Anarchy

Is it ironic to write about anarchy, especially if you are not using spray paint?

I'm a few days late blogging on this topic, one that bookended the Saturday Washington Post. Of course, Greece was once again on the front page with an article on the rise of the anarchist movement in Europe but especially in the motherland.

Though a punk rocker from way back, at least 1981, I was never into anarchy that much. It might have been okay for the U.K. and the Sex Pistols, but I was too much of a socialist punk rocker, with a soft spot for government programs and public projects funded by progressive taxation (so maybe I was a Keynesian punk rocker) to see the appeal of anarchy as an ideology or world view.

The irony here is that many punks in England, especially the Pistols, hated the welfare state and it's leveling and blandness (even the national health service!).  There were other punks, like The Clash, who were more leftist/Marxists/populists/etc.  and in the U.S. most punks of that era were very left, following the anti-corporate, anti-Reagan, and anti-hippie credo of The Dead Kennedys and others (I may be overgeneralizing here, but that was my experience).

So I liked the state too much to be an anarchist, but also you simply can't trust anarchy, and more importantly the mob mentality that usually accompanies it.  I can't imagine anarchy is the best way to accomplish anything progressive, so it's odd to think it's popularity is on the rise in Europe.

One of the great political paradoxes is 'without order there is no freedom."  Or justice for that matter.  The rule of law, just law, is more important and more liberating than anarchy. 

A vivid example of that truism was also in The Post on Saturday, in my main man Colbert King's column on the Freedom Riders.   King brutally reminded us the cost of anarchy. In the south in the 50s and 60s there was anarchy.  The mob ruled, the police looked the other way, and in the anarchy that followed African-Americans and members of the civil rights movement were terrorized.  

His column is just one, small, snap shot of how the white power structure reacted to the civil rights movement, and took advantage of the lack of the rule of law, of anarchy.  

A year ago anarchists in Greece fire bombed a bank, killing 3 employees including a pregnant woman.  That incident prompted Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to state "protest is one thing, murder is another."

The U.S. has learned a lot from the Greeks.  Greek youth, the most active participants in the 'We won't pay' movement, have plenty of reasons to have little-to-no faith in Greek political structure. But they should learn from the U.S. in this case.  

All the great leftist victories in the U.S., from winning the Civil War to labor to civil rights, have relied on citizens insisting on a just application of the law and our democratic values.  Despite the anarchy, the civil rights movement eventually won (legall; within 10 years legal racism had been defeated).  But it was a disciplined, organized movement. 

The 'We won't pay' movement and others like them should focus on organizing around democratic values, not on promoting anarchy.