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NBC Gives the Anarchist’s Eye-View of ‘Anarchist Jurisdictions:’ Tyrannical

Posted on 23 September 2020

NBC is infuriated with President Trump’s “brazen ploy to crush dissent.” By dissent, they’re referring to the rioters howling “Black Lives Matter” who’ve been looting and burning throughout cities in America.  Freelance journalist and activist Kim Kelly wrote in an NBC article that the new anarchist jurisdictions of Seattle, New York, and Portland, were “a surprise to the people living in these ‘jurisdictions,’ some of whose only exposure to anarchism has been a vague notion of ‘chaos’ or ‘disorder’ buoyed by hyperventilating Fox News headlines.” She claimed that Trump was slashing the government funds to these jurisdictions to subdue his political opponents.  Referring to Trump’s efforts to prevent more ferocious riots from tearing through American cities, Kelly said that the administration was “ramping up his efforts to equate any kind of mild dissent with insurrection, and by using anarchy as a convenient boogeyman (much as it has done with antifa), the Trump regime is further working to criminalize and stigmatize resistance.”  After complaining that no one understands the anarchist code, Kelly kindly explained the reasonable nature of anarchists. “Far from the scary, senselessly violent mobs popularized by conspiracy theorists and Republicans alike, anarchism is a complex and legitimate leftist political ideology that is deeply rooted in broader working-class movements — from workers' rights to prison abolition to LGBTQ+ liberation — and challenges the legitimacy of the state.” History shows that this is true. Anarchists have challenged the state by murdering U.S. president William McKinley, King Umberto I of Italy, and Empress Elisabeth of Austria, to name a few of their victims. Obviously, no real leader should view anarchists with hostility. “But politicians on both sides of the aisle insist on flattening it to ‘angry people setting things on fire’ because it suits their political agenda.” Not because they’re actually doing it? Kelly continued that the government refused to comply with “actual anarchist ideas, like dismantling oppressive institutions, forming mutual aid networks and building a world without hierarchy” not because the world would explode, but because it “is far too dangerous for those whose comfort and power depends on upholding the status quo.” Shrewdly spotting the compelling historical similarity, Kelly also compared Trump’s measures to discourage lawless rioting with the unjust execution of men who were wrongfully convicted for their role in the Haymarket Affair. “Everything old is new again, and as a glance back at the 1887 executions of the Haymarket Martyrs shows, there is a very bloody precedent for what Trump is doing here.” Ignoring times when people actually tried to stop rioting (the New York Draft Riots of 1863 come to mind) Kelly also complained that “Basic measures like cutting police budgets, dropping charges against some protesters and refusing Trump's offers to send in federal troops are being painted as radical acts of rebellion, while in reality, they represent the barest minimum that city and local leaders can do to attempt to address the festering injustices being forced upon the most vulnerable.”  Kelly also then made a confusing statement:  "What these liberal cities have actually done is offer the people a few scraps in hopes that they'll lose interest and stop demanding real justice. It was the absolute least they could do, and yet a vindictive Trump is now attempting to punish these cities' residents in retribution. Because while the wealthy political elite bloviate from their well-secured mansions, it will be the people who suffer from this political game: the progressives and liberals and socialists and anarchists and regular politically unaffiliated residents who took to the streets to protest the epidemic of state-sponsored Black death and to fight for Black lives." The only state-sponsored black death going on right now takes place in abortion clinics.   The final sentences of Kelly’s piece included the disturbing claim that “Anarchists and their allies know the truth, but the ruling class is very much invested in convincing people of this fallacy, because if more people knew what anarchism actually means, they may realize that it makes a lot of sense.” To who?