Idlers do not make history: they suffer it!

The no bill posters building that I featured yesterday also seems to be a favourite of the anti-New World Order crowd (remember them?) I quite like their stencil work (it’s better than the “dick” written on our fence), even if you get a little tired of being told how horrid Americans are (and, consequently, how horrid anyone is that might take issue with lumping 400 million-odd into one vile basket).

You see, there is something inherently offensive about people that are seemingly driven to lecture high-minded principles about the way one should or should not live (and indeed the way that one should or should not think; yet at the same time exhibit a kind of hypocrisy that is as extreme as their political and cultural viewpoints.

Of course, this tendency towards extremism does not limit itself to a particular set of pre-conditions (other than ideological certainty). I have seen it in libertarians and communists; Christians, Muslims and atheists; left and right. On one score, I can’t help but generalise. So, I do plead a certain forgiveness for a certain inability to overlook the fact that every single self-proclaimed "anarchist" that I have ever met has fulfilled the descriptor above.

Now, anarchism as a concept almost certainly lends itself to extremity, and I have outlined already that I am a social democrat, and am thus obliged to emphasise the positives of an interventionist state. Consequently, I can’t help but be at odds with anarchism as a concept.

But my personal beef with the self-styled anarchists that I've personally met is no doubt rooted in the fact that every single one that I've met was in receipt of some kind of government benefit. Certainly all of them benefited from state-funded higher education, by that, I mean if they were reliant on competitive scholarships, well, they'd probably be mopping floors of the uni rather than annoying other punters in the uni bar three sheets to the wind on tax-payer subsidised shandies.

Now I am sure that there is some logic in utilising the resources of the state in setting about destroying the state. It is what I would do. But you see, I'm a pragmatist. This, my anarchist colleagues tell me (over and over and over), renders me a "reactionary", and "ideologically unsound". Of course, these facets of my personality (and my character), have made me more than worthy of endless chastisement for my contribution to most (if not all), the ills in the world. Indeed, my list of crimes makes for very interesting reading, (I have truncated it for brevity):

• 
  The destruction of the environment;
• The exploitation of children;
• The subjection of women;
• Global inequality;
• The destruction of minority cultures;
• The desecration of local identities and erosion of ‘community’;
• The alienation of workers from the fruits of their labour;
• The dumbing down of western culture;
• The denial of true liberty;
• Every war ever fought;
• Every future war that may or may not be fought;
• The disenchantment that is attendant to modernity and progress;
• Neo-colonial resentment and anger;
• The sexualisation of art;
• The infantisation of the ego;
• The commodification of human feelings;
• Disempowering the agent; and
• Elevating the agent to a point that denies concealed structural barriers.
  

Obviously, anyone still reading this are obliged to take the word of a baby whale killing, self-unaware emasculating misogynist who is so very, very tainted by every crime that humanity has unleashed upon itself with a grain of salt.

The intellectual incoherency is inherent in modern anarchism is its most frustrating aspect. It claims to ignore nations, borders and states and rest in a total world community, yet expresses itself in the most simplistic notion of “anti-globalisation” (anti-globalisation? You may as well be “anti-weather”). The notion that what is essentially a cult of the singular (the individual, or ”me”) will in some way inexorably lead to what is best for the whole (the community, or ”us”) seems problematic.

Well, who am I kidding? It’s my blog. It is more than problematic, it’s bloody stupid! It denies everything that I have seen and experienced of human nature. It denies historical experience. I don’t care how many get out clauses a totalising theory writes into itself, nobody likes some do-nothing bludger who constantly spouts rubbish telling them how to suck eggs.

I feel better now.

I am going to be showcasing a revolutionary new globally interactive Blog-cept tomorrow, so be careful not to miss that.

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