Anarchy is rule of the none.

If you think that anarchists are just bomb-throwers, that anarchy is the same as violent chaos, then you’ve accepted the big lie into your heart and home. The big lie, as expressed by Hobbes, is that “absent the iron hand of the Leviathan”, life can only be nasty, brutish, and short.*

Anarchy is the absence of rulers.

The name of Leviathan is the first instance is the name of God. In Hobbesian cosmology, this God is a Ruler, and this Ruler makes natural laws. In order to be Civilized, individuals must cede some portion of their human rights (and some portion of their income) to an Authority, a Sovereign, A Ruler–in the modern parlance, civilized beings trade some liberty for some shaky guarantee of Security.

This mandate mirrors Christian theology, in which god is the lawgiver, the christ was briefly his earthly representative, and some succession of apostles, prophets, and popes if you go in for that sort of thing are the first in a big pile of allegedly natural authorities, and therefore logically the place to start looking for your rulers. But, Hobbes says, interpreting scripture is a tricky thing, so as a practical matter it’s just best to leave all the important decisions to the earthly kind of authority, whether that means the orange one with a briefcase full of nuclear launch codes, or your stupid boss at your stupid job.

Leave them to whatever coercive authority has you under its thumb. Stalin, or the LandLord. Leave your liberty in their hands in order to try to guarantee your security in this brutish world, with unwashed rapists pouring over the southern border. Be polite to the officers at the checkpoint, or whenever stopped for papers because your tail light is shorting by the minions Authority has hired with your tax money, and pray you don’t find yourself driving while black.

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I proclaim myself openly as a heretic regarding the worship of Leviathan in whatever form.

This is why the Left/Right axis matters far less than the Authority/Liberty one.

When you hear people saying that there’s no essential difference between the two parties, the important part of that jaded take is that the whole world, red and blue, worships Leviathan in their own slightly different way.

The American project and democracy itself were notable improvements, but almost entirely tweaks to Leviathan worship that accrued to the benefit of people who were already doing alright, namely the ‘white’ male landowners enfranchised to vote–the people who already paid the least in terms of their liberty, and suffered the least from the excesses of authority. Rich high-caste types.

Remember that it was all men who were created equal, and that this really meant all high-caste men, not savages or god forbid slaves.

You can make a case that progress from that point has happened, and any good Leviathan worshiper will tell you about it at a length worthy of a Jehovah’s Witness. We let them have their liberty, didn’t we? The weaker sex can vote now, right? What more could you want?

Would asking for the head of Leviathan on a silver platter be too much, I wonder.

All “land of opportunity” mythos aside, the smarter priests of the Leviathine order will preach to you that what we do have is the rule of law, and this is the true protection that giving up your rights and liberty is still worth surrendering for.

Hmmm. Equality under the law. Sure, in a world run by Leviathan and his masses of brainwashed minions, it’s better to have it than not …

Except that in reality, you get the justice and the equality you can afford. Which might be an underpaid public defender with 102 other cases …

… and that equality might mean paying your family for your corpse because the lesser leviathans hired a uniformed psychopath with a gun and an itchy trigger finger …

Or, you might come gradually to realize, as thinkers from Bakunin to MLK have done, that it just makes no sense to point to all the rich bounty of equality, when that equality is a purely theoretical and legalistic construct. In the end there can be no real equality, nor justice, in a place where there are five hundred billionaires, but children in all kinds of cages, from the literal to the equally solid economic.

Your kid has leukemia? It’s a shame they don’t have the human right to health care … might I suggest a GoFundMe page?

Meanwhile the Bezos is buying a newspaper. How capricious of him; what would he want that for? The Musk is firing things into space. And a tooth is rotting in your head.

But goddammit, you’re Free! Equal! And Safe! We got you a computer for your pocket!

(Ungrateful bastards.)

This message brought to you by Leviathan, a partnership of government and industry, of the military-industrial complex, far and away the most advanced and beautiful form of fascism ever devised, and now in a perpetual state of continuous improvement. Vote Blue and we’ll throw in transgenders being able to use the bathroom, and even being allowed to fight our holy oil wars again.

Heresies are the only words worth uttering.

This is why Leviathan wants you to hate and fear antifascists, and anarchists.

Because if you don’t live in hate and fear, you might find yourself marvelously and logically tempted to join a real revolution.

Can you feel temptation just a little now?

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*This idea and even phrasing is cribbed from an episode (10.6) about Bakunin of a podcast called Revolutions. I commend it to you.