The Perils of the Anarchist Utopia

Violent Anarchism is the offspring of an era barren of sane and wholesome ideologies due to the moral bankruptcy of our high-tech materialistic and hedonistic culture. Naturally, a corrupt tree produces rotten fruits. There is nothing abnormal about it. 
So, before we single out, judge and condemn the incongruous and dangerously angry mask-wearing young adults for preaching anarchism by throwing Molotov bombs around, or, in the best case, by writing insulting messages on walls, we should first look for the roots, i.e. the cause of this tragic social phenomenon. 
Every reaction presupposes an action that has provoked it. Regrettably it goes without saying that rampant corruption in high places of government generates antagonistic forces in society that are bound to create vicious storms of bloody violence. And this is what we have seen being repeated in human history, both in an ethnic scale and in a larger international scale.
Therefore, we should first condemn our corrupt democratic system for cynically and habitually violating age-old moral principles; we must denounce the ruling politico-economic class for its covert or overt violence; we must hold our governments responsible for oppressing millions of people with innumerable social evils, for their provocative injustice, and their aggressive exploitation of the most vulnerable members of our society.

Surely, it is easy to condemn those frustrated youngsters and deride them as coward for perpetrating crimes behind black masks, but, alas, we usually endure without complaint those rascals in high places of power...
who are hiding behind their polished masks of hypocrisy. If the Judicial system had fearlessly declared a holy war against corruption, and had impartially administered blind justice against the dark schemes of the ruling elite, then the angry young protesters, who are not heartless after all, might have adopted more peaceful ways of activism.

Please don’t take me wrong. I am neither pro-anarchist nor do I support any form of violence. On the contrary, I wholeheartedly condemn the anarchists’ violent activism that threatens the lives of innocent people and destroys properties (shops, cars, etc.) of hard working and peace loving citizens. If the government is corrupt, this is not the average citizen’s fault. Why should hard-working people pay for the sins of their government? Unlike many romantic writers, poets and artists, I am not going to pay tribute to those masked youngsters for their supposed high sensitiveness to social injustice and exploitation around them.

Combating evil with off-target evil attacks is cruelty and madness and it cannot, and does not, produce any good results. Besides, even if the anarchists used peaceful means to propagate their beliefs, I definitely consider the so-called philosophy of anarchism as a sheer utopia. It can never work, as it goes against natural laws and common sense. In fact, the only thing it would surely work out, if it were to be tried as an alternative to central government system, would be chaos and misery for all. Unless, of course, all humans were suddenly transformed into benevolent angels!

Yet, in spite of all this, I often see with sympathy those black-masked anarcho-utopians. But I certainly feel more sympathy for the policemen who are the targets of the anarchist’s vicious and often bloody attacks. In the best case, the former are misled enthusiastic dreamers with missionary zeal, most probably subtly used by shrewd diabolic agents to serve their own obscure ends, first of which is the further restriction of our freedoms. The latter are obedient low-salaried civil servants who try to make their living by doing a difficult, joyless and dangerous job. Both groups are victims of our corrupt pseudo-democratic system of government. It is the rotten ruling class that has pitted the first group against the second; it is the pseudo-democratic elite that has every interest for this chaotic violence to be perpetuated.

This is why they seldom punish masked anarchists, even if they catch them committing criminal acts. For this, the average citizen wonders and often gets angry with the administrators of the Judicial system. But we ought to look deeper and thoroughly examine this tragic situation, which in some ultra democratic countries like Greece at times tends to get embarrassingly out of control.

In my opinion, a harmonious anti-authoritarian society, based on individual self determination, as the anarchists imagine it, cannot be materialized for the simple reason that people are neither equal in natural abilities and charismas nor saints. Unregenerate man is but an animal driven by its instincts – a reality that puts self-interest above group interests. Besides, even amongst the most sincere and noble anarchists, there can never be unanimity of opinions and convergence to rational decisions as to how to organize a society without any form of government.

Let us face the bitter truth: to get things moving and business done someone in the group has to have the last word. We all like our freedom, but we also like to have drinking water and food, clothes to be dressed, health care, electricity, telecommunications system, roads to travel on, etc., etc. And without government, however corrupt it may be, we cannot provide ourselves with the bear necessities for a reasonable living. To be honest, I feel embarrassed even for trying to prove the uselessness of the anarchist utopia…

And the question that now arises is this: since violence as a cathartic means produces more violence and injustice, for it is the innocent that suffer and never the guilty, what is the solution? How humanity could ever enjoy peace, justice, true freedom and prosperity? Enlightenment is the magic word! It is only through the reformation of thinking that man can behave as truly Homo sapiens and stop considering himself as immortal and worshipping riches as its god.

It is through enlightenment and regeneration that the members of government can try their best to honestly serve the people by whose labor are generously paying themselves. It is through enlightenment and moral education that those working in the public sector would work conscientiously and productively, respecting those by whose taxes are getting paid. It is through enlightenment and cultivation of integrity that judges will be determined to administer blind justice and send to prison even those in high places who embezzle public money. It is through enlightenment and spiritual regeneration that a government would stop spending billions on weapons and start feeding the poor instead.

"Oh", someone might say, "this is a long process that will take centuries to come to fruition, and we desperately need a solution to social and international ills right now"! I am afraid neither anarchism, nor terrorism or wars can ever bring real justice, lasting peace and prosperity in the world. In fact those means generate more injustice, more corruption, more exploitation, more violence and bloodshed.

It is a matter of sheer rationality that man at last understands that it serves the best individual and collective interests to uphold moral principles and values and implement them in our lives. Morality is a commodity we cannot afford to turn our backs on, if of course we are in the right frame of mind.

Morality has nothing to do with being religious or fearful of some afterlife punishment. Morality has to do with the instinct of self-preservation and survival. Morality is about being rational and complying with the unwritten sovereign laws, both spiritual and natural. As for those who worry about the rise of anarchism and terrorism, let them work towards eliminating the causes that make these activists behave the abhorrent way they do.