this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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Why is the Gadsden flag placed alongside a thin blue line flag? Those symbols are mutually exclusive. I would also strongly question the intent of the valknut symbol.
Ancaps are not ideologically consistent.
I would hesitate to call this only an inconsistency; it's really more of an example of cognitive dissonance.
I feel like we shouldn’t bully the dead husk of niche ideology. It must feel terrible to have virtually zero support for your politics and frustratingly pace around in the anonymous niche web communities because everyone in real life would just laugh.
It must be hard to have such views and grasp at straws daily reading some same scraps of Wikipedia with examples where for 56 days the system worked
I'm not gonna feel sorry for a bunch of dudes who fantasize about being the next Kyle Rittenhouse.
Mind you my comment isn’t exclusive to ancaps. There are tons of ppl screaming in the wind their whole life and dying without even realizing how stupid and misguided it all was. This is tragic, extremism is a cult for isolated from society. The last sliver of hope of a tortured mind
Would you mind clarifying exactly what "niche ideology" you are referring to? It's not immediately clear to me.
EDIT (2024-08-10T19:15Z): I think this comment of yours clarifies that you are referring to ancaps?
I refer to all weird online political views. Bloodthirsty leninists, self righteous ancaps, remote and depressed collapsniks and all else not fitting in the society and desperate for some form of hope in the quasi theological salvation of dusty political manifestos.
You would seldom find them irl unless they already took ar15 and are going for it. A natural extension of school shooters except the whole society is the class. If someone starts to lecture you on some maoism or the like better try to get on their good side
I mean ... ancap ideology is not about having support of this kind anyway. Which matches stoic philosophy somewhat.
There are flaws to ancap ideology, even terminal ones, but you are not pointing them out.
You should tell that to the endless sea of car bumpers and flagpoles I see flying both those flags and a Trump flag.
I would if I could.
I live in Southern Oregon and it's gotten to the point that I'm actually a little surprised when I don't see them side by side on pickups or flagpoles. On the way through Camas Valley or somewhere between the 5 and the coast, IIRC, there is a flagpole that has those, a thin green line flag and a Trump flag, just to really confuse everyone.
It's truly baffling. Perhaps not that they don't seem to understand, at the most fundamental levels, what they are so passionate about, but that they are so eager to let everyone know.
Standard libertarian/ancap combo. Don't tread on me (the Gadsden flag), tread on my enemies (the thin blue line flag). The valknut signals who those enemies are (blacks and immigrants) just in case the thin blue line by itself wasn't explicitly racist enough.
The presence of a thin blue line flag and a valknut symbol indicates that they are neither libertarian nor ancap.
You would think that, but no, I see the gadsen flag flying with the the thin blue line flag way too much
First of all, the presence of a Gadsden flag doesn't necessitate that the individual is a libertarian nor an ancap. Second, by the definition of libertarianism, it is incompatible with a thin blue line flag (assuming that it is interpreted as showing support for giving the police more oppressive power) or a valknut symbol (assuming it is interpreted as support white supremacy). Any one who displays both the Gadsden flag and the thin blue line flag is teetering on cognitive dissonance. The Gadsden flag represents resistance to oppression, and the thin blue line flag represents giving power to oppression.
It is not, ancap thought is perfectly compatible with a privatized police force and white supremacy (Murray Rothbard literally was one). And the Gadsden flag is commonly understood as being against state interference, not other forms of oppression.
Edit: and while I agree that it seems like an odd combination, there are really plenty libertarians out there who think they need to buy out /bribe the local police force to get them on their side should things go their way.
There is a cop, in my city, who has a gadsden flag, blue line flag, and a gold/black ancap flag, on his porch. He also has nazi appropriated norse symbolism tattooed on his arms. These people exist, he is a walking joke, like I would have thought this was some sort of trolling, if I didn't know he was risking his job over the tatts. He eventually deleted his facebook, and nextdoor, profiles because of how badly he was being made fun of over it, once someone dropped a link to his profile on reddit. He was worried he might lose his job if all that stayed up. He did, eventually get fired, but it had to do with something other than his suspicious tatts, and hypocritical beliefs.
We might as well say those symbols are owned by the far right.
Are you referring to a private police force because of the mention of the Thin Blue Line flag?
It depends what you mean by "perfectly compatible". An ancap would believe that the state shouldn't be able to prevent a person from being a white supremacist.
I agree. Perhaps my previous comment was lacking in clarity.
I would be hesitant to refer to such an individual as a libertarian. At the very least, not without further information.
Indeed
It's only cognitive dissonance if you assume all people are equal and deserve equal rights and freedoms.
A significant percentage of self-described anarchists and libertarians believe all people are not equal - that there are good people, who will use freedom responsibly, and bad people, who will use their freedom to harm others, and it is the purpose of government (cops, sheriffs, border patrol) to protect the good people from the bad people.
Such anarchists and libertarians wave the thin blue line flag unironically and with complete ideological consistency, because they believe police brutality and oppression will be directed at those who rightfully deserve to be oppressed.
Uhm, lots to unpack here, but I think you are mixing things up. Yes, classic conservatives do a divide like that and there is a reasonable argument to be had about the existence of people "bad" people without getting into moral arguments.
But the libertarians do not make this argument. They literally argue that being bad, i.e. acting purely selfish becomes a net positive to society through the invisible hand of the market 🙄
If they support police than that is on the grounds of in-group thinking ("these are our guys") or more often purely utilitarian as in: "we pay them to protect our interests".
Correct.
Such an individual would not be a libertarian.
A belief in libertarianism and the display of a Thin Blue Line flag is no longer teetering on, and is now simply cognitive dissonance. They are mutually exclusive.
I've seen this in the wild. I always ask myself "who do you think does the treading?"
The intent of the symbols may be diametric but the stupidity of the right to co-opt and repurpose any symbol is a historic tradition.
Did Nazis co-opt the valknut? I know it's Norse, so it wouldn't surprise me if they did, just couldn't find anything from some quick searching.
I'm not sure. I've honestly never seen it prior to this post. My knowledge of its use as a symbol of white supremacy comes from its Wikipedia article, so there's a high probability of my ignorance on it.
It makes sense when you realize that AnCaps are uneducated Anarchists who haven't read political theory (they generally swap as soon as they do)
Ancaps have different weights of the main criteria (which are the same set).
Both employ voluntarism and, well, lack of hierarchy. But there's such a thing as voluntary hierarchy. For ancaps voluntarism takes priority here, for the rest it doesn't. All the differences stem from that single point.
Other things aside, I think ancaps think about guns more often, so, eh, the pic would be inverted.
I don't fully understand how an anarcho-capitalist would put the "capitalist" part into practice under anarchy. Capitalism isn't sustainable without regulation, imo. Whoever has the monopoly on force will have the monopoly on control.
They use it in the meaning that many voluntary person-to-person interactions form a market, when property with which those are done is recognized. Nothing more specific.
It may be a market, but not all markets are capitalist. For a market to be capitalist it must be competitive [1].
References
Until endless amount of interactions take the same from you as one, all such markets will be competitive. Sorry.
I don't think that I understand what you are trying to say. Would you mind clarifying what you meant in your comment?
I said voluntary interactions form markets, you said only competitive markets form capitalism, thus voluntarism doesn't necessarily mean capitalism.
But in real life a market formed by voluntary interactions is competitive, because our time and attention and emotional resource are limited. Even if natural resources, food and such were not.
I would agree that basic principles of ancap do not mean capitalism as leftists describe it. Actually every idea or description of how things would work in ancap involve solutions pretty similar to those left anarchists use.
And since these two ideas have the same set of actual limitations, and leave the same things to personal choice, I'd say there's no technical difference, only ideological.
Using the term as it is currently defined, not all markets need to be voluntary [1][2].
References
Capitalism is defined to require that the markets be competitive [1], yes.
References
Voluntary exchange is a central characteristic of capitalism [1].
References
Not necessarily. For example, if the market were consumed by anti-competitive entities it is no longer competitive. An example of an anti-competitive entity could be a monopoly. Collusion is another example of a behavior which is not competitive.
How are you defining "leftist" in this context? Anecdotally, the average consensus of those that self-describe as leftists seems to be that they are anti-capitalist. Exactly what that belief entails is beyond my anecdote.
What "two ideas" are you referring to here?
I'm talking about A being a subset of B, you are talking about B being a subset of A.
Same mistake.
Looked to your reference and - same mistake.
It's also no longer formed by voluntary interactions.
Integration of my experience with people calling myself that. One can say - people refusing to discuss the possibility of markets not intentionally rigged by some non-market force.
Voluntarism and self-ownership.
You have a glaring problem with logic with the first 4 quotes, it's not an insult, but makes a discussion hardly possible until fixed, please do.
Ah, that's my mistake, then. I didn't initially read your comment as it stating that all voluntary interactions between people are themselves a market. I agree with that. However, I would still personally be more general in that all interactions between people form markets — they need not be voluntary. At the very least, I am not currently aware of an interaction that could not be thought of as a market.
Sure, but you're still misquoting me. What I originally said was:
From this statement, I am stating that A implies B. You responded with:
Which is stating that B implies A. A competitive market need not be capitalist.
This is part of the following quote which I read as being one thing:
I don't really see how the latter half draws from the former half. Yes, capitalism is only formed by competitive markets, and yes voluntary interactions doesn't necessitate capitalism, but I don't see how the latter can be drawn from the former.
The way you are wording your replies is somewhat hard for me to follow, so, for me, they are likely susceptible to misinterpretation. I feel that I have to reply to them in fragments.
I disagree. You can choose to not do business with a monopoly. You can choose to not do business with entities that are colluding. Having choice implies voluntarism.
An interesting definition. At any rate, the original point is just a matter of the definition used for a word — "capitalism". If they understand it as something different, then that is more an issue of poor communication.
I don't understand why you are all of a sudden bringing up "self-ownership", but yes if one fundamentally has self-ownership, then that implies that they can voluntarily take part in things. Do note that voluntarism isn't all or none; you can have certain things that aren't voluntary, eg taxes, and other things that are, purchasing goods and services. One could argue the degree to which one has self-ownership by how many non-voluntary things are required of them. Philosophically, one could perhaps always fundamentally have self-ownership — there may be social repercussions for an action, but there is no universal law preventing one from doing, or forcing one to do anything. It sort of depends on one's frame of reference.