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Reply to comment by AnarcheAmor in by !deleted30485

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AnarcheAmor wrote

You assume wrongly that this is about morals. It isn't. It's about the consequences of what we think and do. The logic, actions, and consequences of murder and violence are inherently antithetical to individualist anarchists because they are violations of autonomy, create harmful relations between people, are inherently hierarchical, and worsen conditions for everyone. The precedent that murder sets only ends up adding to and legitimizing the harm that legal systems of any society do to people. This is can be seen by the fact that after the Bonnot gang caught, killed, and the surviving members executed, an anti-anarchist campaign was created. Police saw their funds increase and anarchists were met with a new wave of resistance as they became further affiliated with criminals. The Bonnots violence made them enemies of themselves and everyone around them.

Putting this in personal perspective, to think like them would mean to dehumanize me and find murdering me permissible. That line of thinking is a threat to me and in order to secure my safety, I would have to take action to limit one's ability to hurt me. This means I can't find solidarity with you. If you and I agree in the abolition of law for the mere sake that law brings with it rule that we find no reason to abide by yet you feel my death desirable, you and the law become the same to me: an enemy. Yet to relate to you in such a way is ridiculous! Why have enemies? Why be enemies? Why must death, murder, violence, even be on the table? If you so wish to see your will through then those things only make you an enemy to yourself, a slave to your own self-preservation as you try to avoid the repercussions of your actions. I find such an existence abhorrent as I already find my current state of affairs so. But is that the long con of the illegalist? To commit crime after crime until the State ultimately catches up to you? To end the way of the Bonnots? I don't think so. The Bonnots were a tragedy, as it seems, and one we find no truth of illegalism within other than that to murder is begging for one's own death. I find it saddening to think that "Damn the master, damn the slave, and damn me!" were ever anyone's last words before killing themselves off so that the cops wouldn't get to them.

As far as I see it, illegalism, much like pacifism, and individualism, is a natural evolution of anarchism if you allow yourself to continue down its natural course. You can't have anarchism with laws. In this regard, I would gladly have a great number of conversations about illegalist thought and practice BUT that conversation does not precede the one that must be had about the possibility that someone is a threat to me because of the circumstances I exist in and have to live with and if one is a threat to me then ultimately they are a threat to others and I can't find myself tolerating that because, as stated before, that shit backfires on everyone which circles back to me. How quickly that conversation ends so we can get to the good stuff depends on how quickly we can agree that killing maids, workers, and clerks for being maids, workers, and clerks, at the very least, doesn't amount to anything positive for anyone in the long run and should probably be avoided.

In the spirit of sparking a more interesting conversation, I have an infatuation with gentleman thieves, pirates, hackers, and guerrilla activism as I find how illegalism manifests in each of their practices rather fascinating. My favorite little tidbit of illegalist practice is guerilla gardening because "Fuck your property and your law, I'm planting flowers!" Is just really wholesome. I also think the idea of illegalism being a means of tearing down structures and social relations such that people can build those relationships on their own terms is worthy of way more discussion than it seems to garner.

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