The Free State Project and Civil Disobedience With My Own Take on The Whole Idea of Peaceful Protests

 Note: This blog entry  deals with events that have involved those associated with the Free State Project, specifically in Keene, NH. In order to understand my post, you will probably need to have followed recent events in the movement as I am too lazy to give a full background story here. The reason that I am writing this is to get some things off the chest that have bothered me about his movement for some time. The latter part of this post will deal with more general issues surrounding the nature of "non-violent" protest in general. 

As those who follow the doings of the Free State Project (specifically the Free Keene actions) may know, Ian Freeman, one of the hosts of Free Talk Live, who recently sentenced to 90 days in jail for his role in this incident that occurred last summer. If you what more details about this incident, go to Free Keene  and go back a few posts for more details.


Now a lot of people in the comments sections of some of the blog posts on that site are making the usual attacks on Ian and other activists. The sad fact is that one of them claims to be a left anarchist and yet smears Ian with what amounts to typical right-wing smears, entitled, spoiled, etc. As an aside here, it's interesting to note that many right and left "terms of abuse" are actually very similar to each other. The right decries the "privilege of today's kids in contrast to the conditions of people of earlier generations and they hold them morally guilty for being born in a certain time period. The left holds white people guilty for their privilege as opposed to poorer non-white people so there is a similar thing going on in my opinion.



However, that is not what I want to write about here. Instead, what I want to do here is to offer some criticisms of the activism that is being done by some involved in the Free State Project. 


The first thing to point out about much of their activism is that it is generally of a confrontational nature that hardly causes anyone to become sympathetic to their cause and has mainly the opposite affect. In fact, these Free Stater's have developed quite a negative reputation among the native population. They have not tried to engage in any really true dialogue with these people and have instead put out whiny moralistic statements that don't convince anyone. The reason I mention this is because the more hardcore people in the movement want to build a "voluntary society" as opposed to what I'm guessing they consider to be the current coercive state society. The thing I want to point out here is that society is the way it is not because of some evil geniuses in charge of the system (as many conspiracy types imagine) but because of the ways that humans interact with one another. If these people want a different type of society than they need to demonstrate that humans can relate to each other differently. I don't see that in their activism, rather, I see the same song and dance that all the other people in the world do. 


That leads me into my next point which is that if you look at some of the videos of the activism being done (see the links up above) you will notice that it is full of the seem screaming crazy behaviour that is unfortunately all too common among many demonstrators. The real problem with this is that to someone unfamiliar with their movement and purpose behind their activism (purposes that I think are mostly legitimate, by the way) it comes across as a bunch of disturbed crazies, the kind of people who become fodder for cheap entertainment e.g. Trutv World's Dumbest whatever type stuff. Now I am not saying that these people should try to seek the approval of others as an end itself, but if they really want to achieve the type of society that they want, the only way that can come to pass is if the change the minds of many people and their actions are not doing that. 


Another thing that gets on my nerves and this is an issue with most protests in general is the whole "peaceful protest" cliche that is always thrown out. This is done by everyone, how many times have you seen a post by some protesters "police violently crackdown on peaceful protest" some variation on that line is almost everywhere. I admit that I almost want to vomit when I see that phrase, especially from so-called radical anti-statists. Let's get something clear here, it doesn't matter to "the system" whether your actions are peaceful or violent, the only criteria that they use is whether you are breaking their rules or not (and sometimes that doesn't even matter, just pissing off a so-called authority figure can be enough to face retribution, just like childhood). The point here is that it is a waste of time to try and play the whole moral superiority game, for most leftists who accept of the legitimacy of state power it is absurd because they believe in the legitimacy of state violence, and for anti-statists because they in some sense are accepting the system's presuppositions. To clarify what I mean here, the thing about the whole peaceful protest song and dance is that there is an assumption that violence is not justified except within the hands of the state. That leads to another problem which is that this whole peaceful at all times attitude depends upon a setting where the violence of the state exists in order for it to function.  I think this is one of the reasons that the actions of these activists simply reinforce the common stereotype of people who engage in activism as those with deluded naive young minds who have not grasped reality yet. Do these activists really think their peaceful protest would be effective against a horde of ruffians. Imagine if a violent gang moved into your neighborhood and started depending tribute from the citizens, do you really think that sit-ins in front of the gang's headquarters and singing kumbayah will actually stop such people. No, unlike the cops, they won't put you in a cage, they'll just blow your fucking brains out. The point here is that I just don't see violence as being always illegitimate, and I also think that by accepting the claim that it is, these people are unwittingly serving the system they claim to be against.


Another issue with civil disobedience is that I really question how effective any of it is in the long run. It seems to me that engaging doing real constructive things as in building organizations and alternatives to to the current system is a much better way to spend one's time than any protest nonsense. I understand why leftists seeking demands from the government would engage in protests, but I really don't understand what the point is for people who consider themselves to be anti-statists. 

This post was started in August but never completed till now, thus the out of date nature of some parts describing specific events.