Mohawks, metal, port wine, speakers, Yegor Letov, Grazhdanskaya Oborona, Yuri Hoy and Viktor Tsoi! And of course, mother-anarchy!

But seriously, do you think there are common grounds between libertarians and anarcho-punks, and is interaction or even cooperation between them possible?

Ahmad (question accompanied by a donation of 0.00005166 btc)

Perhaps the most punk thing I’ve ever seen is the movie “Fight Club.” There, it’s no longer just Tsoi’s “you must be strong, you must be able to say don’t tread on me,” but an aggressive denial of the dominant system as a whole, in which, of course, the distinct contours of some anti-system are visible: how wonderful it is to destroy something beautiful, how wonderful it is to wage guerrilla warfare against the regime by any means from spitting in soup to blowing up buildings, and most importantly—how wonderful self-destruction is. Self-destruction proves the sincerity of one’s views and provides a person with a high platform, even if before that they were nobody and had no name. And here, everyone repeats in chorus—his name is Vladislav Roslyakov! That is impressive.

Of course, the punk movement is a product of the twentieth century with its disregard for individual human life and very large-scale thinking. Punks did not defend their own individual freedom (freedom within the existing system is shit), because it is only possible through a transition to anarchy, and that primarily means the breakdown of the existing system. It is pointless to discuss whether punks have a positive agenda and to make its presence a condition for cooperation with them. It is quite enough that a punk will fight not against every system, but only against the one that spawned him. We are all a bit like virologists now, so I think the analogy of punks as antibodies to the state would be quite appropriate.

I think it’s clear from the above that there are common grounds between anarcho-punks and anarcho-libertarians. But what about interaction and cooperation? Here, I’m afraid, anarcho-libertarians will seem like boring, stifling and useless theorists to anarcho-punks. What is this “respect for private property”? The state holds you as property tighter than it holds your balls; forget about it. As long as you are afraid of living in shit, they will scare you by dipping you in shit, and in the fight against the system, one cannot be distracted by such trivial fears.

Punks are guerrillas. I think they could have quite mutually beneficial and mutually understandable cooperation with sufficiently hardcore agorists, who are also essentially guerrillas. But still, I would like to see a lecture, say, by Pavel Usanov before an audience of anarcho-punks, dedicated to some kind of brutality. Well, for example, a talk on the economics of Mexican cartels from the position of AEL. Naturally, Pavel should be in full dress, with a bow tie, otherwise the picture won’t be right.

The image is very important in terms of influence on society, so there should, of course, also be many carnival punks in a strong subculture, who mostly copy visual images rather than the style of thinking and, most importantly, actions. But please forgive me for not dwelling in detail on the visual component, such as mohawks and studs: that’s for the designers, they understand the language of material culture better.