From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 94 16:47:44 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Black Cryptoanarchy (KKK, monopolies, contract killings)
Message-ID: <199409092347.TAA03412@pipe1.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Responding to msg by doug@OpenMind.com (Doug Cutrell) on Fri, 9 
Sep 12:36 PM:

Your critique has elicited some of the best responses I've seen 
here.

There is still, indeed,  the task of proving that cryptoanarchy 
is not itself a play for power by those who write and master 
its cryptographic code.  But better to test that in the public 
arena rather remain hidden and protected like the state secrecy 
of governmental cryptography.

The state will probably fiercely  oppose it, not least by 
stigmatizing cryptoanarchy and impugning its motives by 
exaggeration and distortion.

(It is worth recalling that classical black anarchy, the 
secret, lethal version as distinguished from open black flag 
type, is used by despots to justify their ruthless measures.  
Black anarchists, as agents of despots,  mingle with avowed 
flag-wavers to spy and provoke acts that lead to repressive 
crackdowns.  Black anarchists never announce themselves as such 
but may freely admit to being "anarchistic" as a wild-eyed 
subterfuge.  Inept provocations sometimes reveal them but the 
most able are never detected.)

I may be helpful to read one writer's view of how cryptoanarchy 
may be lumped with and targeted like other stigmatized groups 
whose attributes it may claim:

Quotes are from:  "Stigma, Notes on the Management of Spoiled
Identity", Erving Goffman, Simon and Schuster, 1963.

pp. 143-45:

DEVIATIONS AND DEVIANCE

One such deviation is important here, the kind presented by
individuals who are seen as declining voluntarily and openly to
accept the social place accorded them, and who act irregularly 
and
somewhat rebelliously in connection with our basic institutions 
--
the family, the age-grade system, the stereotyped role-division
between the sexes, legitimate full-time employment involving
maintenance of a single governmentally ratified personal 
identity,
and segregation by class and race. These are the 
"disaffiliates."

Those who take this stand on their own and by themselves might 
be
called eccentrics or "characters." Those whose activity is
collective and focused within some building or place (and often
upon a special activity) may be called cultists. Those who come
together into a sub-community or milieu may be called "social
deviants", and their corporate life a deviant community. They
constitute a special type, but only one type, of deviator.

If there is to be a field of inquiry called "deviance," it is
social deviants as here defined that would presumably 
constitute
its core. Prostitutes, drug addicts, delinquents, criminals, 
jazz
musicians, bohemians, gypsies, carnival workers, hobos, winos, 
show
people, full time gamblers, beach dwellers, homosexuals, and 
the
urban unrepentant poor -- these would be included.

These are the folk who are considered to be engaged in some 
kind of
collective denial of the social order. They are perceived as
failing to use available opportunity for advancement in the 
various
approved runways of society; they show open disrespect for 
their
betters; they lack piety; they represent failures in the
motivational schemes of society.

Once the core of social deviancy is established, one can 
proceed to
peripheral instances: community-based political radicals who 
not
only vote in a divergent way but spend more time with those of
their own kind than is politically necessary; the traveling 
rich
who are not geared into the executive's work week, and spend 
their
time drifting from one summering place to another; expatriates,
employed or not, who routinely wander at least a few steps from 
the
PX and the American Express; the ethnic assimilation 
backsliders
who are reared in the two worlds of the parent society and the
society of their parents, and resolutely turn away from the
conventional routes of mobility open to them, overlaying their
public school socialization with what many normals will see as 
a
grotesque costume of religious orthodoxy; the metropolitan
unmarried and merely married who disavail themselves of an
opportunity to raise a family, and instead support a vague 
society
that is in rebellion, albeit mild and short-lived, against the
family system

In almost all of these cases, some show of disaffiliation is 
made,
as is also true of eccentrics and cultists, providing in this 
way
a thin line that can be drawn between all of them and deviators 
on
the other side, namely, the quietly disaffiliated--hobbyists 
who
become so devoted to their avocation that only a husk remains 
for
civil attachments, as in the case of some ardent stamp 
collectors,
club tennis players, and sports car buffs.

Social deviants, as defined, flaunt their refusal to accept 
their
place and are temporarily tolerated in this gestural rebellion,
providing it is restricted within the ecological boundaries of
their community. Like ethnic and racial ghettos, these 
communities
constitute a haven of self-defense and a place where the 
individual
deviator can openly take the line that he is at least as good 
as
anyone else. But in addition, social deviants often feel that 
they
are not merely equal to but better than normals, and that the 
life
they lead is better than that lived by the persons they would
otherwise be. Social deviants also provide models of being for
restless normals, obtaining not only sympathy but also 
recruits.
(Cultists acquire converts too, of course, but the focus is on
programs of action not styles of life.) The wise can become
fellow-travelers.

p. 25:

STIGMA AND SOCIAL IDENTlTY

Often those with a particular stigma sponsor a publication of 
some
kind [list cypherpunks?] which gives voice to shared feelings,
consolidating and stabilizing for the reader his sense of the
realness of "his" group and his attachment to it. Here the 
ideology
of the members is formulated -- their complaints, their
aspirations, their politics. The names of well-known friends 
and
enemies of the "group" are cited, along with information to 
confirm
the goodness or the badness of these people.

Success stories are printed, tales of heroes of assimilation 
who
have penetrated new areas of normal acceptance. Atrocity tales 
are
recorded, recent and historic, of extreme mistreatment by 
normals.
Exemplary moral tales are provided in biographical and
autobiographical form illustrating a desirable code of conduct 
for
the stigmatized. The publication also serves as a forum for
presenting some division of opinion as to how the situation of 
the
stigmatized person ought best to be handled. Should the
individual's failing require special equipment [crypto?], it is
here advertised and reviewed. The readership of these 
publications
provides a market for books and pamphlets which present a 
similar
line.

It is important to stress that, in America at least, no matter 
how
small and how badly off a particular stigmatized category is, 
the
viewpoint of its members is likely to be given public 
presentation
of some kind. It can thus be said that Americans who are
stigmatized tend to live in a literarily-defined world, however
uncultured they might be. If they don't read books on the 
situation
of persons like themselves, they at least read magazines and 
see
movies; and where they don't do these, then they listen to 
local,
vocal associates. An intellectually worked-up version of their
point of view is thus available to most stigmatized persons

End quotes