Israeli Freeman Movement's Continued Saga: Recruiting the Masses to the Cause Fails Miserably

Credit: see below

Eyal Lior, which we have met before, had apparently organized a "Freeman Festival" (that is what it says above in Hebrew) on Facebook (link in Hebrew). The event shows '31 joined' (i.e., told Facebook they did) and '69 interested'. I have no idea how many actually showed up.

For comparison purposes, I checked near my own location for all events, and discovered that tomorrow (Sept. 3rd), one "local" (Facebook seems to ignore international border and considers only distance) event is a group that is going swimming on the beach in El Biyada, Lebanon. This one has 263 people interested. For the less adventurous, a lecture by a visiting German artist in Tel Aviv's 'House of Modern Ceramics' has 15 coming and 78 interested.

In any case, Lior seems to have gone "full sovurn", as quatloos! calls it. He actually has an 'I am a Freeman' ('Free Man' in his version) declaration for people to sign (in English). Looks quite familiar -- it's the same nonsense as with American or other 'freemen'.

It goes without saying that this declaration, or petition, has no legal effect; but however meaningless, how popular is it?

Well, it is hosted on the website https://www.atzuma.co.il/ ('atzuma' means 'petition' in Hebrew). According to the statistics page of this petition, here, (scroll down a bit for the numbers - link in Hebrew), it has been up on the website since 28/8/2016 -- more than a year -- and reached a grand total of 100 (online) signatures and one Facebook comment.

Looking around at the 'atzuma' website for comparison, this is less than the number of signatures collected by a petition opposing the closure of a coffee house in Ramat Gan (109), or one asking the Jerusalem city council to 'Improve the 88 bus line's route' (183).

This is not because the site is obscure: it is perhaps Israel's most prominent social-activism site, and the most popular petitions on the website achieved nearly half a million (464,000+) signatures. Many others achieved tens or hundreds of thousands of signers.

It is rather typical of "sovurn" types to think, that if only they got out the word, everybody will agree with them, and that the Internet will cause the revolution. This isn't true, as can be seen by the utter lack of interests in Lior's claims. People don't agree with them because they are speaking nonsense, not because of "evil government brainwashing".

Oh No! I "Libeled" an Anarchist!

Image credit: http://replycandy.com 

The Israeli anarchist I have mentioned a few posts ago, Eyal Lior, is really angry. He writes, on the preview of his Internet radio show ("the only show dedicated to freedom", link in Hebrew but you can go from there to the English part of his web site), that I wrote a "hate letter" about him on this blog.

Well, what can he do against my "libel"? Sue me? Nope; that would require using the evil government's court system. Threaten my ISP? With what? With a lawsuit? Same problem. With a customer boycott, say? Not if I am a better customer, or he isn't one. He could, theoretically, bribe them into deleting my account, or hire hitmen to threaten me to stop the libel. But what if I am richer and offer the ISP more money, or can hire better "muscle" than he can hire?

So I don't see why, in Lior's anarchy, with no government, I should give a damn if I libel him or not. All I should care about is to be stronger than him. Then I could libel him with impunity, since, in his anarchy, there is nothing and nobody to stop the rich and powerful from doing what they like, while the poor and weak suffer what they must.

The whole point of having a state at all is, as Hobbes points out, that it is far better to suffer even tyranny from one person, the sovereign - let alone suffer the annoyances or bureaucracy of a modern democracy - than to be contantly at the mercy of anybody and everybody who happens to be stronger. Gee, perhaps there's something to this whole "state" thingy after all.