The facts of the repression are clear even if not overt. The Deputy Attorney General, Richard Kleindienst, an old friend who, I can assure you, is more than capable of matching rhetoric to action, has been quoted in the Atlantic as saying that student dissenters would be “rounded up” and placed in “detention camps”. His subsequent denial of the quotation was not categorial but only complained that he had been, as politicians apparently always are, misquoted and that, ah hah, even if he had said something like that he hadn’t meant anything like that.

Mr Kleindienst, as with every one of his political associates with whom I have worked, is sensitive first and foremost to national mood. Although they may sometimes seem to buck it’s ordinary ebb and flow, they all turn and run in the face of it’s occasional floods. Such a flood is now evident, with more than 80 percent of persons answering recent polls saying that they approve of stringent crack-downs on student dissent. It is my notion that buried in these responses, and not by too much racist dirt at that, is an implicit desire also for a crackdown on black militants.

The Administration, with some of the most attentive political antennae we have ever seen–look at the power wielded in it by publicists!–is surely going to play the repressive mood for all it is worth. And how much it is worth is, in turn, clearly evident in the fact that Super Semanticist S. I. Hayakawa has become Puissant Politician merely and solely because he has bumbled himself, like the British at Balaclava, into a bloody, dumb, eventually disastrous position of pig-headed glory. The fact that merely cracking a few student skulls has been enough to propel this second-rate social democrat into a first rank of right-wing respect, equal to and possibly even in advance of that other pillar of West Coast educationism, Max Rafferty, must be lesson enough to Richard Nixon and his court that there are political riches in the blood of repression.

There is, however, a growing interpretation, even among some who call themselves libertarians but who probably would be more comfortable as conservatives, that the New Left has brought it all on themselves and, consequently, upon the rest of us and that, in a convenient application of what the Christians might call the Agnus Dei shift, it is the New left into whom all the daggers of recrimination may be thrust.

No.

It is the libertarian instinct and interpretation that tells us that it is the state, and not those who attack or resist it, that is the guilty or most guilty party in the development of any repression and that to call repression merely reaction is to overlook or even deny the dynamics of state development.

In that dynamic development, the state, any state, always becomes more repressive over the long run rather then less. There are no exceptions to this in the development of any state where the power has been delegated by the people to the politicians, no matter how benign those politicians may seem at any particular point of the development.

Thus, the actions by the New Left, or even the Crazies, that have goaded the state into its current quiet frenzy, are hastened by but not created by those actions. The state must, sooner or later, become more rather then less coercive and repressive. That movement may be accelerated by people’s resistance but it is not created by that resistance. Has not, in fact, the structure of government, state, local, and national, actually become more repressive year by year in this country whether in times of peace, war, languor or riot? The answer is that it has and the very political party which now occupies (and occupies is just the word) the positions of power today is also the very political party which in past campaigns has documented and dealt with that onward course of repression in greatest detail. They are silent now, of course, because what it once called oppressive under Democrats becomes orderliness under Republicans.

Libertarians, who, throughout modern political history, have presented the only clear and consistent analysis of state power, know that the difference between the natural or spontaneous order of a free society, and the enforced order of a state system, is the very difference between the day of human liberation and the night of state coerciveness.

(Some details of that night as it now unfolds in Washington, appear to include the systematic arrest, on a vide variety of unrelated charges and as often as possible by local police, of student leaders and, subsequently, and perhaps depending upon the reaction to that, of non-student militants and radicals. The Black Panthers, of course, face a repression far more harsh and the key to it’s success very likely is simply to what extent local police forces, now frothing with a really rabid zeal, can execute Panthers without publicity. They will be helped, probably, by all of those liberal and conservative editors who feel that Panther revolutionary rhetoric is a threat to the orderly development of their own political programs.)

Libertarians, have a rather clear-cut choice in facing the repression. They tacitly or otherwise support the state or they can remain with the Resistance. There is no convenient middle course such as simply opting out of the struggle. There may be an appearance of such an option but it is illusory. For instance, even if one is able to retreat to a position in which one has no contact with either the state or the Resistance, a reaction in regard to the state-resistence question is inevitable. For one thing there will be many times when a friend who has not retreated could use your help. By not helping him, and if he is resisting, the state itself has been helped. This is not to call for selfless heroics, but only for principled recognition of the fact that there are two sides in this struggle and libertarians, whose analysis is the most pertinent of all, should not contemplate being able to avoid taking one of those sides. Nor should they avoid the possibility–and I say it is inevitability–that a choice which does not support the Resistance, even if with grave reservations regarding some of its character or characters, actually opposes it and that any choice which does not oppose the state, actually supports it.

Not every libertarian should or could be found at the barricades resisting or in the tunnels undermining state power. None, of course, want to end up in jail. And now they will see the power of the state, awesome and even frightening, and they will see the jails eagerly eating the revolution.

Tactics may have to change. That is only wisdom. But direction? Never! The course is to liberty. The state is the enemy.

Noi siamo stati portati a pensare che “attivismo” consista nel volere che qualcun altro faccia qualcosa. Imploriamo i politici eletti, i burocrati, spronandoli all’azione. Ma l’attivismo migliore, il più efficace, è quando prendiamo in mano la situazione e risolviamo i nostri problemi – o colpiamo i nostri nemici – da soli. Nello stato messicano di Michoacán, la popolazione si è ribellata contro il cartello del narcotraffico dei Cavalieri Templari, cacciandoli via con una forza tale che il governo messicano dispera di sopprimere i vigilantes e ora spera di corromperli, trasformandoli da una manifestazione spontanea della rabbia popolare in un altro braccio armato dello stato criminale. Speriamo che resistano.

E ora la popolazione si sta sollevando in Nigeria. Mentre il resto del mondo ha risposto ai crimini odiosi di Boko Haram con hashtag e selfie, la popolazione di Kala/Balge ha risposto con proiettili e machete, prendendo in mano la propria vita e le proprie famiglie. Difendere se stessi significa imparare a confidare in se stessi; i corsi di autodifesa, oltre alle tecniche per sconfiggere l’assalitore, insegnano anche ad avere fiducia nella propria forza e nel proprio potere. Boko Haram ha reagito come da sempre reagiscono i bulli davanti ad una vittima che improvvisamente prende coraggio: hanno fatto dietrofront e sono scappati, lasciandosi alle spalle morti e feriti da quei codardi che sono sempre stati.

Anche in America, il centro dell’impero, dobbiamo imparare ad agire direttamente contro i bulli tra noi, contro le forze dell’impero. Non occorre che l’azione sia frontale e violenta, anche se chi decide di affrontare direttamente gli oppressori merita il nostro rispetto. All’interno del movimento contro la guerra di questi ultimi quattordici anni ci sono stati molti eventi buonisti diretti a risvegliare le coscienze e raccogliere fondi. Ma l’attivismo più efficace ha preso due forme: scoraggiare l’arruolamento nelle forze armate, e incoraggiare chi è arruolato ad uscirne. Entrambe rappresentano una sfida più efficace degli striscioni, allungano una mano verso i soldati ed offrono loro una buona alternativa alla vita militare, uno degli ultimi luoghi della nostra società in cui giovani capaci possono ottenere un lavoro sicuro con una buona paga e benefici. È importante il risultato ottenuto: togliere acqua dal mulino imperialista, obbligando i suoi padroni a impiegare più denaro e tempo a cercare di trattenere i soldati e meno ad uccidere e menomare.

Parlare di alternative all’arruolamento in un istituto superiore di borgata non ha la stessa drammaticità di un’imboscata ad un convoglio di Boko Haram nella giungla nigeriana nel cuore della notte, ma le due cose condividono un aspetto chiave: non devi implorare per ottenere pietà e pace. In entrambi i casi, prendi il nemico frontalmente, e affronti personalmente il meccanismo che causa oppressione e dolore. Se vogliamo salvarci, dobbiamo seguire l’esempio coraggioso della popolazione di Kala/Balge, e salvarci da soli.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

We are conditioned to think of “activism” as getting someone else to do something. We plead with elected officials and bureaucrats, prodding them to take action. But the best and most effective activism is when we take matters into our own hands and solve our problems — or strike at our enemies — ourselves. In Mexico’s Michoacan province, the people rose against the Knights Templar cartel, driving them off with such alacrity that the Mexican government has given up attempts to suppress the vigilantes and now hopes to suborn them, turning them from a natural manifestation of the people’s wrath into another arm of the criminal state. We pray they resist the attempt.

And now in Nigeria, the people are rising. While the rest of the world responded to Boko Haram’s vicious crimes with hashtags and selfies, the people of Kalabalge responded with bullets and machetes, taking their lives and their families into their own hands. To defend oneself is to learn to rely on oneself; in self-defense courses, we learn confidence in our own strength and power as much as we learn specific techniques for defeating assailants. Boko Haram reacted the way bullies have reacted from time immemorial to suddenly emboldened victims — they turned tail and ran, leaving their dead and wounded behind like the cowards they always were.

In America, the imperial center, we too must learn to act directly against the bullies in our midst, against the forces of the empire. These actions need not be direct, violent confrontation — although those who do choose to engage their oppressors directly deserve our respect. In the anti-war movement over the last fourteen years, many consciousness-raising, fund-raising and feel-good events have been held, but the most effective activism I’ve seen has taken two forms — discouraging enlistment, known as “counter-recruiting,” and encouraging soldiers currently in the military to get out. Both are much more challenging than holding a sign at a rally, requiring us to get to know the people we are trying to reach and to offer them a good alternative to the military, which is one of the last places left in our society where any able-bodied young person can get a secure job with good pay and benefits. But both get results that matter, denying grist to the imperial mill, forcing the managers of the imperial state to spend more time and money on finding and retaining soldiers and less on killing and maiming others.

Talking to a classroom in an inner city high school about alternatives to the military is not as dramatic as ambushing a Boko Haram convoy in Nigerian jungle in the middle of the night, but both actions share one key aspect — neither involves begging power for mercy and comfort. Rather, both take on the enemy directly, confronting personally the mechanisms of oppression and violence. If we are going to be saved, we must follow the bold example of the people of Kalabalge, and save ourselves.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, I Frutti dell’Azione Diretta.

L’offerta di sicurezza è una delle giustificazioni più basilari dell’esistenza dello stato. Si immagina che lo stato protegga la popolazione dai predatori, sia interni che esterni. Ma in Nigeria lo stato non ha la capacità di adempiere questa funzione. E forti dubbi esistono anche riguardo la volontà: secondo notizie poi confermate da Amnesty International l’esercito nigeriano era venuto a conoscenza con quattro ore di anticipo del fatto che una colonna armata di militanti di Boko Haram si stava dirigendo verso Chibok: quattro ore durante le quali l’esercito non ha fatto assolutamente nulla.

Ora, visto che il governo nigeriano non può o non vuole proteggere i nigeriani, forse questi potrebbero prendere esempio dai messicani, che si sono armati per difendere se stessi dall’aggressività sia dei cartelli della droga che dello stato. Ovviamente il governo nigeriano cerca di favorire la dipendenza della popolazione dallo stato vietando il possesso di armi semiautomatiche e fucili di qualunque genere; divieto che, pateticamente, non riesce ad applicare ai gruppi di Boko Haram ma che i custodi del collegio di Chibok disgraziatamente rispettano fin troppo.

L’autodifesa armata contro il terrorismo è uno di quei territori che nel corso del secolo appena iniziato sono stati esplorati ampiamente. Il punto di svolta dell’occupazione americana in Iraq non è stato, come si crede comunemente, un prodotto delle tattiche americane, ma piuttosto il risultato degli sforzi di gruppi armati di autodifesa, organizzati dagli stessi iracheni in barba al loro governo fantoccio. Anche se questi gruppi venivano finanziati dai militari americani, la decisione di agire è nata all’interno delle comunità tribali irachene. L’esempio iracheno, così come quello fornito dalla popolazione dello stato messicano di Michoacán, può costituire un modello efficace di difesa da Boko Haram per il popolo nigeriano.

Cosa possiamo fare noi occidentali per aiutare il popolo nigeriano? La cosa più ovvia è ovviamente illegale: se un americano dona armi ai nigeriani o va a combattere contro Boko Haram finisce in galera per molti anni. Un caso che illustra l’assurdità di queste leggi è quello di Eric Harroun, un veterano americano che è andato in Siria a combattere il governo di Assad. Harroun rischia il carcere per aver aiutato gli stessi ribelli siriani che l’amministrazione Obama sta cercando di aiutare. Date queste leggi, c’è poco che l’occidente possa fare legalmente, se non fare donazioni alle istituzioni di carità nigeriane e fare pressione sul governo nigeriano.

Un consiglio al popolo della Nigeria: Il vostro governo non ha né il potere né la volontà di proteggervi. Gli aiuti da parte dei governi occidentali potrebbero risolvere questa dolorosa crisi nel breve, ma non sono una soluzione di lungo termine. Invece di aspettare che i burocrati di Abuja vengano a salvarvi, prendete misure adesso per proteggere voi stessi e i vostri figli. Armatevi, se potete. Organizzate servizi di vigilanza. E se il vostro governo vi chiede di fermarvi, chiedetegli dove era il quattordici aprile, quando le vostre figlie sono state rapite.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Provision of security is the most basic justification given for the existence of the state. The state is supposed to protect the population from predators, both foreign and domestic. However, in Nigeria, the state is clearly incapable of fulfilling this function. Indeed, serious questions exist as to whether or not it even wants to; reports confirmed by Amnesty International indicate that the Nigerian army had four hours’ notice that an armed column of Boko Haram militants was en route to Chibok — four hours during which the army did absolutely nothing.

Since the Nigerian government is either unwilling or unable to protect the Nigerian people, perhaps Nigerians should look to the example of the Mexican people, who have armed themselves in self-defense against both predatory cartels and predatory government forces. Of course, the Nigerian government strives to foster dependence on itself among the people, forbidding them to own semi-automatic rifles or handguns of any type — a prohibition it is pathetically unable to enforce on Boko Haram, but one which the guardians of the schoolgirls of Chibok sadly obeyed all too well.

Armed self-defense against terrorism is well-trodden territory this century. The turning point of the American occupation of Iraq was not, as is commonly believed, a product of American tactics, but rather the result of the efforts of armed self-defense groups established by the Iraqis themselves, outside the American-backed government. While these groups were funded by the American military, the initiative to act arose within the traditional tribal groups of the Iraqi people. This model, as well as the example of the people of Mexico’s Michoacan province, can serve as a template for successful self-defense against Boko Haram by the Nigerian people.

What can we do in the West to aid the Nigerian people? The most obvious way to help is of course completely illegal — any Americans who donate weapons to the Nigerians or who go to fight Boko Haram themselves face stiff prison sentences. The recent case of Eric Harroun, a U.S. Army veteran who traveled to Syria to fight against the Assad government, illustrates the absurdity of these laws. Mr. Harroun may go to prison for aiding the same Syrian rebels the Obama administration is trying to aid. Given the laws as they are, there is little within those laws we can do in the West, aside from donating to Nigerian charities and helping bring more pressure on the Nigerian government.

To the people of Nigeria: Your government cannot and will not protect you. Aid from Western governments might address this immediate and painful crisis, but will not be a long-term solution. Rather than waiting for the bureaucrats in Abuja to save you, take steps now to protect yourselves and your children.  Arm yourselves, if you can. Organize watches. And when your government asks you to stop, ask them where they were on 14 April, when your daughters were stolen.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Boko Haram e l’Imperativo dell’Autodifesa.
• Spanish, Boko Haram y el imperativo de la autodefensa

The Bundy ranch saga has been the subject of heated good guy/bad guy framing by both mainstream liberals and mainstream conservatives, who differ only on which roles to assign to Bundy and the feds, respectively. But I can’t really see any good guys in this.

The respective echo chambers for the two sides differ on whether the land in question was originally federal property from the time of acquisition or originally property of Bundy’s ancestors and then taken over by the government. There’s disagreement over whether Bundy attempted to pay the fees and there was some bureaucratic snafu about who to make the check out to, or he’d just flat-out refused from the beginning.

The claim that Bundy’s family owned the land since the 1880s seems rather tenuous, given that one condition for Nevada’s admission as a state was the recognition of all federal land claims dating to the acquisition of the land from Mexico. And Bundy doesn’t object to the idea of vacant land acquired in war passing into the public domain – he just believes, on constitutional grounds, that it’s the State of Nevada or Clark County, and not the U.S. government, that’s the rightful owner he should be paying taxes to.

And the Paiute Nation included the whole area of Nevada that Bundy’s ranch sits on, before the Paiute were driven into reservations on a minuscule fraction of that land. So they really ought to be shooting at Bundy.

But regardless of all that, there’s some stuff we should be able to agree on.

The feds aren’t good guys. Far from it. Let’s start by asking how the federal government came to own such a large share of Nevada land in the first place. The answer is it had been in the domain of one settler state after another from the time of initial European conquest and colonization: First of the Spanish crown, and then of the government of the Republic of Mexico. From there, it passed via the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo – following a war of aggression predicated entirely on lies by the United States government – into the U.S. “public” domain.

Naturally, much of the land in the state domain under all three of these empires was never really as “vacant” or “unowned” as it was made out to be in official legal doctrine (as is the case with the Paiute).

And whether any particular tract of land in Nevada was the rightful property of the First Nations who lived on it, or was genuinely vacant and uninhabited, the preemption of actually or theoretically vacant land is what settler states do. It’s a counterpart to the Old World phenomenon of landed aristocracies claiming “ownership” of already settled areas and collecting rent from its rightful owners: The peasants whose ancestors had been cultivating the land from time out of mind.

Free access to unused land is a nightmare for economic ruling classes. Franz Oppenheimer argued, in The State, that economic exploitation was impossible so long as employers had to compete for workers against the possibility of self-employment – most importantly, until a little over a century ago, self-employment on vacant land. Oppenheimer argued that – at least in predominantly agricultural societies – exploitation is only possible when all land has been appropriated and no more is available for self-employment, leaving no alternative but accepting wage labor on whatever terms are offered. But natural appropriation of all the land – appropriation by occupying and altering it with one’s labor – would be impossible. The world was, indeed, almost universally appropriated, Oppenheimer said. But it was appropriated by law rather than labor – i.e., simply enclosed as artificial property by landed aristocrats in the Old World, as large land grants to politically connected individuals in settler states like the U.S., or incorporated into the public domain from which ordinary homesteaders were excluded, as with the Western lands.

In the early days of another settler state, Australia, economist E.G. Wakefield called for state enclosure of vacant land into the public domain. He argued that free access to land by ordinary settlers was making it impossible for employers to hire labor at a low enough wage to be profitable. In Britain before the Enclosures, likewise, farmers complained that when peasants had access to rights of common pasturage or could erect cottages on the common waste, wood or fen, it was impossible to get them to work at agricultural labor as cheaply, or for as many hours, as desired.

The Homestead Act, passed during the Lincoln administration, is generally framed as a triumph of populism. But it actually involved only a small fraction of total public domain lands out West, and the sodbusters – who, if a given parcel were genuinely unoccupied and unused, should have automatically become the first owners without anybody’s permission when they mixed their labor with it — had to pay for the land.

But guess what? The U.S. government gave a much larger portion of public domain lands to railroad companies – an area the size of France. And not only did they not have to pay for it, they were given ten-mile strips of land on either side of the actual right-of-way, so that the railroads could use the rapidly appreciating speculative prices of real estate along a future train route as a source of revenue.

As for the enormous tracts of land kept in the public domain, the U.S. government gave preferential access rights to extractive industries like mining, oil, logging – and ranching. And the tracts of land were quite conveniently unencumbered by even sparse homesteading, which would have entailed having to buy out families a lot less favorably disposed than Uncle Sam.

The government supposedly auctions off leases to timberland, oil reserves and the like via competitive bidding. But such auctions are always restricted to firms in the relevant industry. They don’t have to compete with anyone outside the club like, say, environmentalist groups who might want to hold old-growth forest out of use, and who might bid up the price higher. In one case where it turned out an extractive industry CEO was actually an activist who deliberately bid up the price so as to sabotage the good ol’ boy arrangement, the industry and Bureau of Land Management screamed for blood. So between oligopsony pricing (a market with just a few buyers, who can easily engage in collusion) and the political pull of extractive corporations, the leases are generally kept to sweetheart prices.

If this doesn’t yet sound quite loathsome enough, the government frequently subsidizes these favored industries by building access roads on public lands, at taxpayer expense, so the extractive industries can haul off the pillaged resources without having to spend any of their own money.

So Bundy really isn’t much of a candidate for knight in shining armor, either. Normally the federal government is the natural ally of extractive industries – including ranchers like Bundy – when it comes to exploiting Western lands. The fees that Bundy is charged with not paying were entirely nominal – just another example of those sweetheart prices for favored interests.

What would have been the rightful course of development, then. First of all, of course, the land would never have been conquered in the first place by either Spain, Mexico or the United States. The sparsely populated lands out West would have been governed by the simple principle that the land belonged to whatever people were currently living on it and using it, and land not yet in use would belong to the first people to cultivate it. So the First Nations would continue to enjoy their traditional hunting grounds and agricultural land, and settlers would be free to make use of land not in use, without paying tribute to government or corporate overlords of any kind.

Extractive industries could exploit only lands not currently in use, or acquire land from those already using it if they were willing to leave it and found the payment acceptable. And any activity by extractive industries that poisoned surrounding air or groundwater, or interfered with the preexisting uses of their neighbors’ land, would be subject to full tort liability without any caps or regulatory exemptions conferred by the state.

As Media Director Tom Knapp at the Center for a Stateless Society commented, the low carrying capacity of land like that Bundy’s cattle graze makes it ideal for some sort of commons-based management (of the kind Elinor Ostrom wrote about for most of her career) by an association of neighboring ranchers. Of course well-managed common pastures had effectively enforced rules restricting the total pasturage rights apportioned to the sustainable carrying capacity of the land – the kind of rules that self-styled “Sagebrush Rebels” like Bundy would probably object to even if they came from fellow ranchers rather than the government. And it’s equally plausible that areas of Nevada would be nature preserves managed as commons by conservationists in the interest of preserving endangered species like the tortoise that keeps cropping up in this story (never mind, of course, that the same tortoise lives on military testing grounds that regularly have the crap blasted out of them). The rival property claims of homesteaders, First Nations, and managed commons of all kinds would be a matter for horizontal negotiation based on the agreed-upon civil law principles of free local juries, not not administrative fiat or political pull.

So what we see on the Bundy ranch is really just a fight between bad guys: A corrupt state in league with corrupt economic interests, versus a rogue member of those same corrupt economic interests.

In response to this declaration of war, natives and their supporters blocked traffic onto their land from state troopers and mounted a blockade on Interstate 90 and Route 17. Cops were confronted, tires were burned and thrown into the street, traffic was slowed or halted and the injustice of the actions of New York were highlighted by protesters who waved signs and handed out leaflets to inconvenienced thruway-goers.

This resistance paid off big for the Senecas and the war efforts of New York’s government were at least temporarily halted. The Senecas had won. They had not won through lobbying, through peaceful protest, by appeal to the inherent right of natives to the land, but by facing down the government that made a claim to their land and their wealth and saying no.

Now let us travel to contemporary Nevada and a war of a different sort. This war was declared by the federal government, specifically the Bureau of Land Management. Their adversaries, rancher Cliven Bundy and his family, have been ranchers in this area for over a century, but the federal government believes that it has a right to seize Bundy’s land. The ostensive claims by the feds on Bundy’s land stem from unpaid fines levied against him for using “federal land” and laws protecting an endangered tortoise population

This war came to a head last week as federal agents surrounded the perimeter of Bundy’s ranch. The message was very clear: Pay us, give up your land or face violent conflict. Bundy chose the third option, and a successful internet campaign on his behalf brought hundreds of supporters to the Bundy ranch. Many of these supporters were from “militia groups.” Others were simply average Americans who sympathized with Bundy’s plight. After a days-long standoff, the BLM were fought off the Bundy ranch.

It might seem obviously wrong to compare these two events. After all, as many have rightly pointed out, the land Bundy now defends is in all likelihood the result of historical injustice against Native Americans. What legitimate right does Bundy have to this land beyond a claim to ancestral sovereignty? These ancestors cared nothing at all for the native claim to this ranch. I’m conflicted here. If some band of natives tomorrow were to storm the Bundy property and seize it, I imagine my emotions would be apathetic at best. Such is the nature of many claims to property in America, muddled by the savage treatment of Native Americans and their claim to the lands of this country. While I have not familiarized myself with the particular claims of natives to Bundy’s land, I assume that in some way the original acquisition by the Bundys of this land amounts to little more than theft.

But who enabled this theft? Certainly not the Bundy clan. The culprit in injustices against natives has almost always been the federal and state government itself since its establishment. I do not empathize with the claim of familial rights that Bundy makes here. What I do find myself in solidarity with is any and all opposition to encroachment.

These wars against private individuals are for one reason: Government plunder. Any notion that the federal government cares about the wildlife of the Nevadan desert is preposterous. The menace of Bundy’s cattle to tortoises pales in comparison to the maliciousness towards nature displayed time and again by the US government, which set off multiple atom bombs across the American west in the heyday of nuclear testing. This is about control, not protection of any species.

It is only through blatant opposition to government claims that we can begin to imagine a world in which some manner of justice is restored to Native Americans. The Senecas understood in 1997 that if they did not mount a resistance to the war declared by New York, that they would lose any real sovereign right to their land. Today, Bundy stands for the same principle of opposition. I do not support Bundy because of his property rights claim, but because he sought to truly defend his claim to the land against an ever-expanding federal presence. This wasn’t about states’ rights, property rights or historical injustice. It was about standing up to government power.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Bundy, os senecas e a luta pela soberania.

In Alabama, prisoners are filming each other on smuggled cell phones to tell their stories and express grievances about human rights abuses in Alabama prisons. These videos are then posted on a YouTube channel affiliated with the Free Alabama Movement. As Bay Area Intifada explains, “the prisoners speak of deplorable conditions, slave labor, prisons being a continuation of slavery and many candid stories from their lives inside and outside the cement walls of Alabama’s prisons.” The very nature of the prisoners’ non-violent disobedience tells us something about Alabama prisons. The communication mechanism they use to engage in political speech, the cell phone, is prohibited by prison officials. Only by disobeying the prison’s institutional rules can the truth about prisons be revealed. Prisons are designed to suppress communication, dissent, and the accountability that might result from openness. The Free Alabama Movement deserves the support of all who care about freedom and justice, and I’ll continue posting on their story in the coming weeks.

Outside of prison walls, I’ve been seeing prison abolitionist ideas in various media sources. Anarchist journalist Charles Davis published an excellent article at Vice that discusses prison abolition and interviews Isaac Ontiveros of Critical Resistance. The interview covers a lot of important questions about prison abolition, including what to do about violent criminals, what tactics to use right now, and the risks of reform. Critical Resistance is one of the most significant prison abolitionist groups in the world today, and it’s always excellent to see their work highlighted at a popular website like Vice.

My friend Cory Massimo also recently published a guest post at The Stag Blog offering a libertarian case for prison abolition. He argues for a system based purely on restitution rather than punishment, and contends that prisons are the wrong response even to those who have violated the rights of others. I’m glad to see prison abolitionist ideas gaining traction in libertarian circles, and I hope they will continue to gain traction.

Shining light on the prison state doesn’t just mean talking about prisons themselves. Prisons are closely related to a variety of other political issues. For example, the prison industrial complex includes immigration detention centers th tat lock up migrants for deportation. Issues like border militarization should thus be core issues for those of us concerned about the prison industrial complex. Lucy Steigerwald has a great new column at AntiWar.com called “The War at Home,” which examines how issues like immigration restrictions, policing, prisons, and surveillance interact with militarism and the warfare state. Her first column, released this week, deals with border militarization. Border militarization tramples civil liberties while lining the pockets of both war profiteers and prison profiteers. I’m glad to see the issue being addressed at AntiWar.com.

The way borders operate as part of militarism, empire, capitalism, and the prison-industrial complex is also explored in Harsha Walia’s book Undoing Border Imperialism, which I recently started reading. The book develops a theoretical framework for seeing immigration restrictions not just as a domestic policy decision, but as a structural feature of empire. Moreover, the book discusses the tactics used by a network of anti-colonial and anti-state migrant justice organizations called No One Is Illegal, which operates throughout Canada. I haven’t finished reading the book yet, but so far it’s excellent and I highly recommend it.

Today’s a good day to mention border imperialism and the framework of criminalization that sustains it, because a major act of civil disobedience against the state’s borders happened today. Over 100 families attempted border crossings today at the Otay Mesa point of entry, demanding asylum so they could reunite with their families. These sorts of actions highlight the way the state’s borders, imposed through conquest and enforced through militarized violence, break apart the families, communities, and other peaceful forms of voluntary association that build a truly robust society.

These are just a few examples of the ongoing action, thought, and media happening lately to challenge the prison-industrial complex, the empire, and other mutually reinforcing systems of state violence. Let’s keep up these fights for freedom, until the state’s violence ends.

Da allora mi è capitato di vedere molte, molte altre richieste, l’ultima delle quali nell’ultimo libro di Andrew Bacevich, di un ritorno alla coscrizione da parte di persone apparentemente contro la guerra. La premessa, a volte esplicita e a volte no, dietro queste richieste è che la coscrizione fermerebbe la brama americana di guerre e di interventi all’estero distribuendone il peso più equamente. La coscrizione è stata condannata, giustamente, perché è una forma di schiavitù; e qualche volta una forma mortale, per giunta. Ma anche chi sviene alla sola idea di considerare schiavi i soldati americani non può negare la semplice realtà storica che la coscrizione non ha mai, mai, neanche una volta, fermato o rallentato o in qualche modo inibito il corso di una guerra.

La prima guerra americana combattuta con la coscrizione fu la rivoluzione, e fu combattuta tutta quanta fino alla sua conclusione. La seconda fu la guerra civile, che costò più vite americane di ogni altra guerra. E se la coscrizione causò diverse rivolte, prima fra tutte una protesta anti-coscrizione degenerata in pogrom contro i neri a New York, anche questa guerra fu combattuta fino al suo sanguinoso esito finale. Anche la prima e la seconda guerra mondiale furono combattute in gran parte con coscritti e fino al loro infelice esito finale. Nel secondo caso, due grandi città furono immolate al dio della guerra da una nuova odiosa arma sganciata da aerei con un equipaggio composto parzialmente da coscritti.

La guerra di Corea e, soprattutto, quella di Vietnam formano quella che la lobby pro-coscrizione considera la chiave di volta del loro ragionamento. L’interpretazione classica è che l’americano medio era stufo di vedere le vite dei suoi figli distrutte dalla guerra d’attrito di Westmoreland, mentre Lyndon Johnson apparentemente diceva: “Se ho perso Cronkite, ho perso l’americano medio.” Apparentemente, le manifestazioni di protesta persuasero il governo americano a lasciare il Vietnam. Questa interpretazione non considera chi realmente fermò la guerra americana in Vietnam: i vietnamiti.

La rivoluzione, la guerra civile, le due guerre mondiali: per il governo americano, queste sono guerre vittoriose. La vittoria è sempre popolare; una guerra vittoriosa, per quanto ovviamente aggressiva o assurdamente ingiusta, raramente genera un’opposizione significativa. Ma in Vietnam l’America non stava vincendo. Stava perdendo, e malamente. L’americano medio scese in strada, è vero, ma non perché Johnny tornava a casa in una scatola. Scese in strada perché Johnny stava perdendo.

L’interpretazione pro-coscrizione della opposizione alla guerra di Vietnam ha un fondo razzista e imperialista; nega ai vietnamiti il loro ruolo di protagonisti della loro storia; esalta orgogliosamente i bianchi americani che protestavano agitando cartelli per le strade, ignorando i contadini vietnamiti che davano le loro vite per cacciare via l’ennesima potenza imperialista che pretendeva di comandare in casa loro. A fermare la guerra di Vietnam non furono gli studenti dei college che agitavano i cartelli; furono i risaioli con gli AK-47. Gli americani si commuovono per la morte di un coscritto solo quando il coscritto muore in una guerra che sta perdendo. Il credito per l’opposizione a questa guerra non va agli americani a casa ma alle vittime straniere del governo americano.

L’idea secondo cui la guerra perderebbe popolarità se solo il peso fosse distribuito fra tutti sembra intuitiva e accattivante, ma storicamente è un’illusione. La vittoria rende le guerre popolari, e la sconfitta le rende impopolari. Se vogliamo fermare la macchina della guerra dall’interno del centro imperiale, dobbiamo fare tutto il possibile per incepparla, che si tratti di contrastare gli arruolamenti, appoggiare l’opposizione al mondo militare, far conoscere i costi del militarismo, ricorrere allo sciopero fiscale, o fare altro che possa servire. E mentre dibattiamo sui fini ultimi dei comunisti in Vietnam o degli islamici in Iraq, dobbiamo sempre ricordare che le persone che fanno più di ogni altro per fermare la macchina da guerra sono quelle che prendono le armi in mano e la combattono.

Di Jonathan Carp. Originale pubblicato su Center for a Stateless Society il 17 ottobre 2013 con il titolo The Draft Never – Ever – Stopped a War. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.