At roughly 5 pm CST (January 22, 2015), Brad Spangler confessed in a Facebook post to the 2004 molestation of a child and expressed his intention to turn himself in to the police. He has not posted anything, nor, so far as we know, otherwise communicated — to the contrary, or for that matter at all — in the intervening time. No other evidence or circumstances have come to light to suggest that his confession was false, fake or coerced.
The Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) finds his monstrous actions and the way in which he admitted them utterly abhorrent and completely counter to the values C4SS stands for.
There is absolutely no avoiding the elephant in the room: Spangler co-founded C4SS. He was a key builder of its infrastructure. But he has not been a part of C4SS for a long time, either publicly or behind the scenes. His biography on the website erroneously listed him as a Senior Fellow until yesterday; that description should have been changed long ago simply for accuracy’s sake. Due to this oversight, C4SS is working on approving a proposal for identifying and removing associates who have “abandoned” C4SS due to lack of communication or participation.
C4SS has changed substantially over the years as we’ve grown and Spangler does not represent us. Rather than continue to host the writing of a child molester and to make clear our strenuous disassociation we’ve removed his historical posts from our site. At the same time we do not mean to disingenuously “memoryhole” Spangler’s unfortunate legacy and will be archiving his historical content on another site, the Spangler Pensieve.
Spangler’s admission was a heavy blow to us, but whatever discomfort our organization experiences over the coming months is nothing in comparison to the pain the survivor of Spangler’s actions has suffered for a decade, nor the pain that survivor is surely being forced to relive as a result of his selfishness. The survivor deserves the chance to heal. We will respect the survivor’s space, and offer our assistance should it ever be needed or wanted. To further this end, C4SS will be donating $200 from our Entrepreneurial Anti-capitalism fund to generationFive. [G]enerationFive “works to interrupt and mend the intergenerational impact of child sexual abuse on individuals, families, and communities. It is our belief that meaningful community response is the key to effective prevention.”
We would like to close with some quotes from Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements:
Time and again heterosexual men in radical movements have been allowed to assert their privilege and subordinate others. Despite all that we say to the contrary, the fact is that radical social movements and organizations in the United States have refused to seriously address gender violence [1] as a threat to the survival of our struggles. We’ve treated misogyny, homophobia, and heterosexism as lesser evils—secondary issues—that will eventually take care of themselves or fade into the background once the “real” issues—racism, the police, class inequality, U.S. wars of aggression—are resolved. There are serious consequences for choosing ignorance. Misogyny and homophobia are central to the reproduction of violence in radical activist communities. Scratch a misogynist and you’ll find a homophobe. Scratch a little deeper and you might find the makings of a future informant (or someone who just destabilizes movements like informants do). …
As angry as gender violence on the Left makes me, I am hopeful. I believe we have the capacity to change and create more justice in our movements. We don’t have to start witch hunts to reveal misogynists and informants. They out themselves every time they refuse to apologize, take ownership of their actions, start conflicts and refuse to work them out through consensus, mistreat their compañer@s. We don’t have to look for them, but when we are presented with their destructive behaviors we have to hold them accountable. Our strategies don’t have to be punitive; people are entitled to their mistakes. But we should expect that people will own those actions and not allow them to become a pattern.
We have a right to be angry when the communities we build that are supposed to be the model for a better, more just world harbor the same kinds of antiqueer, antiwoman, racist violence that pervades society. As radical organizers we must hold each other accountable and not enable misogynists to assert so much power in these spaces. Not allow them to be the faces, voices, and leaders of these movements. Not allow them to rape a compañera and then be on the fucking five o’ clock news. […] By not allowing misogyny to take root in our communities and movements, we not only protect ourselves from the efforts of the state to destroy our work but also create stronger movements that cannot be destroyed from within.
[1] I use the term gender violence to refer to the ways in which homophobia and misogyny are rooted in heteronormative understandings of gender identity and gender roles. Heterosexism not only polices non-normative sexualities but also reproduces normative gender roles and identities that reinforce the logic of patriarchy and male privilege.
Translations for this blog post:
"It is my contention," writes Spangler, "that Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism is misnamed because it is actually a variety of socialism, in that it offers an alternative understanding of existing capitalism (or any other variety of statism) as systematic theft from the lower classes and envisions a more just society without that oppression. Rather than depending upon the labor theory of value to understand this systematic theft, Rothbardian market anarchism utilizes natural law theory and Lockean principles of property and self-ownership taken to their logical extreme as an alternative framework for understanding and combating oppression."[25] – Wikipedia
wow, this fucking guy. he was the guy that made anarcho-capitalism seem not so bad as i had previously understood it. one of the guys that made me embrace free markets and whose writings got me to think about moving away from social anarchism to embrace more individualist anarhcism. It's been a long time since i read anything from him, though, and this is literally the first thing in years i read about him. Didn't even know he was still at c4ss.
I hope the victim is well, and that Brad gets what's coming to him.
"Didn't even know he was still at c4ss."
He isn't and wasn't; see above.
My recent post Fear-Fraught Funnies #3
What the fuck does Brad Spangler's pedophilia have to do with "gender violence" and anti-queer anti-womanism.
My god, not everything is about identity politics.
But I guess most lefties would disagree with that.
Sorry, I was curious about this Spangler shit, but I can't read anything on the left anymore without being subjected to some garbage about how I oppress everyone cuz I'm straight or something. Or how "deep down" I'm a X, Y, or Z horrible kinda person.
You're misogyinist, I'm misogynist, Brad Spangler misogynist, misogynist misogyinist misogyinist misogyinist.
I THINK so anyway….right?
"I can't read anything on the left anymore without being subjected to some garbage about how I oppress everyone cuz I'm straight or something"
you poor snowflake
That'll win him over! Good one!
wow, this fucking guy. he was the guy that made anarcho-capitalism seem not so bad as i had previously understood it. one of the guys that made me embrace free markets and whose writings got me to think about moving away from social anarchism to embrace more individualist anarhcism. It's been a long time since i read anything from him, though, and this is literally the first thing in years i read about him. Didn't even know he was still at c4ss.
Wow, can't pass up an opportunity to make everything about SJW pet causes. And if you think that will dissociate your organization from a sick pedophile, more the better? Don't think it comes across that way, unfortunately for C4SS
Goddamn it. Exploiting a tragedy to use as a soapbox to rant about straight men.
I'm a mutualist, non-white woman, and I believe in real social justice, not this Tumblr-style SJW shit, and I want jack shit to do with left-libertarianism today. Enjoy.
black here, and sick and tired of uncle toms like you
"I believe in real social justice"
so you're a "real" social justice warrior? Not a fake one like on tumblr? That's pretty hardcore, m9.
Social justice, as in the absence of racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. is good.
I just don't push everything into the same oppressor/oppressed model. Racism against white people is still racism, though I recognize there are issues of non-white people being targeted more in parts of the world. Homophobia is the most real out of those three, but I'm not going to go around going off on straight people or seeing homophobia in every damn thing. Sexism originates from gender roles which affected both sexes differently but about equally, but in the west today it pretty much affects only men.
The majority of social justice today is a clusterfuck of bizarre relativism, and resembles the far-right more than they'd feel comfortable with, however.
The site deserves to be purged. 1) You're stupid and don't have real patriarchy or racist society in any meaningful way. A patriarchy/racist society (or whatever), would oppress the living shit out of you. 2) You're against the state which makes you retarded. 3) You're degenerate and believe in hedonism and you're shitty version of freedom which revolves around "me." 4) It isn't surprising that such a manipulative group has a incest (and potential pedophile in it).
You're all sub-human and degenerate. I wish you were as oppressed as you think you are.
Your comment is so eloquent and thoughtful that it’s basically a case against itself.
go back to >>>/pol/
As a gay man in the 1970s, I shuddered with every word in this disclaimer. The words monstrous and abhorrent were applied to LGBT people back then. The same revulsion. The same emotions of being sickened. The same words that C4SS so freely throws out against Spangler were used against me and those I loved way back then. If Spangler had beat his daughter would you have used the same words? I doubt it. Those words have nothing to do with opposition to violence and everything to do with opposition to sexuality. Those words are promoted by the very state you claim to oppose. They are used to create bogeymen to facilitate repression. The idea that adding sexuality to a crime makes it worse is a cultural artifact. Would you have removed all his back posts if he beat his daughter? How about if he blew up a military post and killed 10 children as collateral damage? In the latter case, though I'm certain you would condemn the action, I am certain you would not remove his back posts. But he had sex. What a monster. What an evil person. Pretend he never existed. It boggles the mind that those with such ignorance can consider themselves a political force for change.
Deviants gonna deviate
The way Spangler admitted his crime isn't "abhorrent," as judged by C4SS. At least he had the courage to admit it and accept that he should suffer consequences for it. Many people guilty of this sort of thing deny it in the face of all evidence. He should be commended for his admission.
The ghettoizing of his writings by C4SS is odd, it seems to me. Why do his writings become less valid after the admission of a crime?
he forgot he had cp on his computer when he sent it in for a warranty exchange. i agree his writing doesn't become less meaningful, but you're an idiot if you think a guy should be commended for forgetting to clear his browser history and realizing he's probably gonna get busted for cp.
I access C4SS to read about freedom, anti-capitalism and mutualism.
Not this identity politics bullshit. How the fuck pedophilia is even related to that?
Sorry, but this really lowered my vision of the site.
Don't worry, the fad will blow over. Some new way to signal moral purity will be discovered.
Libertarianism is a critique of power and of the abuses of power. Child molestation is an abuse of power. So unfortunately is it extremely relevant to what someone says about power and the abuses of power. I can only hope that the victim is all right by now.
This seems relevant: http://c4ss.org/content/35201
I'm tired of identity politics. Poverty is color and gender blind. I think the English speaking gender warriors on this site need to get in a fucking time machine and travel back to ask straight working class men in the IWW how well that imaginary patriarchy was benefiting them. Even Emma Goldman pointed out that most men were deriving no benefit whatsoever for their "privileges" For it to have been a patriarchy, most men would have actually had to derive at least some benefits. They did not.
"Poverty is color and gender blind."
That's bullshit and you know it.
Tired of identity politics!? YOU WOULD SAY THAT, you white man, you!
See how it works?
And so ends the brief period c4ss.org got any decent amount of interest and traffic ever. Yes, we are only here because we are following the Spangler scandal. Yes, we are all disgusted by the malignant intersectionalist psychotic identity politics crap you have infused your official response to the scandal with. I really think retards that use the word 'heteronormative' need to start using the word 'anti-incestnormative', because in order to not be a hater and bigot against adult, sterile, birth-control using incest couples (who exist Google GSA or Genetic Sexual Attraction), you should really have begun this post by telling us all that you support incest marriage, support incest couple equality, but simply take issue with the fact that this incest couple was forced on someone underage. Antiadultincestsexism not only polices non-normative sexualities but also reproduces normative family roles and identities that reinforce the logic of anti-incestarchy and non-incest privilege.
In other words, your bullshit organization is a joke and so are you, and so you had a child rapist in your midst, now we go back to not giving a fuck what you say or do because you're clearly fucking insane. Also please try and create some social justice for people whose sexuality is "granny porn". Non-grannyporn-normative sexualities are bigotry and hateful against 119 year old world record holders of World's Oldest Woman who wish to marry hot young 18 year old guys with six packs.
Good catch. Fixed.
Why not just put a short disclaimer above each of his articles that says that while you support and display his academic work, you condemn and in no way condone his personal choices (and you could also briefly add that he doesn't work for the site now, and hasn't for some time)? Seems odd to purge the site of things that you previously endorsed. There have been many people with abnormal and immoral proclivities who have at various points in their lives done greatly valuable and moral works. Some people are unable to get their head around that, but it's the truth.
Will reprints of Markets Not Capitalism omit the piece by Spangler?
"Will reprints of Markets Not Capitalism omit the piece by Spangler?" Good Question. I guess I'll have to do something about the Spangler interview in my Kindle book, Environmental Non-Policy, which of course nobody has read or is likely to read anyway…should I take it out completely? Pen some sort of disclaimer? Do nothing?