming effectively neo-feudalistic or dictatorial. As if the lion would fear the zebra.
Leftist-anarchists want to keep power to an absolute minimum. Usually relying on a combination of culture and group action to wield just enough power to prevent the growth of unchecked power in the hands of a few.
In my mind, culture is the key element. The capital-worshipping, me-versus-all culture we live in would fit quite well into extreme-libertarianism and then it would devolve into defacto rule by a few. (As seems to be happening anyways. Because, again, capital accumulates, protects itself and takes power where it can when no one is willing to or allowed to work together to stop it.)
Leftist-anarchism requires a more mature, selfless, introspective, cooperative culture. Anathema to the “United” States of America.
2 replies →
How do you get libertarians mixed in there? Libertarians want freedom from government, not the consolidation of power nor levy of new taxes (which tariffs are). Apart from downsizing select government organizations, what the current administration is doing is the exact opposite of what libertarians would want.
Tariffs are only part 1 of the plan. The next step is cutting income tax entirely for most people. Trump has said this, and even yesterday called on congress to pass his "Big Beautiful Bill".
This would severely hamstring the government, and make it incredibly difficult to reverse (you would need to re-implement income taxes, while removing tariffs, and hope to god that trading partners have mercy and forgiveness (unlikely))
Reagan’s administration was very corrupt. So that law and order evidently didn’t apply to them. It was also very profligate. So that fiscal conservatism didn’t apply to them. I don’t see a lot of difference between the actor Ronald Reagan and the actor Donald Trump. Maybe in degree but not in kind.
I’ve been a left liberal my whole life. We haven’t gone anywhere.
It’s not “anarchism” it’s simply rolling back the bad parts of Reagan’s legacy: free trade, immigration/amnesty, and foreign empire.
When Democrats embraced free trade and globalism with Clinton, most of the liberal Reagan republicans and neocons became Democrats. What MAGA is today is what the bulk of the GOP has always been: a coalition of social conservatives and business owners.
What is so bad about free trade?
Isn't competition in free markets something Republicans believe in anymore? Because forcing Americans to buy inferior locally-made products at a premium through artificial restrictions surely isn't that.
Free trade and globalization are also a pacifying force, by creating mutual dependencies between countries.
Protectionism doesn't work.
[flagged]
3 replies →
"Democrats embraced free trade and globalism with Clinton"
History would disagree with this. Republicans and Big Business were always for free trade and globalism.
Because in 80's-90's, big-corp was salivating over that sweet cheap-cheap foreign labor. To put this on Democrats is a retcon.
No, I agree with you. My point is that Democrats embraced it in the 1990s as well. So the Republicans who were otherwise liberals but just in the GOP for the cheap foreign labor switched sides.
> What MAGA is today is what the bulk of the GOP has always been: a coalition of social conservatives and business owners.
I'm skeptical of this historical analysis.
The two major political parties fundamentally realigned during the civil rights era of the 1960s. Before then, Democrats controlled the south. Strom Thurmond switched from Democrat to Republican in 1964. George Wallace ran for President as a Democrat 3 times before he became an independent. Robert Byrd was a Democrat until the end. Who were the "social conservatives"? Both Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon (Californians, by the way) made their names as staunch Cold Warrior anti-Communists during the McCarthy era.
I don't think there's any such thing as what "the GOP has always been", or what the Democrats have always been, for that matter. I'm old enough to have seen the parties change several times, and the definitions of "conservative", "liberal", "left", "right" morph into something unrecognizable to former adherents.
The only constant is change.
> The two major political parties fundamentally realigned during the civil rights era of the 1960s.
This is an incorrect analysis looking at the wrong causal factor (civil rights rather than economics). Even in 1976, Carter did great in the deep south. The realignment happened in the 1980s, due to economic growth in the south. The south went from being poor and agrarian in the 1930s to being newly industrialized in the 1980s.
> Who were the "social conservatives"?
The 19th century GOP was a coalition of religious conservatives and protectionist industrialists. MAGA is a coalition of religious/cultural conservatives and protectionist industrialists.
5 replies →
Business owners don’t like the tariffs either. Even American car companies are being hurt by tariffs on steel and car parts.
It's because the far left and the far right are both made of up of people deeply disaffected by the status quo, and when those people talk they often find that at the very least many of their grievances overlap.
In terms of today's landscape there is a list of things like LGBTQ issues, race, gender equality, abortion, religion, etc., and if you avoid things on that list you'll find a huge overlap between the views of the far left and the far right. Both are broadly opposed to what's popularly called neoliberalism, the post-Reagan/Clinton post-cold-war order, and the reasons for this opposition overlap quite a bit if you again avoid the topics that I listed. From that perspective, blowing up the system is the goal. When they see trade policies like these crash the present system, they view that as a success because they think the current system is such a mistake that it must be smashed.
(I am not making a judgment in this post, just explaining the landscape.)
Correct. The left and right seem like a circle because Pat Buchanan and Bernie Sanders long had a large overlap on issues that have become highly salient today: immigration and free trade.