When I was an orthodox left-wing anarchist, one of the things that eventually led to my present heterodox positions was the observation that every leftist revolution in which anarchists participated led to the repression of the anarchists by authoritarian leftists, or by right-wing reactionaries who managed to gain popular sympathy by acting against leftist accesses. I consequently realized that a better approach was needed. Hence, the pan-anarchist/pan-secessionist approach. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains:

“Rather than supranational political integration, world-government, constitutions, courts, banks, and money, global social democracy, and universal and ubiquitous multiculturalism, anarchist-liberals propose the decomposition of the nation-state into its constituent heterogenous parts. As their classic forbears, new liberals do not seek to takeover any government. They only want to be left alone by government, and to secede from its jurisdiction to organize their own protection. Unlike their predecessors who merely sought to replace a larger government with a smaller one, however, new liberals pursue the logic of secession to its end. They propose unlimited secession, i.e., the unrestricted proliferation of independent free territories, until the state’s range of jurisdiction finally withers away. To this end-and in complete contrast to the statist projects of ‘European Integration’ and a ‘New World Order’-they promote the vision of a world of tens of thousands of free countries, regions and cantons, of hundreds of thousands of independent free cities-such as the present-day oddities of Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein, (formerly) Hong Kong, and Singapore-and even more numerous free districts and neighborhoods, economically integrated through free trade (the smaller the territory, the greater the economic pressure of opting for free trade!) and an international gold-commodity money standard. If and when this alternative liberal vision gains prominence in public opinion, the end of the social democratic ‘End of History’ will give rise to a liberal renaissance.”

One need not adhere to Hoppe’s hardline ancap/paleolibertarian perspective in order to recognize the general value of this outlook. As I wrote 17 years ago,

The triumph of philosophical anarchism as a socio-political meta-system would likewise mean the simultaneous victory of an enormous variety of subsystems. Against the fake “diversity” and “multiculturalism” offered by the liberal and neoconservative establishments and the reactionary left, whereby the total state rules in the name of “progressive” platitudes like Equality, Social Justice and Humanity, in the place of more traditional platitudes like God, Family and Country, a victorious anarchism offers an authentic pluralism consisting not only of genuine diversity in matters of culture, religion or ethnicity but also in questions of politics and ideology. If the heart and soul of the anarchist ideal is a social order where autonomous individuals voluntarily choose those types of institutions, communities or associations that are most suited to their own needs or desires, then virtually the entire panoply of dissident factions stand to gain through the victory of anarchism. The enemies of the current international ruling class and its rapidly encroaching New World Order include among themselves followers of the teachings of Karl Marx, Murray Rothbard, Osama bin Laden, John Zerzan, Eduard Limonov, Saddam Hussein, Emilio Zapata, Bo Gritz, Israel Shamir, Muammar El-Qadaffi, Mao Tse-tung, Noam Chomsky, Russell Means, R. J. Rushdooney, Mikhail Bakunin, Adolf Hitler, Anton Szandar LaVey, Elijah Muhammed, Julius Evola, Michael Oakeshott, Che Gueverra, Edmund Burke, V. I. Lenin, Hillaire Belloc, Thomas Aquinas, Michele Foucault, Barry Goldwater and many others.(34) Such a dazzling array of dissidents might be characterized as constituting a type of “diversity on steroids”. With the disintegration of centralized power, all of these (and other) dissident communities would gain greater opportunities for self-determination.

What Hoppe and I have suggested is largely what places like Cheron and, perhaps, CHAZ/CHOP are doing, and that is the way forward, and there is room in this framework for everyone from Judith Butler-loving queer theorists to Yukio Mishima-loving conservative revolutionaries.