BLM Should Learn From Anarchists

From Liberty Nation GenZ

BLM Should Learn a Thing or Two From the Anarchists of 1919

What do the anarchists of 1919 and the Marxists leading Black Lives Matter have in common? Quite a lot.

By: Leesa Donner

The voices of those at the helm of Black Lives Matter (BLM) have some Americans worried about what is to come as this summer of civil unrest unfolds. Are rioting, looting, and vandalizing statues a precursor to widespread violence? If this is merely the leading edge of chaos and anarchy, American history may provide some valuable lessons for radicals.

Almost exactly a century ago, the U.S. faced a similar period of civil unrest as far-left radicals, anarchists, and those who identified as communists initiated a violent uprising. This so-called Red Scare resulted in coordinated bombings at the homes of prominent people, including John D. Rockefeller and Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. At the time of the attacks, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor lived across the street from Palmer and had just passed the house when the bomb went off – close enough that body parts of the man who lit the fuse landed in their front yard.

The mayhem and madness were synchronized to detonate across the country at an appointed time. Explosions hit a church in Philadelphia, the homes of the mayor of Cleveland, a federal judge in Pittsburgh, an immigration chief – the list goes on and on. Accompanying each explosion was a pink flyer that read:

“War, Class war, and you were the first to wage it under the cover of the powerful institutions you call order, in the darkness of your laws. There will have to be bloodshed; we will not dodge; there will have to be murder: we will kill, because it is necessary; there will have to be destruction; we will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.”

Fast Forward to the Summer of 2020

Today, self-proclaimed Marxists have issued a stark warning: “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.” That was a threat issued by the president of the Greater New York Black Lives Matter, Hawk Newsome, on a Fox News program in June. BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors can be heard on YouTube saying that she and a comrade “are trained Marxists … We are super versed on sort of ideological theory.”

While this latest far-left uprising has not elevated to the level of 1919 – or the 1920 bombing of Wall Street, which resulted in horrific carnage – the language of this uprising is strikingly homogeneous to anarchists of the 20th century.

Wall Street bombing

The looming question, of course, is: What did government authorities do to quell the Red Scare? For those who love liberty, the response is unappealing. The so-called Palmer Raids included arrests and detentions without warrants, illegal searches and seizures, and deportation of hundreds of people who were “suspected” anarchists. The Bureau of Investigation (predecessor to the FBI) under the leadership of a young J. Edgar Hoover wielded the Espionage and Sedition Acts as weapons against anyone they thought to be subversive. In all, some 3,500 people were held in detention and an estimated 10,000 arrested.

It’s worth noting that the exact opposite happens when radicals try to force their will on an entire populace. In both eras – the 1920s and the 2020s – anarchist actions provide authorities with the determination to restore civility by any means necessary. The ugly truth is that anarchy most often produces government tyranny. Backed into a corner, law enforcement uses such times to overstep its bounds. Ultimately, those who plan to “burn the system” will come to the conclusion that their actions only serve to permit government authorities to double down on law and order.

It’s likely that efforts to vastly change the American system of government will fail in 2020, just as they did in 1920. The Marxists at BLM should take note of these historical facts as they sally on down the road toward more violence.

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Leesa K. Donner is Editor-in-Chief of LibertyNation.com and LNGenZ.com. A widely published columnist, Leesa previously worked in the broadcast news industry as a television news anchor, reporter, and producer at NBC, CBS and Fox affiliates in Charlotte, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC. She is the author of “Free At Last: A Life-Changing Journey through the Gospel of Luke.”

There are 7 Comments

This shit doesn't deserve a response but aside from it being embarrassing to see "libertarians" acting like the state needs excuses to throw its weight around, one cool effect of all the riots is that the month they were heaviest was also the time the lockdown mentality actually seemed to be fading, both socially and systemically.

Needs no justifications to subjugate and control other people, even though it always makes soemthing up.

However, i also think that if this article "doesnt deserve a response then you seriously need a good ol cup of shut the fuck up. Be the justice you want to see in the world, stop justifying your resentiments with the legal code of "deserving". Reciprocity is beautiful. So is ironic justice.

And the difference between "need" and "deserve" is what exactly?

My words were the shorter way of saying "I feel stupid wasting my words on an article this idiotic, but here's an observation anyways". You're the one telling people how to talk.

It jumps around a lot, the funniest part was the empty threat by the marxists. You cant just burn the system down.

The "history of anarchists" really doesnt matter as far as what the future will bring. We live in completely different times than 1920.

Fuck your pedagogical nonsense lisa

"Backed into a corner, law enforcement uses such times to overstep its bounds."

When were they backed into a corner in those eras?

Immigrants definitely were...and they bit back. If you read Paul Avrich's book about the Galleanisti what set them to violent retaliation first and foremost: their anarchist literary clubs would have really really free markets in parks. A cop saw some Italians (he used the slur) trading a revolver in the open at a picnic.

Then came a wave to test everyone's loyalties to WW1, for which the draft was instituted. Many Italian anarchists knew they were going to be deported...into the hands of Mussolini. Wall Street was a last act of desperation. One of their comrades had been thrown from the police headquarters to his death mere blocks away, and it was written off in the press as a suicide.

Never once was the system of control not in control. Quit using their mediated and sensationalized rationalizing as some sort of explanation or justification for repression. This country has been playing cowbows vs indians from the start, always warring and threatening the most marginalized of its domestic populations as less than human and therefore worthy of predation.

A mindset based on control requires tremendous energy input. It must constantly take take take and subjugate. Anything that cannot be made to stay the same is to be destroyed. This cannot last, and people will rightly push back to recover their lost humanity...

Can you imagine someone telling slaves or child laborers that they're only that way because they wanted to be free, so the government had to be tyrannical? "Slaves, also don't stop being slaves because the government is going to get even more tyrannical on you."

"You Afghani's better not not like being struck by drones because it'll make more drone strikes."

So what then, just shut up and get abused? Weather the tyranny, because that's all there is? That makes me determined to not obey even more.

That's the logic of this piece. And it's really weak and fucked up. Abusing power is what states do. We little people aren't doing anything to make them abuse us, or abuse us worse. Sometimes we get fed up and momentarily push back. It hasn't really changed anything, because the fundamental relationship at base is abuse: we are forced to rent ourselves to exist, with the threat of potential death or abduction and held for another type of random (taxes being founded on another, and debt servitude being another yet).

*ransom

why should BLM activists crack open some books about anarchists in the 1920s? How will that result in less black people getting shot by cops.

I'm really also VERY OFFENDED that there are now a total of 8 replies to this article, this website is clearly run by skinheads and post-leftists.

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