Claims against Navalny

Supporters of political stability have many grievances against Alexei Navalny. If you ignore the anecdotal stuff, like “State Department agent” and “he would have stolen even more in their place,” and start asking in more detail, something curious emerges. If Navalny had overthrown Putin back in 2012, simply by preventing him from taking a third term, kicked both him and Medvedev out of the Kremlin, sat on the throne himself, befriended Europe, refrained from lending to Yanukovych, refrained from seizing Crimea, stopped inflating spending on the security forces and directed it toward social welfare instead—then in 2018, they would have voted for his second term and been champions of stability, asking “who, if not Navalny?” And they would have grumbled about gay parades in hushed tones, because there would be no reason to rock the boat.

In short, the main grievance “vatniks” have with Navalny is that he is weak and indecisive, and therefore unworthy of sitting on the tsarist throne. Instead of allowing himself to be beaten in the squares, he should have smashed the Kremlin with tanks; then he would be a respected man, not some lowlife. It is easy to see that this position is very close to the position of the well-known liberal extremist Arkady Babchenko, who still reminisces about the warm December of 2011 and expresses readiness to return to Russia only in an Abrams tank as part of a NATO peacekeeping contingent.

Alexei Navalny returned to Russia not at the head of a loyal guard, but on a shitty low-cost carrier; he was immediately punished for this stupidity, and rightly so. And if our leader is so dear to us, why the hell haven’t we freed him yet, and instead boast that on January 23rd the police seized a record number of people? Are we masochists? Is this why we went out? What do we actually plan to do to free Alexei? Where is the storming of Matrosskaya Tishina? Or do we think that they, the supporters of political stability, will defend Putin? No way! If Akela cannot protect himself, he has no business leading the pack.

That is the kind of interesting conversation I had recently, and I was unable to give my interlocutor satisfactory answers. Not only because I am not great at oral debates, but because essentially I have nothing to object with. Navalny and his team behave as if they haven’t even considered overthrowing the regime; Navalny seems perfectly content to spend another ten years playing Mandela and wait until Putin either dies on his own or becomes completely decrepit, hands over the throne, and his successor engages in national reconciliation by releasing Navalny and allowing him to run in the elections. Because even if they are looking at the Belarusian scenario, there was no need to return to Russia for that—hang out with Tikhanovskaya, meet with world leaders, push for sanctions, push for the freezing of the accounts of Putin’s cronies, rather than sitting in a cell. The cell is for Putin, not for you.

When Navalny and his associates try to explain why the hell Alexei rushed back to Russia, they bleat about moral duty. It is roughly like riding out on a white horse into machine-gun fire just to wave a papakha hat and send the army into a psychological attack because “the truth is on our side,” meaning we’ll overwhelm them by throwing hats at them.

So, I’ve suddenly found this touching unity with the supporters of the “strong hand.” As for tomorrow, I will try to post my thoughts on what I would like to see at the upcoming Sunday action.

*Us. Here. Power*!
Putin. Resign!
Give us. A Constituent. Assembly!

Freedom of speech — in respect of everything, but not physical violence

Voluntarist

Against the backdrop of recent blockings of conservative groups and resources by Western corporations, as well as in view of longer-standing claims against me regarding my calls to participate in the blocking of propagandist Vladimir Solovyov’s YouTube channel, I would like to express my, and in general the libertarian/voluntarist, position regarding freedom of speech.

As we know, the idea of voluntarism is to eradicate any manifestation of violence and coercive force in relationships between people, that is, to achieve a state of maximum freedom of activity, agreement, and association. It can be said immediately that the blocking of content of any kind by any platform is not a violent act, and therefore it is not something that a voluntarist can oppose. However, in the modern world, a situation has arisen where large social platforms are heavily dependent on states; they are in close cooperation with them (especially with police and intelligence services), and also frequently receive monopoly privileges and subsidies from them. Effectively, they operate to some extent using tax funds taken from people, and as long as this remains true, many believe they can be nothing other than public services to which freedom of speech should apply in an absolute (or nearly absolute, with minor caveats) degree. I also frequently encounter the opinion that even in a free society, pressure must be exerted on any large social platforms so that they also support full freedom of speech.

However, let us not forget that the main problem for us is violence. It must be fought. And in the course of this struggle, the dissemination and popularization of violent ideas must under no circumstances be allowed, as this will only provoke new acts of violence, which will lead to many negative externalities (about which I have spoken a lot in the materials of my channel and public page) and may eventually turn into a total catastrophe for us all (someone, wishing to solve their problems through violence, might even use weapons of mass destruction, for example, by releasing a very dangerous virus).

Understanding this will allow us to formulate an answer regarding what policy should be applied now on so-called public social platforms, and what is necessary when exerting pressure (except for forceful pressure, which is obviously unacceptable) on any platforms of this kind in general. And that is: freedom of speech is permissible in all cases except for cases of calls to violence.

Ideas based on coercive imposition should not be allowed for publication on such platforms. People who call for the initiation of violence against anyone should be blocked; general ostracism can also be applied to them until they decide to renounce violent aspirations. Calls for the punishment of people by state authorities are also unacceptable, since such punishments are implemented by forceful methods. Of course, this does not apply to calls for self-defense by any means in the event of the initiation of violence by an aggressor, as this action is aimed at stopping an act of violence already being committed and eliminating the associated negative externalities.

Conclusion: violent people must be subjected to ostracism, and violent ideas must not be allowed for publication and dissemination on social platforms. Pressure (of course, non-violent) must also be exerted on any social platforms to achieve the blocking of people and materials that call for violence. In the case of materials of another nature, everything is settled privately: each platform decides for itself what to publish and what not, and each person decides whether to use a particular platform and whether to introduce personal sanctions against it if they do not like the content published there.

Do we need to actively implement UBI from below?

Should we actively promote actions that contribute to PNBP within the framework of current law? For example, the acquisition of hunting rifles or gas pistols, martial arts training (and which ones?), the creation of voluntary militias to counter criminal violence, etc.? In general, does it mean that every “ideological” libertarian should possess at least some weapon or combat skills?

Continuing regarding self-organized people’s militias. If their goal is to apprehend actors of unorganized violence (hooligans, bandits, etc.) and hand them over to the state, can they be considered a successful example of a first step toward PNBP under statism?

Muscovite

In short, yes, we should, and yes, they can. Now, in more detail.

The key condition for maintaining anarchic social orders is a mass readiness to personally exercise one’s rights and an unwillingness to delegate them to anyone without serious benefit. Therefore, naturally, skills for ensuring both personal and public security through cooperation greatly help to push out of one’s head the idea of the state as something vitally necessary.

Now let’s go through specific activities.

Martial Arts — I am not particularly well-versed in them, but the main benefit is removing the psychological block before inflicting pain on another, and the fear of having pain inflicted on you. So, contact martial arts are preferable; otherwise, it’s just a variety of gymnastics, which, however, is also useful.

Knife. The most effective tool for kitchen disputes, and doubtfully effective on the street in an equal fight. It is intended, essentially, for a surprise attack or improvised self-defense with whatever is at hand. Therefore, specifically training with a knife is unlikely to be very relevant if the readiness to strike can be developed in some other way.

Pepper Spray. In conditions of a ban on rifled short-barreled firearms, it is the primary means of street self-defense; it works, as we saw on January 23, even against a buffed OMON officer. The skills for use are simple. The effect is easily verified even on oneself: the consequences are instant, and there is no long-term harm to health.

Civilian Firearms. They cannot be used on people, and one cannot train on people, so the only thing they are good for is developing skills on targets, assuming these skills might come in handy at the moment when you stop caring about what is “forbidden.” An additional downside to owning legal weapons is that they are seized after two administrative offenses, which can be received for literally anything; thus, the possession of a weapon motivates one to stay quiet and not stir—and this particular skill is rather harmful to train for building an ancap society.

Militias. An excellent legal way to develop skills in team power interaction, without serious risk to health, without a drop in income, while earning real authority among neighbors. If militiamen catch real aggressors rather than violators of public morality, then such associations are certainly worth joining. Again, in far from every case does it make sense to hand detainees over to the state. Judging by certain publications, self-proclaimed law enforcement associations in those remote corners where cops were last seen in the last century are usually inclined to resolve matters on the spot, and legal norms will inevitably emerge from this tradition. Ancap is the decentralization of law, so militias are exactly what the doctor ordered.

The obvious downside of militias is the disgusting smell of officialdom already emanating from the phrase “voluntary people’s militia.” Here, of course, it would be good to organize everything so as to practice doublethink less, but that is difficult to guarantee.

*How militiamen would like to see themselves*

Has it really begun?

Today’s rallies dispelled my melancholy. Many people came out; the crowd was angry and cheerful. There were far more cops than in previous years. They worked without brutality, but with enough determination. People were learning how to link arms on the fly, trying to beat back their own. There were few posters and flags; they didn’t come out to show off, but to push with their mass.

Videos where cops are sprayed with pepper, pelted with snowballs, or simply punched in the face are particularly motivating. I cowardly took the spray out of my pocket before leaving, but next time I will definitely bring it. And perhaps I will even look for an occasion to use it. It feels that this time, if criminal cases are filed, they won’t be fabricated or based on plastic cups, but for real. And I have a strange feeling that such cases will likely fuel the people rather than intimidate them. Yes, of course, I am recording this now while the trail is hot and the adrenaline-fueled memories are fresh. But people are already mentally preparing to come out in a week, if not sooner, and their adrenaline-fueled memories are also fresh. So, an escalation on the part of the protesters is quite likely, and that is exactly what is needed for a chance of success.

Special thanks to that young man, who remains unknown to me, who prevented my detention by grabbing me and shouting, “Hands off, she’s my girlfriend!” And the cop, characteristically, took his hands off. That’s how the homstead works)))

This is Moscow, I think. Unfortunately, we didn’t have such inspiring footage.

Overloading the stationary bandit

Bitarch, Voluntarist

Sometimes, as an argument regarding the impossibility of implementing any serious attempts to achieve a free society while violent state power still exists, the fact is cited that the state’s enforcement agents (i.e., the stationary bandit) will simply stop all related activities. For this reason, in particular, it is impossible to practice agorism—all agorists will be caught and imprisoned as economic criminals evading taxes and engaging in “illegal” entrepreneurship. And without the practice of agorism, it is impossible to build social institutions alternative to the state, that is, to create the initial infrastructure of a free society. This will also prevent the balancing of the Balance of Violence Potential—law enforcement will simply imprison those who produce and distribute self-defense weapons at the very beginning of the process. And without the BVP, there can be no talk of opposing the stationary bandit. However, there is a solution to this problem: it is necessary to make it so that the state cannot apply force, and one way to achieve this is to organize an overload of its enforcement structures, analogous to a DDoS attack on online services.

To begin with, it is still necessary to address the issue of self-defense weapons. Naturally, their production and distribution will require financial resources, even if the cheapest and most accessible options of such weapons are used. These can be collected through crowdfunding; it is also possible that anonymous patrons, beyond the reach of the state’s enforcement structures, will appear. With sufficient funds, the production and distribution of weaponry will not be a problem. Look, for example, at the situation with the production and distribution of drugs. Despite persecution by the authorities, they are produced quite successfully, albeit underground, and there are always people willing to make “dead drops” for them—many people are not afraid of punishment from the stationary bandit. This example shows us that engaging in the underground production of self-defense weapons and finding people willing to distribute them is entirely realistic.

Next, the self-defense weapons fall into the hands of the people. Of course, it will not be possible to provide them to the entire population immediately; however, even a small percentage of people will be enough, especially if they are chosen carefully. The best candidates are those most likely to become victims of persecution and violence by other people, or those who already are.
What will this lead to? To a sharp increase in injured and deceased persecutors and rapists. The police will be overwhelmed with cases of this kind. Furthermore, the representatives of the enforcement structures themselves may become victims if they attempt to use force against people, as there is a significant probability they will encounter an owner of a self-defense weapon. And let us not forget the protests and rallies that occur from time to time, where law enforcement will also suffer if they decide to attack an armed crowd.

All of this will simply overload the enforcement structures of the stationary bandit. They will lose the ability to effectively perform their duties. Due to the workload, they will be far from worrying about economic criminals—agorists will be able to quietly conduct their activities and expand the agoristic infrastructure. Even an attempt to introduce total control over citizens will not help—this will only hit the economic position of the authorities and diminish their enforcement capabilities.

Of course, some will say that people themselves will suffer from this, as there will be no one left to protect them, including from a judicial point of view, since the state courts, again, will be overloaded. But this is already a question of agoristic activity, during which self-defense measures and independent conflict resolution institutions can be organized. By the way, in the event of the state’s inefficiency due to the overload of its structures, many people in search of protection will decide to join these alternative solutions themselves, which will only expand agoristic activity and infrastructure.

I wanted to make an extremist post, but something didn’t work out

In 2017, Navalny released a film about Medvedev that unexpectedly took off and brought a huge number of new faces onto the streets. Back then, many expected that the most important film—about Putin—was about to be released. We had to wait almost four years, but now we have a double blow: one about Putin’s palace, which is very effective and capable of igniting a new audience, and one about the FSB poisoners, which had a serious effect even on long-time observers.

On January 23, like most of my Russian readers, I will go out into the street to demonstrate my disagreement with Navalny being held in prison. This is a simple warning that the boundary between the extremely undesirable and the completely unacceptable today lies somewhere around “imprisoning a public politician of international standing through lawlessness on a live broadcast.” The use of violence against people in uniform or state property is not endorsed. But there is also an emphasis on the unwillingness to coordinate the protest itself in any form with representatives of the regime.

For its part, the regime is predictably demonstrating that it does not recognize our right to such a demonstration and will most likely not listen. This manifests in preemptive arrests of everyone who is presumed not only to intend to go out but is also capable of participating in the coordination of protest actions. Those who are administratively dependent are being assigned various chores for Saturday on a mass scale, students are warned of expulsion, loyalists invent horror stories about police shooting to kill, and Roskomnadzor-chan is scrubbing communities from VKontakte and videos from TikTok—in general, the direction of work is more or less clear.

Effectively, we are now at a fork between the Ukrainian and Belarusian scenarios. And I would, of course, prefer the Ukrainian one, but the Belarusian one seems more likely to me. I don’t know what other cards Navalny’s team has in their hand, but I suspect that the strongest ones have already been played, and the Ukrainian scenario requires the ability to raise the stakes significantly. In short, I am going tomorrow with a heavy heart and without much hope, not even for victory, but for at least some improvement in the situation. If no unpleasant surprises occur, tomorrow I will try to reflect in another post on what it felt like. And so, a channel about theory turns into a chronicle of some petty squabbling…

The stylistics of 2021 differ noticeably from 2020: people look back at the rules less and less

As time goes on, I am more and more surprised that there are still people convinced that the state benefits citizens by creating norms, thereby increasing the predictability of life. But if there is anything one can be sure of, it is that the state constantly violates its own norms, and from time to time changes them to legalize these violations. The game can also be played in reverse: if people massively and consciously violate a norm, it will eventually be softened or abolished—but until then, it will ruin the lives of a vast number of people, and when the norm changes, they won’t even bother to offer a fleeting apology.

You are constantly constrained by absurd, impossible norms handed down from above, and you either tolerate it or fight it (the latter is called “engaging in politics”). If you fight, the norms constrain you even further. It doesn’t matter whether you are a cog in the state machine or a completely private individual: there will be absurd norms for everyone. Simply depending on your weight in the class hierarchy, you will have to exert different efforts to evade the execution of some inconvenient norm with impunity or to get it abolished.

Today, the most convenient way for the state to introduce arbitrary restrictions is, of course, covid. Any business can be closed, any offline activity banned, arbitrary expenses can be imposed on people, or passport control, detention centers, and courts can even be merged into one. Millions bear the costs of covid itself; billions bear the costs of covid-related bans. But the suffering of billions in no way helps to save millions; they simply suffer along for the ride.

You have read three paragraphs of whining, which means that the situation with Navalny has left me stunned. I need to at least outline an answer to the question “what to do.” Navalny claims that taking to the streets works best. And how does it work? You go out. You get beaten. You go out. You are fined. You go out. You are imprisoned. Everyone around discusses the failure of the protest. The country becomes a pariah, the economy crashes, and those who are beaten, fined, and imprisoned become poor even faster. This goes on for about twenty years, then a miracle happens, and the regime becomes loose enough to collapse. By this time, only the most inert and incompetent remain in the country, while the clever ones have long since settled abroad.

Of course, any oppositionist would prefer everything to be resolved more quickly. A peaceful rally suddenly turns unpeaceful, the National Guard is driven from the squares, the order to bring in tanks is sabotaged, and suddenly the Prime Minister announces that the President has passed away suddenly and invites the opposition to jointly form a government of national reconciliation. But for now, it is not customary to call for such a thing aloud: the level of bitterness is insufficient. For us, a refusal to authorize a rally is still considered a valid reason to cancel it.

If you count on changing the situation in the country through rallies, at least expand the circle of protesters. Is the person already a regular? Leave them alone, look for a newcomer. It is pleasant to see familiar faces in the crowd, but it is far more useful to see new ones. If authorization was denied due to covid, that is a reason to rally not only for that but also for the abolition of covid restrictions. But it is better, of course, to fundamentally not notify the authorities of the intention to take to the streets. Let them monitor social networks instead of hoping that everything will be told to them voluntarily.

And, of course, if you intend to become regulars at protest actions, you will have to get rid of real estate, cars, and bank accounts—everything that can be seized for refusing to pay a fine. Or do you intend to pay the fines? Really? Do you want to overthrow the regime or feed it? In a while, they will start trying to fire protesters on a mass scale. This is a reason to get ahead of the game by asking employers to fire you and hire you in the same position under the table.

You can do none of this, of course, and just quietly grumble and keep a low profile. Then the inertial scenario described in the paragraph about twenty years will work.

I make a poor politician; I have never known how to motivate people to perform heroic deeds…

*When the legal is illegal, it’s better to look to the shadows*

Morality and Weapons

Voluntarist

I recently read the chapter “Morality and Weaponry” from one of the works of ethologist Konrad Lorenz. He made some quite interesting observations about how various animal species behave in intra-species clashes. From these, important conclusions about violence can be drawn, which will be relevant to other materials I publish on my channel. Bitarch has posted the full text of the chapter; you can read it by following this link. For now, I will briefly describe its essence to you.

Usually, the violent tendencies of animals are judged based on inter-species relationships. Analogies are often drawn between how a predator, such as a fox, catches and kills a hare, and how one human kills another. Although this comparison is completely disproportionate, it is far more accurate to compare a predator’s hunt for other animals with a human’s hunt for animals. However, if one looks at how animals behave in intra-species clashes, a fairly high level of restraint in their behavior can be noticed.

Of course, if we take poorly armed species, such restraint is not as strongly expressed. Once, Lorenz left two collared doves (a variety of pigeons) in one cage and left until the next day. He did not expect anything bad from this decision; even though these individuals did not get along, it was unlikely that particular ferocity could be expected from pigeons. However, upon returning, he found one of the individuals finishing off the other. The problem was simply that the second individual had nowhere to run. Previously, Lorenz had observed a clash between hares and logically assumed that it could end the same way if it took place in a cage rather than in an open meadow. Poorly armed species are often quite ferocious in their manifestation of violence, but this usually does not lead to bad consequences, as they cannot quickly and effectively inflict damage on their fellow species, and the latter, in turn, always have the opportunity to escape. But if they are so ferocious, what can be expected from more armed species? One might assume even more terrible and bloody clashes, but that was not the case.

Observations of wolves and dogs showed that during clashes they do not inflict fatal injuries on one another. When one side loses, instead of continuing to defend itself with all its might, it does the opposite—it exposes vulnerable areas, such as the neck, a single bite to which would be enough to kill it. However, the other side cannot do this; they are stopped by certain internal inhibitors. Similarly, birds capable of inflicting severe damage with their beaks do not use their full potential in clashes. There is a proverb that a crow will not peck out another crow’s eye, and this proverb is absolutely true. Even when crows fight, for example over food, it never occurs to them to eliminate their opponent in the most effective way, which would most likely lead to their subsequent death—by pecking out an eye with one precise strike. Furthermore, birds are very careful when cleaning the feathers of their fellow species, especially near areas such as the eyes; they do not use their beaks with the same force as they do when feeding. Why such inhibitors developed is, of course, because otherwise, representatives of these species would have torn each other’s throats out, pecked out eyes, and all gone extinct together.

In this regard, humans are closer to doves and hares than to wolves and crows. By nature, humans are poorly armed. But over time, they became the most armed creatures in the world. This happened quite quickly; there was no time to develop natural inhibitors. And, considering that the survival of the species is impossible if its representatives destroy their own kind, an important question arises, which Lorenz formulated in these words:

The day will come when two warring camps find themselves face to face, before the danger of mutual destruction. A day may come when all of humanity is split into two such camps. How will we behave in this case—like doves or like wolves? The fate of humanity will depend on how people answer this question. We must be vigilant!

If the aggressor kills the property owner, does the property pass to him?

Someone

Property is, as is fashionable to explain nowadays, a bundle of rights. Moreover, an awful lot of these rights can be invented: the more complex the legal relations in society, the more of these rights there are, the harder they are to distinguish, and the more they intertwine. For example, I can visit a friend and sit down to work at a computer that he rents along with the apartment using his parents’ money, where I pay for access to the computer with a kiss. I use a pirated operating system and type the text of an article promised to a client, for which I have received an advance payment. In this regard, can the friend’s parents, the owner of the apartment with the computer, and the employees of the operating system manufacturer also demand a kiss from me, and exactly what share of the kiss? Can I, instead of a kiss, send the guy to my client so that the client can kiss him himself, since he has such an urgency that I have to work anywhere at an odd hour? The answers to these questions seem obvious only if we have some roughly similar notions of what is proper in our minds.

But notions of what is proper depend quite heavily on context. If I kill an opponent in a computer game, and the game implies the possibility of looting the corpse, then the transfer of the deceased’s property to me causes no particular dispute. If the same rules apply in a live-action role-playing game, then my ownership of the killed person’s property can also be quite legal. Finally, if I participate in such an unpleasant variety of role-playing games as a real war, then the appropriation of weapons, ammunition, and various souvenirs from the body of the killed person there also does not cause misunderstanding among those around.

Moreover, military booty may not be limited to things from a corpse. If tomorrow Navalny kills Putin, he could well claim to inherit the presidential post in Russia, and show me that strange person who would dispute this. Prescribe him a triple dose of fantasy.

But as soon as we move into a context where murder is not considered a way of resolving conflict, it ceases to be a legitimate way of acquiring the property of the killed. After that, the entire bundle of rights for the killer will shrink to the factual possession of what he managed to take from the killed, and only for as long as it is not taken away.

*Madam President, please choose the dish upon which to place your trophy during the inauguration.*

Rodion Belkovich. Blood of Patriots

Some time ago, Rodion Belkovich visited Novosibirsk to present his book “Blood of Patriots.” When I asked if there were plans to publish the text in electronic form, he replied that there weren’t, because “I know you libertarians—you’ll buy one copy and put it in the public domain.” Well, if that’s how it is, so be it. I had to get a paper copy, scan it, format it—and now I am putting it in the public domain. Considering how many footnotes are in the book, it was quite an adventure. The text contains my donation link, in case you decide to thank me for the publication. A link to the author himself could have been included, but he does not keep his details in the public domain, and that is his choice.

Ancap-chan

I answer questions on ancap, libertarianism, economics, politics, ethics, law and occasionally on abstract topics.