Inside an anarchism convention

I'm finally getting around to expanding on my "Knee-deep in subculture" tag where I record my observations from interactions with various groups, which so far includes yoga hippies and the Occupy Boston protest.

In January 2008, I attended a free weekend anarchism convention in downtown Portland Maine that was promoted on an acquaintance's MySpace page. I wanted to hear what they were all about, as I was still somewhat new to calling myself a libertarian and expected to find a lot of common ground.

I was completely wrong about that.

I was also completely wrong in my jokes that an anarchist convention would be fatally disorganized. There was about 40 of us sitting close together on the carpet while the organizers spent more than an hour explaining the rules for us. The weirdest one was how we were to use "caususes" in case we belong to minority groups that are offended and wanted to pause the meeting.

For example, if someone said something about gays that a gay person didn't like, they could pause everything like a Zack Morris "Time Out." All the gays would discuss the issue outside while everyone else waited in silence until the gay caucus came back in and presented their findings. Fortunately, that never actually happened.

We were told to introduce ourselves by our names, why we were there and what gender of pronoun we preferred. Seriously.

I made no attempt to infiltrate the group as a rebel. I wore a tie while everyone else was in gutterpunk garb. Most of the attendees were in their teens or early twenties and there was one bearded elder who attended Woodstock and never hatched from his tie-dye cocoon.

The discussions were like a pageant for who could display the most economic ignorance. I quickly learned the difference between individual anarchism, the kind I was hoping to hear about, and collective anarchism, which is just ho-hum anti-capitalism, anti-corporation, anti-globalization Marxist opium dreams. There was applause when someone talked about their "vote for no one" campaign, which included putting signs around town that said "Don't vote, they're all Nazis".

Everyone spoke starry-eyed about the concept of "rising up," where the general public would become swayed to their side and overthrow the system from the inside. No one offered example of this actually happening. I repeatedly heard people say that graffiti messages would help the public learn and appreciate their political messages. During a workshop on how to get Bank of America to stop loaning money to companies that perform mountaintop removal mining, one girl suggested that they go into a Bank of America branch and smoke a bunch of cigarettes to mimic air pollution, and this would cause the employees to rise up and change the company from the inside.

This suggestion received a ton of applause, and no one questioned that giving low-level bank clerks a tough time is going to sway them to your side, and even if it did, how that would translate to changes in corporate policy.

To their credit, activists from Earth First! had a good understanding of focusing on cause and effect to achieve their goals, instead of just feel-good public spectacles. They lead a discussion on spiking trees to stop logging companies. Someone in the audience spoke up about how tree spiking poses bodily risk to the laborers and they were immediately shushed by everyone else. An Earth Firster said they were just talking about effectiveness of the tactic now, and would discuss the ethics of it later. That discussion never happened, as should be expected.

After a free lunch of vegan-friendly food swiped from dumpsters, everyone started talking about how they were going to stop the "Iron Sea." This sounded menacing, and I finally asked what it was.

It turned out to be the upcoming 2008 Republican National Convention, or RNC. We broke into groups to brainstorm ways to disrupt the RNC, and everyone submitted illegal ideas like sabotaging the bus system and blocking the streets to keep people from attending the convention. It was clear the spirit of democracy was absent.

I learned that anarchist protesters divide themselves into different sections depending on their rioting preferences. Non-violent people will be in one place and those who want to assault the police and burn cars go elsewhere. They have "medics" with red cross decorations to help get pepper spray out of rioters eyes and they get free legal help from the National Lawyer's Guild activist group.

This should sound familiar with anyone who read the Occupy Boston post I made last week when I interviewed Mark. The same breed of violent protesters are intertwined with the gentle reformers of Occupy Wall Street, and I don't think enough supporters realize who they're marching with.

The anarchists were not the least bit shy about talking about these intentions to commit violent crimes. I was a clean-cut guy in a tie and vest who was taking notes and they still spoke about openly about terrorizing political rivals. These groups start riots and when they get arrested they lie to the public and say they were peaceful protesters who were attacked by evil police.

There are anarchists who don't participate in violence, but they are still willing to work with the bomb-throwers. Tolerance of evil is corrupting. I think it's telling that they claim the police are Nazi-like thugs, but a lot of their tactics depend on the police respecting their civil liberties, like chaining their hands together in tubes or tying themselves to buildings. How would it have gone if a group had chained itself to the gates of Auschwitz?

I'm not sure if anyone from the convention was part of a group of masked rioters arrested at the Republican National Convention for the usual stuff: fighting police, burning cars and macing old women. The local alternative weekly repeated all the usual lies in support of the rioters, and then praised them when a judge threw out the case because their masks spoiled photographic evidence.

This is what I've been trying to warn my liberal friends about when they say they support the Occupy Wall Street movement and tolerate the extremists inside. Anarchists are brutes who want to violently overthrow the country, and they have murdered people on Wall Street before. I've seen masked men in Boston with my own eyes and I can't overlook the threat they represent. These people want blood, not reform, and I have trouble seeing how anyone could justify having them as allies.