tbqh, the extent to which anarchists think #ancaps want to infiltrate spaces and covertly spread their ideas is both deeply fucking embarassing and unintentionally flattering to the #paleolibertarian right. Let's start with the latter point:

In case you're not aware, the US #Libertarian Party was recently taken over by the "Mises Caucus," a far-right contingent of an already rightist political organization. Since their self-avowed "takeover," they have lost the party thousands in donor revenue, lost several state affiliates, and allowed the official twitter account to get hacked due to botched authentication (back when this was a function on birdsite ofc). TLDR, these people can't run jack shit beyond edgelord messageboards and a middling alt-right twitter presence, and they certainly can't convince anyone outside their echo chambers of their "libertarian" credentials.
Of course, that's not the point of their strategy; the Mises Caucus isn't trying to convince anyone of their libertarianism, their explicitly ancap figureheads completely ambivalent towards the recognition of their self-avowed anarchism, and their predecessors only marginally less so. Rothbard claimed he and his people "captured a crucial word from the enemy," but beyond this "linguistic theft," the organizing principles of the modern libertarian right aren't exactly characteristic of the tankie or third positionist grifts we've seen in the past. If anything, the libertarian right has made abundantly clear its open hostility towards egalitarian rhetoric, leftist imagery, and the individuals who populate radical spaces. They want nothing to do with us, and whenever they try to fabricate common ground with actual anarchists, they fuck up miserably.

None of this is meant to dismiss the great and genuine threat these reactionaries pose as footsoldiers of the New Right, only to make clear the general fact that they are anything but stealthy in their endeavors. Infiltration that's easy to spot immediately isn't worth as many eyes as those who lurk passively and corrode networks of trust.

My first point, informed by these observations, is that anarchists in specific are hung up to an embarassing degree over the "ancaps aren't real anarchists" discourse - particularly those few vocal individuals who have more to say on the question than an unambiguous "no" or "yes." I characterize this as embarassing because it takes way too much of our precious, increasingly scarce time on earth that could be spent addressing bigger problems than cancelling a #marketanarchist account on birdsite for saying "ancaps ARE real anarchists."
Imagine for a moment what kind of movement we'd have if most of our time - even just a significant, non-majority proportion - was spent explaining why the USSR wasn't socialist. We don't really need to imagine that, now do we? All we need is a quick glance towards the Marxist-Leninists and see how misguided such a myopia is in pursuit of radical change. While it is indeed true that the USSR wasn't socialist by the most consistent definition, just as it's true anarcho-capitalism isn't a part of "anarchism proper," these points are not hard to explain and, more importantly, are *single* points worth only a small portion of our time. They are not, on their own, measurements of another individual's radicalism. If the world were so simple, we'd have fixed it by now.

Do not confuse major difference within a milieu for fundamental hostility. A friendly #LWMA (left-wing market anarchist) isn't a mystical wizard using a koch-funded spell to trick ancoms into voting for Ron Paul; they're most likely an accomplice in the struggle that just so happens to have different beliefs than you that, while distinct, are not mutually exclusive from yours. Ancaps aren't anarchists, sure, but there's no rule saying they can never become one. I mean, I can't be the only one right?

tbqh, the extent to which anarchists think #ancaps want to infiltrate spaces and covertly spread their ideas is both deeply fucking embarassing and unintentionally flattering to the #paleolibertarian right. Let's start with the latter point:

In case you're not aware, the US #Libertarian Party was recently taken over by the "Mises Caucus," a far-right contingent of an already rightist political organization. Since their self-avowed "takeover," they have lost the party thousands in donor revenue, lost several state affiliates, and allowed the official twitter account to get hacked due to botched authentication (back when this was a function on birdsite ofc). TLDR, these people can't run jack shit beyond edgelord messageboards and a middling alt-right twitter presence, and they certainly can't convince anyone outside their echo chambers of their "libertarian" credentials.
Of course, that's not the point of their strategy; the Mises Caucus isn't trying to convince anyone of their libertarianism, their explicitly ancap figureheads completely ambivalent towards the recognition of their self-avowed anarchism, and their predecessors only marginally less so. Rothbard claimed he and his people "captured a crucial word from the enemy," but beyond this "linguistic theft," the organizing principles of the modern libertarian right aren't exactly characteristic of the tankie or third positionist grifts we've seen in the past. If anything, the libertarian right has made abundantly clear its open hostility towards egalitarian rhetoric, leftist imagery, and the individuals who populate radical spaces. They want nothing to do with us, and whenever they try to fabricate common ground with actual anarchists, they fuck up miserably.

None of this is meant to dismiss the great and genuine threat these reactionaries pose as footsoldiers of the New Right, only to make clear the general fact that they are anything but stealthy in their endeavors. Infiltration that's easy to spot immediately isn't worth as many eyes as those who lurk passively and corrode networks of trust.

My first point, informed by these observations, is that anarchists in specific are hung up to an embarassing degree over the "ancaps aren't real anarchists" discourse - particularly those few vocal individuals who have more to say on the question than an unambiguous "no" or "yes." I characterize this as embarassing because it takes way too much of our precious, increasingly scarce time on earth that could be spent addressing bigger problems than cancelling a #marketanarchist account on birdsite for saying "ancaps ARE real anarchists."
Imagine for a moment what kind of movement we'd have if most of our time - even just a significant, non-majority proportion - was spent explaining why the USSR wasn't socialist. We don't really need to imagine that, now do we? All we need is a quick glance towards the Marxist-Leninists and see how misguided such a myopia is in pursuit of radical change. While it is indeed true that the USSR wasn't socialist by the most consistent definition, just as it's true anarcho-capitalism isn't a part of "anarchism proper," these points are not hard to explain and, more importantly, are *single* points worth only a small portion of our time. They are not, on their own, measurements of another individual's radicalism. If the world were so simple, we'd have fixed it by now.

Do not confuse major difference within a milieu for fundamental hostility. A friendly #LWMA (left-wing market anarchist) isn't a mystical wizard using a koch-funded spell to trick ancoms into voting for Ron Paul; they're most likely an accomplice in the struggle that just so happens to have different beliefs than you that, while distinct, are not mutually exclusive from yours. Ancaps aren't anarchists, sure, but there's no rule saying they can never become one. I mean, I can't be the only one right?