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Anarchists in NYC

Tolstoy, Ellul, Proudhon, Rothbard. Those are just a few of the anarchists that have eschewed violence and revolution. There have been many others. No matter. Anarchists have been consistently painted by the press as violent scoundrels. It raises the real specter of the intertwined pillars of power (government, press, business . . . with higher education recently joining the old boys), but no matter. The important thing to note is that our culture's knee-jerk reaction toward anarchism is remarkably negative.

The weekend hijinks in New York won't help matters, of course, but I find it curious that the anarchists attacked Starbucks. Isn't that the symbol of capitalist privilege? Are these anarchists or socialists? My hunch is, they're both: socialists who want to achieve their vision through anarchy. Such thinking has a revered place in anarchist thinking (Proudhon and Godwin come to mind).

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