[Charlie Southerland]

Anarchism, anarchy, anarchists, however loosely defined as you would like it, Andrew, preceded all of the major tyrannies I admit to knowing nothing about. The kind of anarchy you may or may not be associated or affiliated with does have some semblance of structure or some defined order or hierarchy at the top and soldiers (loosely defined). So, it is not truly anarchy for anarchy's sake. Someone makes the cute masks/balaclavas, someone buys and pays for the paint for the silly A moniker, someone tells other someones where to meet and cause trouble. You know, the general way Brown Shirts and Leninists used to do it. It's why lots of Leftists embrace Mao's communism instead of Stalin's communism. Mao is much more palatable than Lenin's version as appropriated by Stalin. China was still pretty primitive when Mao took over in 1949. A certain amount of anarchy took place before he succeeded, and then "your kind" was put in the same camps along with the other academics who ushered Mao in. Imagine the betrayal those folks felt.

"Contemporary" Communism and Socialism, whatever the hell that means, is as it has always been, an means to an end, which is State control and ownership of business and its people. Contemporary Communism classifies the people into castes. Lower class, middle class, upper middle class, and so on. It dehumanizes individuals (workers) for the collective good. It has been largely successful since the anti-Macarthyites, the true communists with their cocktail parties and gauche movie stars endeared themselves to an compliant political elite to entrench themselves into the system like parasites. (Apologies to parasites.) Anarchists are nowadays pretty much laughed at, much like we laugh at the remnants of the KKK, whose power is now only a joke at keggers in the backwoods. No one likes being laughed at, so once in a while, one of those "kind" does something really stupid and awful. Your position is untenable. Pretense is an awful thing to carry around on your shoulders. The thing that makes America resistant to the isms is its love for individualism in the face of "groupthink". Why would we willingly give up that which makes us unique among the entire world. We wouldn't. I don't.