Keith and stuff
12-04-2012, 10:16 PM
I clearly don't support this blog post. It is full of misinformation and lies. Of course, since there is a lot of quoting, there is also a lot of truth here - often, the passages being quoted. This isn't the 1st time a statist has mocked the FSP. There was a couple who moved to NH for the rural lifestyle. They wrote a couple Counter Punch hit pieces on the FSP. They decided NH was too free for them and left. It doesn't seem like this author lives in NH so I guess he would by moving away. Gonzo Times is known for posting satire and houmous blog posts.
The Free State Project: The Future of White America
December 4, 2012 9:00 pm
http://www.gonzotimes.com/2012/12/the-free-state-project/
When one takes a drive through Keene, New Hampshire, one can see the city is populated with a host of young white middle-class “anarchists” who call themselves the Free State Project.
What is the Free State Project? From their website:
“The Free State Project is an effort to recruit 20,000 liberty-loving people to move to New Hampshire. We are looking for neighborly, productive, tolerant folks from all walks of life, of all ages, creeds, and colors who agree to the political philosophy expressed in our Statement of Intent, that government exists at most to protect people’s rights, and should neither provide for people nor punish them for activities that interfere with no one else.”
What the website leaves out is that this group of bourgeoisie is also at the forefront of the “Anarcho” – Capitalist and ‘Voluntaryist’ movements.
As expected from a movement that bases the whole of its “radical” philosophy on Ron Paul throwbacks and small business angst, the sales pitch for this Murray Rothbard caricature of Jonestown reads:
“Are you frustrated at the loss of freedom and responsibility in America, while the growth of government and taxes continues unabated? Do you want to live in strong communities where your rights are respected, and people exercise responsibility for themselves and in their dealings with each other? If you answered “yes” to those questions, then the Free State Project has a solution for you.”
Their solution? Escape to the capitalist heaven of New Hampshire where there is no general sales tax and barely any pesky minorities. If that hasn’t convinced you let’s read some more reasons to move to New Hampshire from the FSP’s own ’101 Reasons to Move’:
“New Hampshire is one of only four states that places no helmet restrictions on motorcyclists…New Hampshire is one of the few states that very lightly regulates raw milk sales…New Hampshire is the only state with no laws restricting knife ownership… New Hampshire’s median household income of $63,942 is the highest in the country…New Hampshire has no capital gains tax…”
So if you like flailing unregulated knives, helmet-less, on a motorcycle you paid for with tax-free capital gains, then New Hampshire is the place for you!
If all of this still doesn’t convince you, they have explicit support from both Ron Paul and John “Captain Racism” Stossel.
Beyond the humor this is all a very sad expression of the core of the Voluntaryist movement. A movement of white middle-class males who feel alienated by taxes and poor people.
Analysis
Not much more needs to be said to prove the point about the Free State Project. They seem to explain it themselves. Anything redeemable about this wholly reactionary organization is easily flushed away in a hysteria of anti-state reductionism and bitcoins.
My real criticism lies in the audacity of the Free State Project to associate itself with Anarchism. The sheer idiocy of such a comparison is masked by an equally dumbfounding ignorance of those in the Free State Project to realize they are indeed not Anarchists. Being a rich privileged white male who escapes the confines of income taxes to realize his full rate of surplus value does not qualify one as an Anarchist. It qualifies one as a privileged schmuck who at most is a coffee shop ‘revolutionary’ trading bitcoins for raw milk.
Many will know I am a Marxist; however, I have a great respect for the Classical Anarchist thinkers and their contributions to anti-capitalist and anti-state theory. These modern day ‘Anarchists’ would leave Proudhon rolling in his grave.
A more glaring issue with this all is: what is the point? Most of the members of the Free State Project are of the heavily privileged classes of the petit bourgeois and I have yet to see any of them that come from an actual Proletarian background. They already enjoy the luxuries that the majority of Americans, little alone the vast majority of the world, ever enjoy. Furthermore, most do not have to suffer the alienating qualities of wage labor that plagues the working classes.
The Free State Project is really about the realization of a shitty ethical framework that prioritizes man’s relationship (or rather, subordination) with property higher than any concept of human liberation. They hide this framework behind lofty acronyms like the NAP (Non-aggression principle) which basically sanctions any sort of economic aggression against a “willing” subject and forbids any physical resistance as the utmost heresy towards the Gospel of Private Property. The failure here being that ‘free will’ is highly deterministic in a world where the means of subsistence are held privately and operated for a profit. Physical resistance becomes the only option other than utter ontological destruction; yet it also becomes the only thing that is more reprehensible to ‘Anarcho’ – Capitalists than the tenets of social ownership.
That's about 1/2 of it. Feel free to read the rest, or not. http://www.gonzotimes.com/2012/12/the-free-state-project/
The Free State Project: The Future of White America
December 4, 2012 9:00 pm
http://www.gonzotimes.com/2012/12/the-free-state-project/
When one takes a drive through Keene, New Hampshire, one can see the city is populated with a host of young white middle-class “anarchists” who call themselves the Free State Project.
What is the Free State Project? From their website:
“The Free State Project is an effort to recruit 20,000 liberty-loving people to move to New Hampshire. We are looking for neighborly, productive, tolerant folks from all walks of life, of all ages, creeds, and colors who agree to the political philosophy expressed in our Statement of Intent, that government exists at most to protect people’s rights, and should neither provide for people nor punish them for activities that interfere with no one else.”
What the website leaves out is that this group of bourgeoisie is also at the forefront of the “Anarcho” – Capitalist and ‘Voluntaryist’ movements.
As expected from a movement that bases the whole of its “radical” philosophy on Ron Paul throwbacks and small business angst, the sales pitch for this Murray Rothbard caricature of Jonestown reads:
“Are you frustrated at the loss of freedom and responsibility in America, while the growth of government and taxes continues unabated? Do you want to live in strong communities where your rights are respected, and people exercise responsibility for themselves and in their dealings with each other? If you answered “yes” to those questions, then the Free State Project has a solution for you.”
Their solution? Escape to the capitalist heaven of New Hampshire where there is no general sales tax and barely any pesky minorities. If that hasn’t convinced you let’s read some more reasons to move to New Hampshire from the FSP’s own ’101 Reasons to Move’:
“New Hampshire is one of only four states that places no helmet restrictions on motorcyclists…New Hampshire is one of the few states that very lightly regulates raw milk sales…New Hampshire is the only state with no laws restricting knife ownership… New Hampshire’s median household income of $63,942 is the highest in the country…New Hampshire has no capital gains tax…”
So if you like flailing unregulated knives, helmet-less, on a motorcycle you paid for with tax-free capital gains, then New Hampshire is the place for you!
If all of this still doesn’t convince you, they have explicit support from both Ron Paul and John “Captain Racism” Stossel.
Beyond the humor this is all a very sad expression of the core of the Voluntaryist movement. A movement of white middle-class males who feel alienated by taxes and poor people.
Analysis
Not much more needs to be said to prove the point about the Free State Project. They seem to explain it themselves. Anything redeemable about this wholly reactionary organization is easily flushed away in a hysteria of anti-state reductionism and bitcoins.
My real criticism lies in the audacity of the Free State Project to associate itself with Anarchism. The sheer idiocy of such a comparison is masked by an equally dumbfounding ignorance of those in the Free State Project to realize they are indeed not Anarchists. Being a rich privileged white male who escapes the confines of income taxes to realize his full rate of surplus value does not qualify one as an Anarchist. It qualifies one as a privileged schmuck who at most is a coffee shop ‘revolutionary’ trading bitcoins for raw milk.
Many will know I am a Marxist; however, I have a great respect for the Classical Anarchist thinkers and their contributions to anti-capitalist and anti-state theory. These modern day ‘Anarchists’ would leave Proudhon rolling in his grave.
A more glaring issue with this all is: what is the point? Most of the members of the Free State Project are of the heavily privileged classes of the petit bourgeois and I have yet to see any of them that come from an actual Proletarian background. They already enjoy the luxuries that the majority of Americans, little alone the vast majority of the world, ever enjoy. Furthermore, most do not have to suffer the alienating qualities of wage labor that plagues the working classes.
The Free State Project is really about the realization of a shitty ethical framework that prioritizes man’s relationship (or rather, subordination) with property higher than any concept of human liberation. They hide this framework behind lofty acronyms like the NAP (Non-aggression principle) which basically sanctions any sort of economic aggression against a “willing” subject and forbids any physical resistance as the utmost heresy towards the Gospel of Private Property. The failure here being that ‘free will’ is highly deterministic in a world where the means of subsistence are held privately and operated for a profit. Physical resistance becomes the only option other than utter ontological destruction; yet it also becomes the only thing that is more reprehensible to ‘Anarcho’ – Capitalists than the tenets of social ownership.
That's about 1/2 of it. Feel free to read the rest, or not. http://www.gonzotimes.com/2012/12/the-free-state-project/