HBO attack anarchism

[grarpamp]

On 7/10/22, professor rat <pro2rat at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-anarchists-on-hbo-explores-how-an-anarchist-paradise-became-a-violent-hellscape

> Caveat lecter

Rat's cowardly disclaimer, as usual.



Attend the next Anarchapulco, Porcfest,
crypto freedom conference, etc...

https://anarchapulco.com/


Yet another hitpiece by GovCorp Davos Fake Journos etc,
against Voluntaryism Libertarian Anarchism Cryptocurrency,
still trying to ply the long since tired murder as encompassing.



These Anarchists Wanted Paradise. They Ended Up in Hell.
PIPE DREAM

The new HBO docuseries “The Anarchists” examines Anarchapulco—an
annual crypto-fueled anarchist festival that turned into a
murder-filled nightmare.
Nick Schager

Entertainment Critic
Updated Jul. 10, 2022 4:15AM ET / Published Jul. 10, 2022 1:03AM ET
HBO

“When did you ever feel like you would be happy to see children
burning books?” asks a gleeful Nathan Freeman over images of his kids
tearing up tomes and throwing them into a beach bonfire at the
beginning of Blumhouse Television’s The Anarchists. For most, the
answer will likely be: never! Even those embracing an
anti-establishment lifestyle, however, achieve little lasting joy in
director Todd Schramke’s six-part HBO docuseries (July 10), which
focuses on an annual event known as Anarchapulco—held, as its title
implies, in Acapulco, Mexico—that brings together men and women who
object to governments and their corrupt, authoritarian rules and
social norms. It’s a fascinating portrait of against-the-grain
dissenters and their pipe dreams of true freedom, commencing with
promise and concluding with the age-old lesson that you should be
careful what you wish for.

Launched in 2015 by entrepreneur Jeff Berwick, Anarchapulco started as
a makeshift conference attended by a few hundred people and
orchestrated without a real structure—a tack befitting a get-together
founded on ideals of autonomy and decentralization. Berwick
differentiates his ideology from the more traditional view of anarchy
(i.e. violent insurgence) by explaining that he and his Ron
Paul-venerating compatriots share a core conviction about the
unjustness of taxation and the villainy of central banking. To them,
anyone buying into the global paradigm of “statism” is a sheeple, and
the sole way out is to band together to form a new community
predicated on unfettered thought and action. Thus, in more than one
archival clip, Nathan makes it a point to performatively laugh at the
word “allowed,” since it runs counter to this movement’s guiding
ethos.

Nathan and his wife Lisa moved to Acapulco after the inaugural 2015
Anarchapulco, whose creator Berwick embraced anarchism following his
introduction to G. Edward Griffin’s anti-Federal Reserve book The
Creature from Jekyll Island. Berwick comes across as a hedonist with a
lot of faux-big ideas and not much in the way of nuanced thinking in
The Anarchists, and sights of him being drunk on stage and rapping at
nightclub parties only enhance this notion. Nonetheless, Berwick
tapped into a revolutionary sentiment felt by marginalized and
screwed-up individuals who were angry at the world. Moreover, he was
shrewd enough to recognize the disruptive anarchist potential of
cryptocurrency, and bitcoin in particular, and when that market took
off in late 2017, so too did Anarchapulco, drawing in thousands of new
attendees and becoming a trendy meeting place for those looking to
shake up the status quo.

Director Schramke documents Anarchapulco from its inception, thereby
making The Anarchists a comprehensive overview of the event’s rise to
prominence. It’s also, simultaneously, an in-depth snapshot of the
personalities who dominate its south-of-the-border scene, led by not
only Berwick and the Freemans, but by Lily Forester and her boyfriend
John Galton, a pair of dreadlocked “anarcho-capitalist” potheads who
wound up in Acapulco after fleeing the United States because of an
arrest on drug charges that would have netted them up to 25 years
behind bars. The two fugitives broadcast their story (detailed in a
2019 Daily Beast piece by Kelly Weill that’s briefly highlighted in
the docuseries) on social media, and they soon became local
celebrities due to their adherence to an anarchist standard far
stricter than the one they believed was being promoted by
Anarchapulco.

Populated by interviews with Berwick, Lisa Freeman, Lily Forester, and
Lily’s close friend Jason Henza (who forced his wife to join him for
Anarchapulco and was then left by her after she shacked up with a
crypto-bro residing in a Mexican mansion), The Anarchists employs
first-hand accounts, archival material and occasional hand-drawn
illustrations to explicate the sordid mess that ensued, culminating
with a gunman attack that left Galton dead and Henza clinging to life.
Rumors flew that cartel assassins were behind the murder, and the
series strongly suggests that those criminals may have been connected
to Paul Propert. A military vet with severe PTSD, Propert originally
travelled to Anarchapulco in a small yellow school bus in order to
deliver a cryptocurrency, ATM (which, predictably, never worked), and
he quickly became the unhinged fly in the wannabe-idyllic anarchist
ointment. Once Forester pointed the finger at Propert for Galton’s
death, he responded by posting online death threats to Henza, all as
Berwick tried to turn Anarchapulco into a grander phenomenon by firing
loyal and dedicated conference director Nathan.
“Once Forester pointed the finger at Propert for Galton’s death, he
responded by posting online death threats to Henza, all as Berwick
tried to turn Anarchapulco into a grander phenomenon by firing loyal
and dedicated conference director Nathan.”

Chaos followed, which should have been right up these anarchists’
alley, and yet The Anarchists features quite a lot of doom-and-gloom
lamentations about Anarchapulco’s devolution in the wake of Nathan’s
departure and Propert’s lunatic behavior. The fact that none of these
outsiders could turn to the police—or each other—for assistance in
times of dire need renders their tale the epitome of the maxim,
“You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.” Though Forester eventually
comes around to recognizing the downside of living a truly “free”
anarchist life—an unsurprising epiphany considering her days and
nights were wracked with grief and fear over impending murder—she’s
one of the few. The overarching impression left is one of scattered,
alienated loners finding a community for their out-there views via the
internet, only to realize that perhaps such ideas aren’t as practical
as they wanted them to be, especially in a city like Acapulco where—no
matter Berwick’s comforting claims—crime was rampant and safety was
anything but guaranteed.

Suicides, the bitcoin crash of 2018 and cryptocurrency Ponzi-scheme
scandals all prove a part of The Anarchists’ cookbook, with Schramke
evoking the early enthusiasm of Anarchapulco and, afterward, a more
sobering reality about the danger of casting aside all social
structures. Like so many docuseries before it, this six-installment
affair is unnecessarily prolonged in its momentum-challenged back
half. Nonetheless, it accurately pinpoints its subjects as individuals
linked by trauma and anger born from unhappy childhoods and
dysfunctional familial dynamics. The sad irony of Schramke’s
non-fiction series, consequently, is that it resonates as a story
about disparate damaged people who chose to cope with the gaping holes
in their lives by further rejecting the world and everything it stands
for, rather than filling those voids with the very communal things
(togetherness, trust, selflessness, order) that matter most.