Keith Preston

Keith Preston (born on October 29, 1966 in Lynchburg, Virginia, United States) is a Third Position anarchist and self-described "pan-secessionist" writer and activist. He is the founder and director of American Revolutionary Vanguard, which promotes an "alternative political vision that is anti-authoritarian, non-militarist, non-Marxist and decentralist,"[1] which de-emphasizes "left-wing cultural politics, countercultural lifestyle matters, and liberal pet causes," in favor of "a synthesis of the currently scattered anarchist tendencies" prominently including alliances with tendencies "from the Right," including "anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-monarchism, anarcho-feudalism, national-anarchism[2], tribal-anarchism, paleo-anarchism and Christian anarchism."[3]

Contents

Biography

In the 1980s, Preston became strongly opposed to American foreign policy in the Third World, and was heavily influenced by the left-wing radicals Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Alexander Cockburn and Michael Parenti.[4] Preston is staunchly anti-communist, and originally joined the anarchist movement because of the anti-state and anti-Marxist ideals of the anarchism. Having arrived at anarchism through the works of Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Preston joined the Industrial Workers of the World, served on the national board of the Workers Solidarity Alliance, and participated in the Love and Rage Network in the late 1980s.[5] In 2002, Preston described himself as a "socialist-anarchist in the classical Bakuninist tradition."[6]

In the 1990s, he discovered the works of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, which led him to be influenced by the Austrian School of economics, particularly Mises' critique of planned economies, Rothbard's legal theory and critique of plutocracy, Friedrich von Hayek's social theory, and Hans Hermann Hoppe's critique of liberal democracy. He incorporated those ideas into a wider syndicalist-mutualist framework that maintains the emphasis of classical anarchism towards producer-oriented economic arrangements, such as cooperatives, land trusts, mutual banks, barter and exchange networks, partnerships, works councils, agrarian communes, militant industrial unions, family enterprises, small farms and small businesses.[7]

During the 2008 US presidential election, Preston supported Republican candidate Ron Paul and wrote a series of articles defending Paul for LewRockwell.com.[8] In October 2008, he was awarded the Chris R. Tame Memorial Prize by the United Kingdom's Libertarian Alliance for his anti-capitalist essay, "Free Enterprise: The Antidote to Corporate Plutocracy".[9]

Criticism

Infoshop.org refer to American Revolutionary Guard as national anarchist or neo-Nazi, saying "Be aware that there are efforts underway to fuse nationalist, white supremacist and neo-nazi ideology with anarchism."[10]

References

  1. ^ AttackTheSystem.com Statement of Purpose
  2. ^ http://namshropshire.blogspot.com/2011/12/anarchism-of-right-by-keith-preston.html
  3. ^ AttackTheSystem.com Statement of Purpose
  4. ^ >Keith Preston (2003), "Learning the Hard Way: My Life as an Anarcho-Leftoid": "Prior to that I had been an activist for various left-wing causes for about a year, mostly the anti-apartheid movement and opposition to the war in Central America (this was the mid 1980s). ... At the time, I was basically an 'anarcho-social democrat' of the Noam Chomsky variety."
  5. ^ Keith Preston (2003), "Learning the Hard Way: My Life as an Anarcho-Leftoid": "I could probably write a book on my misadventures with the anarcho-leftoids. I was at the 1989 Chicago conference where 'Love and Rage', initially a tabloid that eventually became the basis for a federation, was launched. Those people were idiots. Mostly, they were a mixture of ex-Trots and molotov types."
  6. ^ What Would An Anarcho-Socialist Economy Look Like?
  7. ^ Learning the Hard Way: My Life as an Anarcho-Leftoid
  8. ^ In Defense of Ron Paul, Part One: A Reply to Noam Chomsky, In Defense of Ron Paul, Part Two: Why Left-Libertarians Need Not Worry, In Defense of Ron Paul, Part Four: The Immigration Conundrum, In Defense of Ron Paul, Part Three: The Case for a Left/Right Alliance Against the Empire
  9. ^ "This essay is a very slightly edited version of the winner of the Libertarian Alliance's 2008 Chris R. Tame Memorial Prize: 'Can a Libertarian Society be Described as "Tesco minus the State"?'" "Free Enterprise: The Antidote to Corporate Plutocracy", London: Libertarian Alliance, 2009. ISSN 0267-7164. See also Sean Gab, for the Libertarian Alliance, "Chris R. Tame Memorial Prize Winning Essay".
  10. ^ Fake Anarchists and Libertarians

External links