Sleeping with the Devil by Andrew Edwards

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche

The overwhelming trend in a large portion of anarchists is the tendency to want to exert individuality. It make sense, after all, what is anarchy if not the dissemination of power from a central authority to the individual. The anarchist believes that we have the right to succeed or fail without interference from coercive authoritarian figures and because of this trend anarchists have a tendency to be uncompromising.

This does not mean that anarchists have to face the world alone. No man is an island after all. Believe it or not, there are groups out there that support a lot of the same ideologies that anarchists support. If you want proof of this, take a look at this website. Turn it into a drinking game. How many different forms of anarchy, often with mutually exclusive ideas, can you identify? I'll even give you the first one. This article is written by an Anarchocapitalist.

This support of similar ideologies doesn't stop at just anarchism. We live in a democratic society, and despite the rhetoric surrounding the term, this means that the government is controlled by pressure groups. You'll remember the emergence of super PACs in recent years? These are an excellent example of pressure groups.

Pressure groups are groups of individuals who get together to support, usually, one or two common causes. The sole purpose of these groups is to achieve the stated goal. For example, the purpose of the NRA is to promote gun ownership. That's it. They ignore everything else and focus on that one thing. They are pretty bipartisan about it. Before you start laughing too hard you have trouble reading, they supported 64 Democrats in 2010.

If Anarchist are able to get passed their gag reflex toward either of the two big parties, it is entirely possible to manipulate (for lack of a better term) these groups toward our common ends. Anytime we see a pressure group pushing toward a dissolution of government, support them, at least so far as they push toward the goal of less government and greater individual liberty.

“People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.” -Emma Goldman

Our present, short term goal, is not the immediate disillusionment of government, no matter how wonderful that would be. What we should be trying to do right now is shift the political landscape. Change the talking points from the current standard, 'how the government can most effectively screw everyone today' to 'Why should the government be allowed to screw us at all.'

Start with local politics. At the local level 'Democrat' and 'Republican' are nothing more than empty terms. Local politicians are malleable and, best of all, accessible. They have very few resources to work with. Get on their campaigns and whisper sweet anarchy into their ears.