Students for a Stateless Society

From the inception of Students for a Stateless Society we have strived to provide a space to learn about liberty and engage in projects to further its cause. We seek to provide a networked structure that will allow for maximum autonomy of our chapters while fostering maximum inter/intra-chapter participation, communication and coordination. Although we do not ‘own’ the S4SS ‘trademark’ we feel it is necessary to emphasize that we do decide for ourselves which individuals, groups and chapters we recognize as being part of our network.

For the last few months we have been observing a rapid change of subject and tone in the discussions held at the facebook group of the S4SS chapter in Belgium; Students for a Stateless Society UGent. The atmosphere present in that group is becoming increasingly hostile towards fellow liberty-advocates, liberty-oriented organizations, and –most clearly- those of the Islamic faith. In accordance with our organizational orientation which states:

“3. S4SS spaces are safe and valued spaces. We are dedicated to not only identifying agents of aggression, but dissolving institutions of oppression.”

We feel S4SS U-gent is not representing this orientation in their structure or discussions. In fact we feel they are actively promoting oppression of Muslim minorities, as evidenced by the following facebook-conversations:

Piece 1: https://www.facebook.com/groups/452955004728164/permalink/637332409623755/

Everaert: According to Lode Cossaer and his fellow Trotskyists it is “redundant to talk about the problems in the Arab world” and “we should focus ourselves on signs of hope.” I propose sending him on a one way trip to Syria. He can go and ignore the bullets and beheadings (they’re redundant anyway), and look for hope. Surely he won’t return. That kid won’t even survive reality.

Arnaert: Cossaer denies reality? Behold the most important attitude of the left!

Everaert: Reality is redundant, so not relevant and pointless. Bleri Lleshi = Lode Cossaer (ed. Bleri Lleshi is a leftist Belgian philosopher, documentary filmmaker and political scientist who focuses on things like identity, equality and neo-liberalism)

Janssens: It would be relevant enough if you know that the SPA/PS (Leftist political parties in Belgium) are growing in power because of the muslims, and that the Arab world is helping them accomplish this. Unless his hope is is ‘not being beheaded in 20 years because he is a Christian’.

Verdyck: He has no capital and his ambition to work for the government all his life.

Xavier Everaert, Brecht Arnaert, Olivier Janssens and Yannick Verdyck share very islamophobic viewpoints as visible from the above conversation. Let us be clear; We do not believe the Muslim world is helping leftist political parties gain power. Muslims are individuals with their own thoughts, their actions and political beliefs are not a result of their skin color or belief in a certain deity. Additionally:

Piece 2: https://www.facebook.com/groups/452955004728164/permalink/636924376331225/

In response to a story involving a recommendation to the government to change public holidays to involve more multi-cultural festivities instead of just Christian ones.(http://m.gva.be/nieuws/binnenland/aid988952/pasen-hemelvaartsdag-en-allerheiligen-geen-wettelijke-feestdagen-meer.aspx) A selection of comments has been translated.

Janssens: Men, it’s time for revolution

Kint: ‘recommendation’

Jacobs: Funny how the result of ‘inter-cultural dialogue’ always comes down to giving Muslims more advantages while Catholics get doused in shit every day by our regime’s media.

Janssens: Enough is enough.

Arnaert: I don’t think they’re taking it far enough. I think western names like John, Peter and Paul are quite upsetting as well.

Verdyck: And of course, everyone who thinks this will cause trouble between original-Belgians and muslims is obviously a xenophobe.

Everaert: Guns. Guns to kill all those sand-niggers and their servants like Lode Cossaer, just like the animals they are.

Verdyck: I have never been able to find the difference between Mein Kampf and the Koran, but according to Lode Cossaer and Joelle Milquet there is definitely a difference. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in German, that xenophobic nationalist!

Let us highlight Everaert’s comment: “Guns. Guns to kill all those sand-niggers and their servants like Lode Cossaer, just like the animals they are.” Do we really need say more? In no way can you call this critical of religion. This is pure racism. S4SS is supposed to provide safe spaces for students of all sorts, including individuals with minority religious and ethnic backgrounds. In addition this comment is a threat to initiate violence against peaceful people; S4SS should not associate itself with people who make threats to the life and liberty of others. If this wasn’t enough, here is more:

Piece 3:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/452955004728164/permalink/628664343823895/

Janssens: HHH (ed. Hans Herman Hoppe) has the balls to say that, thanks to our welfare state, our genetic pool is fucked. Exactly my thoughts. The only reason the Muslim parasite can breed at a 10 times faster pace than us. Totally love this guy.

Kint: Truefax. A virus can’t survive without a host.

And finally:

Piece 4: https://www.facebook.com/groups/452955004728164/permalink/619657114724618/

In response to: http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=dmf20130723_00667877 A selection of comments has been translated.

Kint: My problem is that mohammedan promise 5 times a day that they will chop my head off, and that I have to pay for them to do this.

Kint: Under normal circumstances people like that would be institutionalized, or better yet: deported. Because the kuffar (unbeliever) keeps paying to finance and maintain that fascist death-cult. Stop welfare checks and the problem is solved.

Kint: Mohammedans who do not promise this are not good mohemmedans. The ‘existence’ of the so-called moderate muslim is irrelevant in this discussion. The question is: what side will the moderate muslim take when all hell breaks loose?

Kint: Servititude is the worst. Breivik had the idea.

(ed. Breivik: Anders Behring Breivik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik )

Kint: Mohammedans must practice Jihad in multiple ways. One of the techniques is to soothe the Kuffar to sleep by becoming ‘moderate’ or becoming your friend.

Everaert: ‘I know friendly muslims, so there is no problem” , how cute.

Everaert: I know how you will defend yourself. You will convert and collaborate and decapitate your mother and father because your moderate friends ask you nicely, just like in Syria.

Kint: Collaborators of islamofascists will be the first targets. The fear has to spread to the other side. http://wiki.artikel20.com/

Kint: Moderate muslims are a fiction created by Mohammed himself. They are the first wave of the Jihad. The anthrax in your carpet. This is where the discussion ends for me, you are in a deep comatose sleep. You won’t care if your head is removed. Insh’allah! (ed. If god wills it!)

Everaert: First point is to get rid of collaborators like you because we have the suspicion that you will pick their side. Just like the liberals have picked the side of the salafists in the middle-east, is there any reason to think why they won’t do that here?

Again, there is no conspiracy of world domination by which ‘the Muslims’ are seeking power. Suggesting that people are automatically part of a plot just because of their religion or ethnic ancestry is racism. Also, posting references to kill-lists set up by racist groups does not qualify S4SS UGent as a safe space, which S4SS chapters should be.

We would like to take the opportunity to point out the continuous hostility towards Lode Cossaer, president of the Murray Rothbard Institute in Belgium. Throughout multiple conversations he has been ridiculed, verbally attacked and his life has been threatened. As S4SS members we feel deeply ashamed that personal attacks like this have happened in a chapter that we consider part of our network. If you’re reading this, Lode, we would like to apologize for not taking action on this at a sooner date. We empathize with the possible fear and under appreciation you feel because of S4SS UGent.

In response to the evidence provided above we have decided to dissociate ourselves with S4SS UGent as well as the members that most prominently voiced racist opinions and threats; Xavier Everaert, Brecht Arnaert, Olivier Janssens, Yannick Verdyck and Peter Kint. We suggest that the members of S4SS UGent who are not part of its racist core to start a different chapter, a safe and valued space, so that the idea of a stateless society may continue to grow in their university and their country.

Finally, we would like to provide the opportunity for anyone else to sign this message with or without additional comments. As a closing statement let us reiterate our orginizational orientation:

The Students for a Stateless Society (S4SS) agree to the following four design principles:

1. “Student” does not mean subservient, submissive, or subordinate. A student is anyone who desires knowledge. A student can be either a teacher or a learner.

2. A stateless society is anarchy. Students have a right to contribute to and have a voice in the institutions they participate or constitute. As anarchists we will actively pursue and support hierarchy dissolving and mutual aid projects. Our time as students is not a time of passivity or mindless discipline, but a time for activity and creativity.

3. S4SS spaces are safe and valued spaces. We are dedicated to not only identifying agents of aggression, but dissolving institutions of oppression.

4. All chapters of S4SS, to be considered active, must have at least one volunteer “point of contact” that can be reached by interested students or encouraging chapters. There is no limit to the number of S4SS chapters that can be on any one campus – swarm and take over!

The other day, members from Oklahoma University and Southern Nazarene University’s S4SS chapters joined a few dozen people in Oklahoma City to protest potential American military intervention in Syria. It was well over a hundred degrees, and there were a few hecklers, but it’s important to show those who oppose this and any other war they’re not alone.

SNU S4SS members at the protest. Multiple hecklers told them to turn the flag around. Photo credit: Trevor Hultner.

One of the common diversions I’ve heard from war-defenders in recent years is that since we don’t have a draft anymore, people who don’t want to fight wars don’t have to. So we shouldn’t worry. Of course, that misses the point – even if I’m not being forced to do it, it is still evil to invade other nations, dropping bombs that we know for certain will cause large amounts of collateral damage. The main thing isn’t just that I don’t want any part of it, but that it shouldn’t be done.

But that got me thinking the other day. While it’s true that the State doesn’t use an army of drafted slaves anymore, we’re still forced to take part in other ways. Since it’s the State doing the killing, we are forced to pay for it. You might not be forced to give your labor in being present on the battlefield, but the product of whatever labor you do end up doing still has to go there.

Imagine the homes, bakeries, playgrounds, hospitals, and whatever else that could have been built had that money stayed with you and been able to go to those projects you think are actually valuable. Instead, our resources are conscripted into the machine of war, which eats your labor and churns out death. There is no conscientious objector status for being a cog in the political economy of war.

And we’re not only forced into making that machine’s fuel, but also into breathing its exhaust — the culture of war. We are forced to watch as war

OU S4SS members exchange information with the Oklahoma Center for Conscience. Photo credit: Trevor Hultner.

pollutes the culture, making so many perfectly peaceful people callous to corpse piles, and teaching them that the greatest honor is in being a part of the process that makes them. We are forced to see a psychological fusion of community and militarism, where saying that murder is wrong is taken to mean you hate your neighbors. Where you are not allowed to love the pond near your house without ignoring the pools of blood we’re forced to pay for. Where you are not allowed to love a school down the street without excusing the incineration of children halfway across the world. There is no conscientious objector status for having to live with the culture of war.

It is important, then, for us to become conscientious objectors of a kind that we can. Not only must we refuse to comply with war ourselves, but we must fully object to it. We must object to the culture of war that’s been forced on us whenever we see it and voice loudly that supporting the institutions that destroy another community has nothing to do with supporting your own – or else we will continue to see people who just want to keep their friends and families safe sacrificed to keep others in danger. We must combat the political economy of war by doing whatever we can to eliminate the power to use other people’s resources against their will – or else we will continue to see the fruits of free exchange stolen, and melted down into bullets and bombs. We must make clear to others why we refuse to participate in wars where the killing of innocents is inevitable, and why they should as well.

Center for a Stateless Society » AN OPEN LETTER TO THE TURKISH PROTESTORS.

S4SS and C4SS stand with you! To the Turkish protesters!

From RT:

Note: This poll is NOT scientific. But funny still.

Who would you vote for in the US Presidential Election:

16% : Democratic incumbent Barack Obama all the way

11% : Republican challenger Mitt Romney to get America back on track

19% : Any of the third party candidates, left or right

54% : No one! The system is rigged and the election is meaningless

Let’s face it: all we can really do is laugh at this point.

James Tuttle at C4SS ponders why this is.

I often think of those two quotes, especially when people ask why there are so few women anarchists and libertarians. The recent anarchist survey came back with 82% of the respondents being men. Libertarian surveys also have lopsided results.

Why?

From CNN:

Obama has already authorized 283 strikes in Pakistan, six times more than the number during President George W. Bush’s eight years in office, Bergen wrote earlier this month. As a result, the number of estimated deaths from the Obama administration’s drone strikes is more than four times what it was during the Bush administration — somewhere between 1,494 and 2,618.

From RT:

On Thursday, legal documents intended to be cloaked indefinitely were accidently unsealed in US District Court in Seattle for a moment, finally offering a small bit of insight as to why the FBI has been targeting adherents to a specific ideology and intensifying what some have equated to a politically-motivated witch-hunt aimed at anarchists.

The Seattle Times reports that an affidavit dated October 3 was momentarily made available during last week’s court proceedings, revealing to those in attendance that the investigation into Plante and her peers dates back to earlier this year when the FBI first began spying on a group of suspected anarchists they believed were conspiring to commit acts of violence and destruction.

The third presidential debate is over. The air has been filled with mindless drivel. But the so-called election continues. Tomorrow, and for a few more days, the talking heads will also tell us what to think. They will continue to sprout the pseudo-gospel of politics, the lie that we have a choice, a voice in what happens in this country.

But that is a lie. We have no such choice. We have the illusion of choice. Our voice is muted cronies and the lobbyists and the corporate interests. They own the government. And the government owns us. Freedom be damned.

In November, the election will be over. Or should I say THIS election will be over. For a few weeks after this election, the talking heads will once again tell us what this outcome means for this country. The corporate media will go into its spin. If Obama wins, MSNBC will continue to paint him as the messiah, while Fox will treat him as the Anti-Christ. If Romney wins, fox will treat him as the messiah and MSNBC will come two steps short of calling him the spawn of Satan. Despite the fact that these two ‘candidates’ offer the same policies—more drone strikes, less freedom, more debt, etc.

Then the spin will continue. The talking heads will debate about the mid-term elections. Who will take the Senate? What about the House? The media will again pretend we have choice. There is no choice. There can be no choice. The very system itself doesn’t work. The system is anti-choice. That is the very foundation of the system. The system I refer to, of course, is the demonic entity of the state.

The state can only exist through force, coercion and theft. That is it. There is no choice in that. If you want democracy, abolish the state. The market, the thing of spontaneous order where voluntary actions—choices—move society. A stateless society, one of voluntary choice. That is true democracy. That is freedom. That is choice. All things in society will be allocated by voluntary action, by individual choice. But that can only happen when the state is out of the picture—completely

I didn’t watch the debate. I didn’t see much point in it. If I had watched it, I probably would have felt about twenty percent dumber.

As far a voting goes, I’m not really opposed to it if it’s going to help spread the message of liberty. Some people don’t share my opinion, and that’s perfectly fine. I can completely respect that opinion. I, and I’m sure many other people, came to anarchism after first becoming a minarchist libertarian. So if voting for someone is going to eventually spread the eventually spread the message of anti-statism, then I don’t see anything wrong with it.

But voting just for the hell of it doesn’t make any sense, especially when the choice is between Goldman Sachs 1 and Goldman Sachs 2.
But what really irks me is when statist left-wingers say that the corporations own the government (which, of course, they do) and then propose that the government should be given more power, as if that would lead to some sort of propitious outcome. There is apparently some belief that our wise, benevolent overlords will break free from their corporate chains and our masters will wave their magic wands and fix everything that’s wrong with America.

Then there are the people that call non-voters ‘apathetic.’ But is it really apathy to not vote when the choice is between to corporatist stooges? I call it common sense. To me blindly believing in the message of a politician, who is no different from his predecessor, while blaming his failures on the previous administration is much worse than ‘apathy’; it is a rejection of reason.

But I guess you can have it your way. If you want to call me ‘apathetic’ for refusing to choose between two government stooges to take away my freedom, then go ahead. I’ll just call you stupid.

2012 elections are upon us.  We are seeing great divides in the movement amongst libertarian statists and libertarian anarchists.  Many are caving further and further into the political process, although everyday we see great losses for liberty using this method.

Once great libertarian organizations are becoming statist and tyrannical in the way that they manage themselves and their members.    They will participate in activities or act buddy-buddy with government sympathizers for personal or financial gain.  Many students realize this and quickly refuse to take part of said groups.  S4SS is not represented by leaders and will personally strive to get non-anarchist donations.

S4SS is what you want it to be.  It can be a place to network with other anarchist students around the world.  It can be a weekly meeting group at your school or a place to chat online.  The groups that have already formed are very active and are a shining beacon to other anarchists that you can start this at your own school!

Here are a few quick tips to starting a group at your school — if you are reading this, I wish to persuade you to do this right now:
S4SS does not require you to beg to your masters (your school admin) to start a group.  All that you need to do is go on Facebook — start a group (not a page, groups allow more communication/notifications).  “YOU SCHOOL Students for a Stateless Society.”  Invite like minded friends.  Let the conversations begin and once you feel like you have enough members, create an event!  Meet at a local cafe, in an open room in your school, anywhere!  Especially do this if you already have a student group that may ascribe itself to general libertarian principles.  Anarchists are different from political libertarians — you should know this!

Good luck, stay strong, keep growing.