Womble: Distrusting any government anywhere anytime in any matter is a case of a clinically paranoid mindset. People like that should seek professional help.

Sham medical diagnoses for political disagreements isn’t going to get you very far in rational argument. It is, frankly, a sleazy rhetorical tactic, and you ought to feel guilty about having indulged in it.

That said, the issue I mentioned didn’t have to do with whether or not you categorically distrust all government action. It specifically has to do with how far you trust incumbent parties (who have the power to set the legal criteria, if we allow legal criteria to be set) to put up legislative barriers against competing parties. Because the ability to exclude your own challengers is a dangerous thing for governing parties to have.

Womble: Believing that the rights of any party, however violent, anti-democratic and racist, must be defended no matter the cost is a case of either total loss of morals or deliberate blindness to reality.

I don’t care about the rights of any “party;” I don’t think they’ve got any. I do care about the rights of party members to freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, etc. I don’t really care very much about the ability of folks to challenge in an election either, since I don’t regard government elections as having any legitimate authority (I think there are some weak pragmatic reasons to resist moves like that, but not principled moral objections). But your dark suggestions that you’d be fine with using “harsher measures” against anti-democratic parties is troubling, because it’s hard to imagine what that would mean other than compromising those rights, and suggests that you’re fine with violent retaliation beyond simply delisting their candidates (for what crime? If their candidates can’t be recognized as standing in the election, what “resistance” do you have in mind suppressing through the use of violence? Advocating political views? Electioneering for qualified candidates? Printing literature? Meeting? Assembling in public? Something else?)

N.B.: I am quite willing to take the stance in question for Kach as well as Hamas, for Maoists, for the Ku Klux Klan, and just about any other example of bare-fanged evil organized that I can think of.

scott: Rad Geek, From the comments here and at your site, I think we’re just coming at things from totally different angles. I’m looking at these things as givens, for the time being, that have to be considered regardless of if we support them or not. You’re looking at the more theoretical aspects of all this – governments, elections, etc – which are important questions on the whole, but not as immediately pertinent to me at the moment.

Well, I’m sure there is a difference of focus here, but I’m not convinced that it’s best understood in terms of the distinctions between theoretical and practical. It seems to me that the very real problems with government-to-government aid make for good practical reasons to take the “purist” stance: because government-to-government aid is actively harmful (in particular, in the P.A., it has propped up and lined the pockets of a corrupt, unaccountable, and co-opted one-party state under Fatah for years), complaining about it being cut seems rather like complaining about someone getting a reduction in their dose of arsenic-laced wine.

scott: At the same time, because of the occupation and destroyed economy, the Palestinians need aid right now. I don’t see anarchists stepping up, or the left, so until then, we’re left with the Japanese government giving UNWRA $500,000 donations, and the EU funding PA programs. Certainly not an ideal situation.

Well, so why not make an effort to get anarchists (and for that matter, statist Leftists and humanitarians of various stripes) to step up like they should and give direct mutual aid? It seems to me that they’re probably more open to persuasion than U.S. policy makers, more likely to give money to the right people, and, if you fail to hit the goals that need to be hit, that’s still more money to people who need it than the nothing that results from failed political pressure campaigns.

scott: Rad Geek, From the comments here and at your site, I think we’re just coming at things from totally different angles. I’m looking at these things as givens, for the time being, that have to be considered regardless of if we support them or not. You’re looking at the more theoretical aspects of all this – governments, elections, etc – which are important questions on the whole, but not as immediately pertinent to me at the moment.

Well, I’m sure there is a difference of focus here, but I’m not convinced that it’s best understood in terms of the distinctions between theoretical and practical. It seems to me that the very real problems with government-to-government aid make for good practical reasons to take the “purist” stance: because government-to-government aid is actively harmful (in particular, in the P.A., it has propped up and lined the pockets of a corrupt, unaccountable, and co-opted one-party state under Fatah for years), complaining about it being cut seems rather like complaining about someone getting a reduction in their dose of arsenic-laced wine.

scott: At the same time, because of the occupation and destroyed economy, the Palestinians need aid right now. I don’t see anarchists stepping up, or the left, so until then, we’re left with the Japanese government giving UNWRA $500,000 donations, and the EU funding PA programs. Certainly not an ideal situation.

Well, so why not make an effort to get anarchists (and for that matter, statist Leftists and humanitarians of various stripes) to step up like they should and give direct mutual aid? It seems to me that they’re probably more open to persuasion than U.S. policy makers, more likely to give money to the right people, and, if you fail to hit the goals that need to be hit, that’s still more money to people who need it than the nothing that results from failed political pressure campaigns.

Womble, the distinction between meaningful democracy and majority tyranny, as those terms are usually used, has to do with protections for minorities and individual rights. It has nothing in particular to do with whether or not “anti-democratic” parties can be elected to office.

Do you think that believing in an inalienable right of free political association, or simply not trusting the incumbent government to be able to make the decisions about which competing parties are sufficiently “democratic” and which aren’t, is not only mistaken, but in fact an insane form of “blind ideological fanaticism”?

And, just to be clear, when you say that anti-democratic political parties ought to be suppressed by the government, just how far do you think that they ought to go in the name of democracy? Banning the anti-democratic party from competing in parliamentary elections? Banning members of the anti-democratic party from standing for individual sets? Dissolving the anti-democratic party by government diktat? Restricting their rights to electioneer or lobby or contribute to campaigns? Restricting their rights to meet or publish political literature? Rounding them up and shooting them? Less? More? (I ask because this bears partly on just what’s entailed by your answer to the first question.)

Womble: No matter how significant a portion of Palestinians they represent, their racist, anti-democratic agenda, involvement in terrorism and the very fact of them being an armed group outside of the PA government’s control should have rendered them ineligible for elections in a real democracy. The Vlaams Blok in Belgium was the most popular party in Flanders, they were banned under the Anti-Racism Act regardless. The sheer armed force of the Hamas would likely make banning them dangerous, of course- but this is only a further proof of the non-democratic nature of the election process, because this means that the Hamas has thrusted itself into the election process while holding the Palestinian society at gunpoint.

Womble: In other words, your reasoning is not based on the logic of democracy or legality, but purely on the “realpolitik”. Well, at least it’s honest, for once. It doesn’t, however, justify calling the election of Hamas to the parliament democratic. It is, in the words of Nick Cohen, “barely political”.

So, just to be clear, Womble, you believe in having the government forcibly dissolve or suppress political parties (in the name of, what, “democracy”? Leftism?) when you find their political views sufficiently loathsome? And any view to the contrary to be a matter of crude realpolitik rather than any kind of principled political stance?

If not, I look forward to being corrected.

scott: “I mean that the US, EU, and others, should not cut aid or diplomatic contacts to the Palestinians because of a strong showing by Hamas, and that Israel should not increase its killing or assassinations either.”

I agree with you that neither the U.S. nor the E.U. nor Israel should escalate military conflicts with the P.A. (because I think as a matter of general policy that no governments should escalate military conflicts with anyone over anything). I’m a bit puzzled, though, by the reference to “foreign aid” (i.e., government-to-government transfers). Do you think that the P.A. should be receiving any tax-funded aid at all? Do you trust governments to pick and choose the best places and best people for the money to go to, or that governments are the best entities to receive it? Haven’t government-to-government aid payments historically been used as a fuel for tyranny and militarism throughout the Third World and the Middle East for the past several decades?

scott: ‘Good point, Rad Geek. I should’ve put “world governments” instead of “the world.” Admittedly, this entry wasn’t written from a very anarchist perspective.’

Well, fair enough, but I’m still not sure why. I mean, maybe “respect” for elections from other world governments will end up with better results for freedom and justice, and maybe it won’t. Part of it probably has to do with what “respect” means in this context. (If it means, e.g., not going to war over it, sure. If it means taking seriously the idea that the election makes the resulting coalition a proper collective bargaining agent with which to dicker about the rights of all Palestinians, probably not.)

I think the important thing here is that government elections don’t place any legitimate demands on anyone, and so aren’t “respectable” on their own account — at the very most they may be strategically useful for getting other people who buy into majoritarian popular sovereignty to hold back on doing nasty things that they might otherwise do. But I think that one of the most important insights in anarchism is the observation that at its very best, that’s just a means to exchange a more obnoxious band of pirates for a less obnoxious band of pirates. And thus that these kind of appeals need to be taken with a heaping helping of salt, when they are taken at all.

“… Assuming they are fair, the world must respect the results of the elections. …”

Why? As an anarchist, I don’t respect the results of any government elections.