On February 1, the Tea Club held a conference with the elegant title “Keep to the Right” in Moscow. Among others, speaking was Mikhail Pozharsky, whom I have quoted many times, who used simple examples from the First World War to explain why you don’t need to fight the left to defeat them.
Today, the state handed down huge sentences in a flimsy case regarding the preparation of terrorist attacks, the so-called “Network” case. But this case was preceded by a real terrorist attack by anarchist Mikhail Zlobitsky, after which security services employees smirked with joy, having received new powers, budgets, and quotas for fabricating extremists. History has known cases where liberal reforms were rolled back or bloody wars were unleashed as a result of terrorist attacks, but I cannot recall a single instance where a terrorist attack prompted the state to loosen its grip on society. At best, the state limits itself to increased security measures for top officials, as happens in the USA, with its traditions of shooting presidents.
The other day, a second round of debates on anarchy took place between a team of ancaps and a team of left-wing anarchists. This was preceded by a long period of personal negotiations and attempts to find common ground; now, they managed to organize a civilized conversation in a public forum. And this is bearing fruit—for example, this review in an anarcho-channel. Each side is discovering the other, searching for conciliatory language, avoiding escalation during the debates themselves—and realizing that the main common enemy is not the left or the right, but the state.
Perhaps, over time, it will be possible to sway the brave left-wing anarchists away from revolutionary rhetoric toward something more moderate, so they stop their meaningless self-sacrifice for the benefit of provocateurs from the security services.
Indeed, I myself have significantly reduced the degree of approval for purely military tactics in my articles. I was quite rightly reprimanded during the discussion of my article on the doctrine of deterrence for the example of eliminating the King of Thailand. Truly, the will of one person does not decide so much that one can expect to solve a problem by eliminating that person or creating a deadly threat to them. It is far more useful if the idea of an attack by state representatives is viewed as ethically unacceptable, and this is achieved through the softening of manners.
So, let us continue our activity of education and persuasion, continue peaceful protest and the creation of a mass feeling of the state’s uselessness—and under no circumstances let us give it a reason to claim its necessity for the sake of fighting various dangerous extremists. The slogan that extremism in the defense of justice is not a vice is false.
As for those innocently imprisoned, they must, of course, be fought for against the state. This means taking to the streets, public appeals from celebrities, and other boring but effective political practices.
P.S. I was immediately written to saying that I confused cause and effect, and that Zlobitsky’s bombing happened precisely as a reaction to the “Network” case. Please forgive the blurred take; however, in such a scenario, the situation only becomes even more tragic.