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how do you do, fellow anarchists?
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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 as intended.
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
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.
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.
Indeed
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.
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.
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)
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.