Anarcho-Historian Lesson #6: Achieving the Fine Art of Violence and Maintaining Power

The fateful year was 246 BCE, in the middle of January, Chinese New Year’s Day. And this day was truly an auspicious event. The calm winds did blow, and a new dynasty, the most powerful and yet, the shortest dynasty in Chinese history, had drunk from the poisoned cup of power. The great Chin Empire had arranged the sacred rituals for its grandiose reign. The infamous Black Emperor held tight to the wrath, once belonging to the worst of winters, and his holy name was, Ying Zheng.

Originally, the Chin rulers had fought as military knights under the great Zhou dynasty. But many centuries later, the Chin had finally received the mandate of Heaven, and like all new regimes and states built on the foundations of violence and legal crime, the emperor had a new capital built, called Xianyang on the western Wei River. Ying Zheng, as war commander and imperial Black Prince, took less than ten years to conquer all of his rival warlords and eventually unite the Middle Kingdom of China, both east and west, and north from the Yellow river to the south on the Yangtze river.

After Emperor Zheng’s sudden death about twelve years later, one of his sons, Zhao Zheng, or following his new name, Qin Shi Huang – the First Great Emperor, continued the Chin dynasty. He would last only a few years in power before his fateful assassination. The great Chin dynasty actually lasted only fifteen years, from 246-210 BCE.

Yet, this dynasty was the first to unite all the Chinas, the first to build on the Great Wall against the barbarians, the first to exterminate all the soldiers that knew the whereabouts of the Black Emperor, and then recreate them in lifelike quality in stone sculpture buried under the imperial sacred Earth. Chin Imperial power had first successfully used the political ideology of Legalism, under the advisers of Han Fei, Li Si, and Shang Yang.

Many philosophers and intellectuals in both antiquity and modern times have tried to formulate a theory, a law, or a truth that would explain to humanity the essence of human history. For some ancient historians, the understanding of history and conquest emerged from correct moral guidance, law systems, and aligning the actions of justice with fate or the Gods. Medieval historians often wrote about the attainment of both group discipline and group feeling, which enabled the triumph of the Spirit.

For others, it was the power of the Idea, the conception of the truth, while great leaders in history had obtained the access to the Eternal Mind, which led their empires and nations to victory. And for a few others, mostly of the Marxist persuasion, history was nothing but the struggle of social classes, where the poorer classes have been in constant war, movement and retreat versus the richer classes. All of these philosophers, intellectuals, and armchair historians were wrong.

The philosopher Nietzsche came the closest to understanding History, when he stated that history was not a subject worthy of study, for it was simply the study about how the strong, or the Masters, abused the weak, or the Slaves. This was true, but history has never been that simple. Humans have been very complex, have often thought too much, and have generally acted and reacted based on mental absurdities. But the cycles of history, and the rise and fall of great powers, empires, nations and states have all developed through the cultivation of the art of violence and the maintenance of such power. True power comes out of the genius, energy and will to do incredible acts of violence, brutality and cruelty.

All powerful state entities know this historical truth, including the sociopathic liars that now run the real United States Government-World Power. Historical entities that have fine tuned their methods of violence to greater legal webs of direction, such as prisons and concentration camps, massive laws codes, greater technological prowess in war, unbelievable controls in information and state secrets, amazing propaganda techniques, sophisticated uses of genocide, shocking acts of mass murder, various layers of legal state crimes, and the utter destruction of multiple enemies, have been the same entities that have triumphed through the attainment of power status on the world stage. Mao Tse Tung, the last known emperor of China, albeit a Communist one, stated that ‘all power comes out of the barrel of a gun.’ He was also partly right.

Violence has not just represented physical extermination, such as war, military divisions, guns, urban destruction, legal murder and state criminality. Violence has also signified institutional levels of brute force, such as laws, codes, work systems, schools, prisons, media propaganda, information gathering, intelligence spying, and surveillance mechanisms. The state apparatuses and empires that have successfully used and perfected all of those different levers of institutional violence have been the same empires that have achieved the most sublime victories on history’s pages for the battle of ideologies.

Think on the first great European empire, the Spanish Empire. At the beginning of the seventeenth-century, this Empire ‘where the sun had never set,’ had just murdered millions of indigenous people in the Caribbean, and yet it constructed a durable colonial regime from the Rio Colorado in New Mexico to the Rio Bio Bio in Chile for three hundred years. The ancient Assyrians also possessed great victories for hundreds of years, and they also held their special methods of torture and death in dealing with recalcitrant nobles that refused to respect them. The Chin Emperors of ancient China understood this truth fully through their ideological supports, called the Legalists.

For example, the Legalists advisers of the Chin ordered the confiscation of all illegal weapons. They also counseled the emperor on the nature of warfare, both internal and external. The emperor had to win the battle at all costs. The Chin also abolished hereditary noble privileges and they willfully executed scheming court eunuchs, massacred suspect villages and buried alive dishonest Confucian intellectuals. The Chin introduced forced labor conscription in order to build royal palaces, roads for war chariots, extensive canals, and gigantic walls that stretched thousands of miles in order to keep out the barbarians. They expelled non-Chinese foreigners and forcibly resettled minority cultures. The emperor did not just lounge in his palace, but he toured his empire on a war chariot accompanied by royal advisers and noble knights.

The Chin emperor forced the nobles into continual wars, so as to keep them occupied from parasitism. The Chin also employed the first court bureaucrats and did allow for some internal criticism. The emperors mandated a large family policy, larger agricultural tribute taxes, and the control of marriage partners, so that the poor would not marry the wealthy. The Great Emperor also demanded the burning of historical records with the final unification of Chinese legal and writing systems. According to the Legalists, the emperor kept a neutral stance on all policy, but his will reigned supreme handing out both punishments and favors, while he always favored the duress of the Law against favoritism and privileges.

After the overthrow of the Chin, another dynasty emerged to rule China. They had the name of the Han Dynasty, and unlike the Chin, they would rule for another 400 years. The Han emperors condemned the old Legalist methods of the Chin, but they also used similar violent methods in maintaining control. Sometimes the officials would cancel taxes, and other times they raised them. Sometimes the officials increased the number of laws, and other times they did not enforce them. The Han Chinese attacked Manchuria, Annam, (northern Vietnam), Mongolia and Korea, in order to expand their empire. The Han used Confucian scholars over Legalists, yet for the posterity of history, they used the same methods of violence and legal crime in order to keep up their power.

The historical lesson is simple. All states that want to advance in power and grasp their historical glory must increase their deeds of violence, brutality, criminality and cruelty. Violence does get the results, because the State, as historical entity, bathes in its own power to commit admissible violence and legal crime. There is no way to have a state without acts of torture, rape, imprisonment and murder. This truth goes for all states: democratic or parliamentary, republican or dictatorial, monarchic or oligarchic, theocracies or socialist juntas. Whether the methods are coup d’états or elections, resignations or palace revolts, the activities of the state speak only to unrestrained violence. Human culture changes, but the state has never changed – nor will it ever.

Anarcho-Historian Lesson #5: Seven Classical Methods in Maintaining Social Control over Subject Populations

A violent year was ending; this ‘august’ day was also in the middle of a hard winter – and it was even rougher inside the moderate climes of Rome. This particular year was 27 BCE. It was the month of January, and the  new emperor of the great Roman Empire claimed the day of the 16th as an imperial holiday. The emperor’s name for historical posterity was Octavian Augustus.

During the subsequent years of his reign, he would use all of the ancient classical methods in maintaining social control over Rome’s subject populations. The Roman Empire would never experience its previous civil wars again, yet he snuffed out the Roman Republic from its existence. He replaced the Republic with an Empire and the rest was history.

The first method in social control was Octavian Augustus successfully claiming the rituals, images and titles of legitimate authority. His second method ingeniously utilized slow and repressive tyranny with token reforms. The third method represented the mastery of the bread and circuses spectacle. The fourth used the infamous, and always-triumphant, political technique of divide and you shall conquer. The fifth aspect of control made use of naming enemies and aggravating the public fear of such enemies. The sixth system of statecraft employed selective justice and pardons for some, while making brutal examples against a few easier targets, or called ‘the carrot and the stick’ approach. The final one, and most important method tied with the first one, availed in him creating state mythologies out of selected events.

And many patrician elites, the senate, the army, common plebes, farmers, artisans, foreign citizens, resident merchants and even slaves would commend the name of August for historical posterity. In fact, this dictator’s name now has the English synonym of prestigious. A month in our Gregorian calendar also has the name August. This short story is how it got that way.

On this day, the 16th of January, 27 BCE, called ‘the first settlement,’ his friend and associate, Lepidus, received the spiritual title of the top priest in the Roman religion, ‘the Pontifex Maximus.’ Lepidus and Augustus acted through a complete religious ceremony that included animal sacrifices and sacred rituals. Lepidus dressed accordingly in the beautiful robes and hat of a Pontifex Maximus. Octavian was not finished however, for he soon dashed into the public state theater in his imperial purple and crimson toga over his old military outfit, when he was previously a military commander of a victorious Roman legion. In one full super event, he claimed all three state powers and legitimized his rule: spiritual, political and military. Octavian Augustus would eventually take the imperial spiritual title of Pontifex Maximus from his old client Lepidus.

While Octavian claimed the semi-divine powers over life and death within the entire empire, he also instituted some important reforms on this sacred holy day. He symbolically handed over his legislative power to the Senate, where a faction of that body had warred against his late, assassinated protégé, Julius Caesar. Augustus made sure that the name and title of Caesar also possessed a semi-divine stature, and Octavian took the name of Caesar as the eternal symbol for the Roman emperor – and which would signify emperor even until modern history, with such bogus titles as Kaiser and Czar.

The entire ritual set up featured senators, military commanders with their officers in full military campaign dress, and a flourish of Romans, equestrians, gentleman farmers and distinguished citizens standing in awe inside of the imperial city, surrounded by grandiose, cleaned white temples and Roman imperial majesty. With all of the state pomp and ritual, which utilized all of the five senses and displayed the flourish of power and greatness, the emotional crowd screamed the new titles and powers of Octavian: ‘Princep,’ or First Citizen, ‘Consul,’ or legislative-military adviser, and ‘Imperator.’ or military commander.

This public ritual super event solidified both his power and legitimacy to rule, while he simultaneously showed his historic preservation of the old Roman values of ‘Dignitas,’ or public honor, ‘Gravitas,’ or public temperance, and ‘Auctoritas,’ or valued wisdom. In an ancient historical age without the Internet, video, television, film, radio and photo-print media, Octavian the Great had prepared a true masterpiece of state theater.

Octavian the Augustus claimed even greater honors, all for his ‘duty’ to Rome. He set up another date of glory called the ‘second settlement,’ where he claimed the powers of the ‘Tribune,’ or the sacred interests of the people, called the ‘Popolus.’ Augustus even claimed that the massive conglomerations of Rome actually represented one great family on the Earth, and so his ultimate title was ‘Pater Patriae,’ Father of the sacred country. In an Empire that swarmed on three different continents while possessing many different languages and cultures, this new truth was certainly something else to believe.

But sacred state rituals and costumes in the service of legitimacy needed some more backing for wider public support. Augustus became the Roman game and circus leader extraordinaire. Normally, such games and circuses happened only during Roman holy days, or holidays. But Augustus kept the party spirit burning with lots of back to back contests of chariot races, gladiator fights, mock battles, and even naval ones, and public contests of lyrical-musical, religious, poetic and physical glories. During these festivals and spectacles, Augustus distributed rations of bread, killed bull meat, and watered down wine to the anxious urban crowds in Rome. The theatrical comedies were in full operation, and the emperor even rebuilt the great Theater of Apollo.

Octavian had also made sure that his rival enemies ended up fully destroyed and discredited. Octavian’s greatest concern was Caesar’s cousin and Roman hero, Mark Antony and his relationship to Cleopatra in Egypt. Octavian managed to pull the Roman Senate against the Mark Antony, and he had even read the supposed will of Mark Antony to the Roman people in the Forum market. Like a skilled manipulator, Octavian moved the public sentiment against the ‘dictatorial degenerate’ lying in waste at Cleopatra’s palace in Egypt. Eventually, Octavian managed to seize a Roman legion that exterminated his followers, and he even ordered their son, Caesarion, killed. Any Roman associated with such a rabble became a public enemy of the Roman people.

While the circuses and bread distribution progressed, Octavian warned the Roman people of the coming sacrifices ahead in order to maintain their wonderful empire. Continual war was the other standard in Octavian’s rule. The Celtic nations in Gaul, or France, and in Hispania, or Spain, still needed the iron discipline of Roman blood and fire. Augustus also had to exterminate the pirate danger in the Mar Nostrum, or the Mediterranean Sea.

Earlier, Octavian had finished off one of the sons of Pompey; Pompey the Great was an old Roman General and ally, later enemy, of Caesar. His sons still had a base of operations in the wilds of Sicily. Augustus’ latter warfare eventual paid off with full victories in Spain and in France. His Germania, or German campaigns, did not gain much territory. In fact, his war campaign against the German nations ended in defeat, but the Roman blood would demand future sacrifice in subduing them. His descendent Claudius would do the faithful job.

In the east, he took Egypt, grabbed more territory from Dacia, or Rumania, and Rome successfully battled the Parthians, or Persians-Iranians, whereby the Roman imperial standards moved from Mesopotamia, or Iraq, into Northern Africa, and on the northern periphery, from the Danube to the Rhine river. Octavian Augustus had many spectacular public triumphs in his city of Rome. His unforgettable triumphant returns featured marching Roman legions in sync, loud war drums, megalith flower displays, stolen religious objects on pedestals, massive stone gods brought back on ships, and thousands of unfortunate captured slaves in chains.

Octavian always maintained the astute politician role. He knew when to offer pardons and patronage, and with other unfortunates, exterminate them mercilessly. He had all of the Senatorial conspirators associated with the assassination of Caesar exterminated – including the noble Cicero, yet he lavished power and patronage on the rest of the Roman Senate to help ‘govern’ the Empire. He exterminated the last heir of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, yet he pardoned Mark Antony’s brother that warred against him in the Perusine War. He ultimately exterminated the sons of Pompey, or the Pirates of Sicily, and yet, he redistributed lands in Italy to his Roman soldiers that faithfully fought with him and even with those that fought for Mark Antony – and he pardoned his old ally Lepidus when his old and disgruntled client decided to battle against him.

Finally, Augustus was the master in creating a renewed imperial and cultural mythology. His death culminated in Roman holiday celebrations that included a monolithic funeral cortège of flower wreaths featuring his noble family and the successor emperor, Tiberius, the Roman Senate, the Roman Praetorian Guard, or elite soldiers, equestrian Roman cavalry, Roman legions stationed near the city of Rome, and throng of innumerable Roman nobles, plebes and citizens in mourning. Augustus financed many public work projects, and his most famous was the construction of the Pantheon, which still stands in the actual Rome of today. His burial took place in the sacred corner of the temple, and his ‘Genius,’ or essence received deification. His eulogies also spread to other writers, intellectuals and historians that Augustus patronized. The greatest work was the epic tale of the Romans, called the ‘Aeneid,’ which traced the early history of Rome back to the honorable and courageous, Trojans – and finishing with Augustus, of course.

And so, the mythology of Octavian Caesar Augustus still lives in historical grandeur, or historical infamy, if you are an Anarchist. His statecraft also continues to breed its monsters. Since those ancient times, uncountable emperors, dictators, thugs on thrones, tyrants, princes, kings, queens, dukes, state criminals, sociopaths, prime ministers, presidents and self-proclaimed leaders have utilized the same methods and have unfortunately made them work.

Now the readers know the truth of such tactics and we can counter them. Anarchists can tell this story and other such examples to the angry and the ignorant. The astute reader can also see how the current monstrosity of empire, the United States of America Empire, has also used, and continues to use, such sinister practices of public manipulation.

But the current evil Amerikan empire has even greater power at its disposal in statecraft and social control. This criminal regime in Washington D.C. has been, and always will be, the greatest at utilizing particular modus operandi: media advertising through image-phrase repetitions, emotional manipulations, and blatant news speak propaganda.