Jeffrey A. Tucker
Commentary
The terms anarchy and tyranny seem like they are contradictory. Anarchy means no state. Tyranny means nothing but state. What possibly could anarcho-tyranny mean?
It’s a phrase coined by the
right-Hegelian political theorist Samuel Francis, whose dark worldview was
never my cup of tea, to say the least. Even so, he was insightful, especially
concerning the ambitions of the left.
He said that if they get their
way, the United States and much of the Western world will descend not to
“socialism” classically understood but to anarcho-tyranny, which is arbitrary
law as the normal way of conducting public life. No one can count on any rules.
Everything is fluid and constantly changing. There’s only one feature we can
expect: whatever happens, it will be compulsory; that is, backed by the threat
of violence.
The violence can be of the mob
but it will be behaving as a proxy for power, such as the Red Guard under Mao.
When the mob quiets down, powerful public officials step up to pronounce what
they did as good or bad depending on the political priorities of the moment.
Bad mobs (those opposing the left) get locked up but good mobs (those who shout
down university speakers or trans activists breaking into the Tennessee
Capitol) are defended and valorized.
In the Franciscan view, the
left was already trending in the 1990s toward a deeply nihilistic loathing of
the rule of law as a universal principle, just as they had come to despise free
speech, equal protection, freedom of association, and other values we associate
with the Enlightenment and the Western idea of freedom. Herbert Marcuse was on
the edge in the 1960s but is mainstream today.
In this Marcusian view, “freedom” itself was purely an illusion fabricated by a structurally racist and fascistic system of overlords. There is no “free market,” no “free speech,” no “freedom of religion.” These are just slogans deployed as a mask for a system deeply oppressive to all non-normative groups. The only way to achieve authentic freedom, in this view, is to undertake a complete dismantling of the rule of law, first by intellectual efforts, then grassroots efforts, and finally regime efforts to dismantle Western codes of law, including restraints on government.
The social system they
envision isn’t a “dictatorship of the proletariat” but a dictatorship of elites
who buy into the upside-down and convoluted worldview of the “woke” left and
its Joker-like ambitions to tear it all down. In the Franciscan analysis here,
genuine freedom depends fundamentally on constitutions, traditions, a people
educated in a classical tradition, respect for norms, and a robust culture
depending on faith, family, and community.
Francis believed that all of
this was more fragile than people believed. Dismantling it was possible once
the foundations of civilized life were eroded through ideological
indoctrination—not of the old left but of the woke left, and there is a massive
difference—and the mass cultivation of ignorance. He predicted that we might
wake one day and find that everything we take for granted had crumbled beneath
our feet, and we would be left only with arbitrary dictates. Courts wouldn’t
work to bring fairness and justice but rather to impose inequality and partisan
rule.
The phrase anarcho-tyranny is
the opposite of what America was founded to be. We had a republican form of
government that established strict limits on government power. The people would
be in charge through their elected representatives. We had checks on power.
There were balances within government. Elections would assure that the power
would never finally be taken away from the people.
What we are witnessing is a
fundamental subversion of this vision and its replacement, for now, by
anarcho-tyranny. It’s government that knows no limits to its power and even
disregards its own laws, spreading chaos as far and wide as possible. At least
under plain anarchy, people would be able to cobble together their own orderly
system of social, political, and economic interaction without interference. The
tyranny part prevents that.
The phrase came to mind as I
watched the news unfold of the indictment of former President Donald Trump on
utterly ridiculous charges that a conventional payment made in the usual legal
extortion racket was really a campaign-finance expenditure and therefore
criminal.
The whole thing is obviously
absurd since such payments go on daily, hourly, in corporate life. Maybe the
man on the street doesn’t know this but it has become the way business is conducted.
That’s what companies and individuals are forced to do, even if the complaints
are wholly made up, to avoid high litigation costs. You pay people to go away.
It’s tragic but perfectly legal even if it’s a form of extortion.
So it takes some doing to
twist this into a campaign-finance violation. It seems rather obvious that this
is nothing but a banana-republic-style persecution of a political enemy. People
say it will backfire and help Trump in the end, which is also likely. It’s also
likely that at least some people pulling the strings know this and intend it.
It’s all a gamble that Trump as candidate will bring out Democrat voters in
record numbers just as before.
There is a lot of speculation
going on concerning the real motives. But such is life in anarcho-tyranny: We
are all left to speculate about the underlying rationale behind the chaos,
shock, and awe. Whatever the truth is, people wisely assume, it isn’t what they
are saying.
It’s heartbreaking to see this
great country descend so quickly into such madness. But keep in mind that this
kind of arbitrary law became codified as the norm three years ago when an
emergency declaration enabled the overriding of all principles of the Bill of
Rights.
When I saw parents arrested
for taking their kids on playdates, pastors cuffed for daring to hold worship
services, hairdressers jailed for accepting customers, and a beer joint in
rural Texas broken up and patrons arrested by a SWAT team, it seemed perfectly
obvious to me that COVID-19 controls had already institutionalized a form of
anarcho-tyranny. And for want of doubt, the elites made this plain by
greenlighting super-spreader events in the summer of 2020. This was their way
of mocking us for our compliance. They effectively told us that day that it was
all a ruse. That was also when Trump himself began to suspect that he had been
trolled into approving the biggest attack on American civil rights in a century
or more.
Something terrible was
unleashed in this period. Public officials and even courts came to believe that
they had all the power. And maybe they do. Voters, if they have any control
remaining, only have influence over a fraction of what governs us. The rest is
the administrative state that was unleashed in those fateful days.
Now, they are testing their
power under a new system, which isn’t the American system, but something
directly in conflict with it. Let’s please not be naïve that this is merely the
persecution by one party of the leader of another party. There is much more
going on. The American system of liberty under law, and government by and for
the people, is being shredded. However bad you think this emergency is, it’s
worse.
There is hope but only if we
realize the darkness of the present moment.
Jeffrey A. Tucker, THE EPOCH TIMES, April 3, 2023
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