Zombie Patriots and other musings
John Kelsey
kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
Sat Dec 13 08:52:46 PST 2003
At 09:19 AM 12/12/03 -0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
...
>You need to think about the "lone warrior" scenario that the Gang
>worries about. McVeighs and Rudolphs.
>They were influenced by memes which were not immediately suppressed.
One interesting property of the lone warriors is that they can't actually
make peace. With large sets of them, there's not only no way to force them
to surrender, there's no way to even surrender to them! The demands of
different lone warriors are different. Because they're not under anyone's
authority, you can't negotiate a truce that's worth anything with
them. You've executed the FBI and BATF agents involved in the Waco
disaster, and so Tim McVeigh has made peace with you. But Randolph still
blows things up, because he wants abortion clinics and gay bars shut
down. And the Unabomber wanted (as far as I can tell) technology shut down.
Of course, there's a more fundamental problem with surrendering to the lone
warriors. Imagine that there's such a wave of pro-life terrorism that we
finally agree to ban abortion. You're a fanatically committed pro-choice
activist. What's your next move?
--John Kelsey, kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259
More information about the cypherpunks-legacy
mailing list