What Is Anarcho-Tyranny and Are We Living in It?

Originally published via The Daily Bell:

Question: How does one best explain the brutal crackdown on COVID-19 protesters worldwide for the sake of Public Health™ while, at the same time, Black Lives Matter was permitted to run hog-wild on America’s streets?

How are elected Democrat leaders allowed to literally incite race riots while those same leaders pearl-clutch about January 6 in never-ending televised witch trials?

Answer: Anarcho-tyranny

The term anarcho-tyranny, on its face, is an oxymoron, a glaring contradiction. Indeed, it’s the biggest possible contradiction of political system descriptors, as anarchy and tyranny occupy diametrically opposite ends of the government force continuum.

So it’s obvious nonsense, right? Well, if we lived in a politically coherent environment, governed by rule of law, it would be. But in a Kafkaesque world of arbitrary exercise of government power, it becomes much more descriptive.

Samuel Francis first coined the term “anarcho-tyranny” in a 1994 essay titled Anarcho-Tyranny, U.S.A., summarized as:

“A concept where the state is more interested in controlling citizens so that they don’t oppose managerial class, rather than tending to real criminals. Laws are argued to be enforced selectively depending on what is beneficial to the ruling elite.”

It essentially describes a situation in which the government has the necessary tools and capabilities to wield oppressive power over its subjects, and does so to further its own interests.

On the other hand, the government actors themselves — and, importantly, their footsoldiers (like Antifa and BLM in the modern American context) — act with impunity, immune from legal consequences.

Exhibit A: the recent hullabaloo over classified documents. When Trump was discovered to have stashed them in his private residence, the full weight of the state fell upon his estate in the dead of night.

“Why [would] anyone be that irresponsible?” an exasperated Biden quipped, his sentiments echoed over and over and over in corporate media.

CNN was suspiciously on the scene with a camera fixed on Trump’s residence, waiting to nab riveting exclusive footage of the FBI raid on the ex-president’s house in the dewy early morning hours before daybreak.

When Biden, the favored son of the corporate state, committed essentially the same offense, no such law enforcement raid commenced, and the corporate press ran to his defense.

There is no substantial difference between the cases. Both men were sheltering classified documents that they were not authorized to possess on private property. But they received different treatment based on the actor, not the actions.

Moving back a little further in recent political history, let’s look at the COVID lockdowns.

They were brutally enforced in the US against all manner of public gatherings – including church ceremonies – until the death of George Floyd. Suddenly, all restrictions went out the window as BLM ravaged cities from coast to coast with carte blanche endorsement by the state.

Suddenly, the BLM rioters became heroes “braving” the coronavirus risk, rather than domestic terrorists targeting grandmothers for euthanization.

<image redacted>

There is obviously no legitimate public health rationale to allow street riots involving thousands of people in close quarters while California beaches remain closed and patrolled by agents of the state.

Contradiction is the point, because there are contradictory legal standards of behavior, depending on whether the actor is favored by the political establishment.

Under anarcho-tyranny, inconsistency in the application of the law is the feature, not the bug. And, as Francis further explains, it’s a tool to propagate a never-ending state of “permanent emergency”:

“Under anarcho-tyranny, the state creates a problem, declares an emergency or crisis – the drug war, the carjacking crisis, Islamic fundamentalism – and then exploits that problem as an instrument by which it continues to enhance its power, though neither the fake problem it exploits nor the real problem that exists is affected.”

Fixing COVID isn’t the goal; using it as the pretext to enforce arbitrary social control measures against opponents of the state is. In fact, the SARS-Cov-2 virus itself is a gift to be treasured rather than a problem to be remedied. The powers that be would release a new virus every day of the week if they thought they could get away with it and believed it would further their interests.

Ditto with the War of Terror, which birthed the modern national security state that currently has “domestic terrorists” in its sights, climate change, and virtually every permanent emergency that the social engineers either invent out of whole cloth or exploit.

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose and/or Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter.

Bitcoin public address: bc1qvq4hgnx3eu09e0m2kk5uanxnm8ljfmpefwhawv