What the CHAZ taught us

Up to five city blocks occupied. Dozens if not hundreds of participants. Enduring for three entire weeks. The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) seemed to be an ambitious creation by anarchists and far-leftists within the United States. It riled up fervor even more during the coterminous Floyd protests that it was a by-product of. So, did such an ambitious and radical demonstration teach us anything? What can we learn from it? Haha, absolutely nothing! The CHAZ was an embarrassing failure that proves nothing except that everything it stood for, as we already knew, was wrong.

As if it needs to be stated, anarchy is unsustainable due to human nature, which is corrupted by hedonism and greed. Such has been the way of things since the Fall of Man. The basis of Western liberal-democratic philosophy, along with my own philosophy, lies with the legendary John Locke. Per his philosophy, which most notably shaped America’s political origins, human society originated from the State of Nature (a doctrine that was shared by most political philosophers of his time like Hobbes, Montesquieu, et cetera). In the State of Nature, there was absolute liberty, which is good, but also means that groups or individuals were free to commit acts that violated Locke’s three natural rights: life (murder), liberty (slavery), and property (thievery). In order to protect themselves and their rights, people began binding together: the common folk, those who were not looking for power, gave authority to those who would compose the government, and those of authority – as payment for receiving authority – would defend the natural rights of the common folk. This is the social contract theory, the origin of popular sovereignty, a fundamental unit of Western political philosophy.

This summary of Lockean philosophy serves the purpose of showing why anarchy is fallacious. Anarchy seeks to resort to the State of Nature, but with no way to prevent these violations of rights. In an anarchic system, say the one the CHAZ created, there was no hierarchy, everyone was of the same worth and power. In a hierarchic system, the State – which has the right to violence (solely to protect rights, that is) – has the responsibility to prevent crime, due to their greater authority. An anarchic system has no higher authority, and if you were to create an anarchic state with an armed group for protection, you no longer have anarchy, as you just created a hierarchy. See what I mean?

This is the underlying issue with anarchy. You cannot sustain an anarchic system because you cannot assign authority to a group that can ensure your protection from wrongdoers without establishing a hierarchy. The CHAZ actually became an empirical example of the State of Nature and social contract theory. Not even three days after the CHAZ was established, Raz Simone emerged as a figure of authority within the CHAZ, armed with an AK-47 and prowling the streets with an armed posse. Twenty bucks says that the agreement between Simone and his supporters was “support me, and me and my boys will protect you”. Social contract right there.

This goes as far as to prove why policing is necessary. The police serve as the division of the State that possesses a monopoly on violence, violence which is used to curb the actions of citizens that violate the three natural rights. As I stated before, the three antitheses to the natural rights are murder, slavery, and thievery; they are more in-depth than this, but that is for another blog article. It is these three crimes that a proper policing institution responds to; abolishing the police does nothing but create that anarchic system that – as CHAZ proved – will end up being the end of many of us. The solution is reform, not abolition.

The CHAZ also showed how much of a groveling, spineless bunch the Radical Left is. They absolutely turned on their founding ideals within a matter of days after the CHAZ was established. Capitalism? Detested by the CHAZites, except by the people who ran food vendors and other small businesses within the CHAZ. Police? Detested by the CHAZ, unless it is a bunch of armed vigilantes that began appearing to enforce order in the CHAZ. Stratification and segregation? Oh, absolutely despicable, unless you are White. Private property? Totally bad, until it is not. Representative democracy? No, no, open participation for everyone…but just for one time. These are just a handful of hypocrisies that occurred within the CHAZ, and there are many more. How are these people supposed to lead any sort of “revolution” or change, when their first chance at demonstrating how their leftist utopia would function goes up in flames? They won’t, can’t, and never will.

The CHAZ stood for anarchy, depolicing, and communism. It proved, for the umpteenth time, that an anarchic/communist system CANNOT function. It proved that the radical left is precisely that, foolish radicals who resorted to the hierarchism, factionalism, and violence they said they would not have the moment things turned tough. In the three weeks that it existed, the place was riddled with violent crimes and was nothing short of a dystopia for those who endeavored to remain in it. It was a melting pot of violence, hypocrisy, and lunacy.