Comments (7)

• P.M.Lawrence

• It looks as though the author literally doesn't know what he is talking about, confusing the real thing with the people he has heard of who were described to him as anarchists. He has also made one small but rather important error of fact: Guy Fawkes never tried to blow up the "British" parliament but only the English one, acting as he did over a century before England and Scotland were constitutionally united.
  

• Published: March 19, 2006 12:05 AM

• Tracy SAboe

• He also doesn't realize the philisophical anarchism started in America WAY before those cops got killed.

  Tracy

• Published: March 19, 2006 2:06 AM

• George Gaskell

• "the first superhero movie that's explicitly anarchist"

  Apprently, it wasn't anarchist enough for creator Alan Moore. He hated the script because they had taken out all the anarchism and replaced it with contemporary American liberalism.

• Published: March 20, 2006 10:07 AM

• D. Saul Weiner

• I could understand Moore's reservations. One could walk away from the movie with the impression that it was an endorsement for overthrowing a bad government, rather than an attack on government per se.

• Published: March 20, 2006 10:50 AM

• Paul Marks

• As one would expect the W.S.J. review of the "V" film makes no distinction between communal anarchists (all the terrorists it mentions were communal anarchists) and private property anarchists like Murry Rothbard.

  Communal anarchists really believe in the state by anther name - the "community" or "the people" (or whatever. They still believe in using force to take the property of individuals and private associations, and they believe in forbidding (again by the threat of violence) private, for profit, trading.

  Peaceful communal anarchists have many options open to them (such as becomming monks or nuns, or living in communes)- however those communal anarchists who follow the political path reject these peaceful options.

  As for Edmund Burke - old myth here.

  I was not "later in life" that he pointed out that "Vindication...." was a satire - it was the very next year after it first came out.

  It was not even intended as a satire of anarchism -the intended target was "natural religion" (i.e. those people who wanted religion without scipture).

  Oddly enough the closest that Edmund Burke got to anarchism (of the Murry Rothbard private property kind) was in the very late "Appeal from the New Whigs to the Old" - where he denies the claim of the French Revolutionaries that property reverts to the state when an existing system of government breaks down.

  On the contrary (argues Burke) if the existing system of government (the King and so on) has gone in France then not only does property not go to the new government - the new rulers have no right to tax or regulate.

  In short there is no lawful government at all. And people (if they have the firepower to get away with it) should not pay the taxes of the Revolutionaries or obey their regulations.

  Contrary to the opinion of a lot of ignorant people, Burke was not a fan of the pre 1789 political system in France. But at least the King had custom and tradition to support his rule. The Revolutionaries just have violence - they have no moral authority at all.

• Published: March 20, 2006 10:52 AM

• Vince Daliessio

• D. Saul;

  I respectfully disagree - the filmmakers didn't show the people, once Parliament was blown up walking back and creating an anarchist paradise, but that would have been the very definition of anticlimactic. They did show,in a stylized way, the people renouncing the fear that had enslaved them, reclaiming their own sovreignty from the troops of the now-neutralized fascist government. The removal of the masks symbolizes the freedom from fear that Evie evinced after being imprisoned and tortured. Explaining what they did with their restored individual sovreignty is beyond the scope of the film, perhaps a fit subject for another film.

  PLEASE?

• Published: March 20, 2006 1:00 PM

• averros

• Vince --

  as the bitter experience show, what people do after getting rid of one government is to erect in its place another one, which then starts its inexorable slide to the fascist nightmare not unlike the one they just toppled.

  Fighting governments is an ultimately futile endeavour until the belief that governments are somehow beneficial is thoroughly discredited.

• Published: March 20, 2006 6:13 PM