In the past several weeks, there seems to be a trend going on in the 'celebrity' world of libertarianism, to mean the anarchist communities. It began with the Kokesh 'scandal' in which rumors and then affirmations of his 'less than tasteful' methods of interacting with his significant other and his crew were publicized through photos and videos.
More recently, yesterday in fact, a new 'scandal' had been announced regarding Larken Rose. Without going into to much detail, there was an affair and persons upset by this uploaded a video publicizing their personal life in regard to this 'affair'. They later took it down, regretting having posted it because of the lives this would distress and because they had done it out of anger and pain rather than because it was in any way relevant to the community.
However, in the short 10 or 20 minutes the video was up, several people had watched it, shared it and some had even made copies of it.
On a thread I started where I had shared the video in order to discuss how this is not relevant to the community and that the author had obviously made the video out of spite(as evidenced in his recant and regret for posting it), someone had declared they had made a copy of the now unavailable video. Upon hearing this, the author then went on to plea with the person with the copy and asked them not to reupload it because of the aforementioned regret and potential distress it was sure to create.
The author even messaged me, briefly, expounding upon this request to not re-upload the video. While I did not have a copy, I was keeping those on the thread abreast to the situation and had even said I would share the new upload when it was available. This was before the author declared their regret and desire to rescind the video from public view. Upon his request and affirmation of regret, I advised him that I would not reshare it myself but that I had no control over the copy. The best I could do is to talk to those who may have a copy and plea his case and explain my reasons for wishing it not to be re-uploaded. I also advised him to speak to those who he talks about in the video, to include Larken Rose, and alert them to the potential fallout should the video resurface as well as apologize for his rash action in making the video to begin with.
It has since come to my attention that Larken had been warned about the video, by a third party, and that the video had, in fact, been re-uploaded(and edited). Since, a series of memes have been created, much in the same spirit as the Kokesh scandal memes, making light of the situation.
As I had unwittingly been dragged into the drama, I now feel I owe it to those involved and the community at large to bring this to the attention of all of us and to discuss a point that has been bouncing around in my head for some time and is more relevant in light of Kokesh and now Larken's scandals.
Firstly, let's make it clear, these men's personal lives are largely irrelevant to the community at large. While they may not be the 'good' guys in these situations and while I may even deplore their actions as asserted in these scandals, I largely feel they are a null point to the activities and progress of liberty minded people. They are human beings and, as such, they are flawed. All of us are.
But our issues with these 'polarizing' figures in our community should not result from their personal failings but from their ideological failings, if there are, in fact, any to be found. I disagree with Larken about many things, more than I am aware of, I am sure. And I have long been skeptical of Kokesh, seeing him as a charismatic figure who has jumped on a bandwagon and, based on his practices in regards to ideology, I have taken issue with him for various reasons.
However, their personal dealings with those in their life are, largely, irrelevant.
But, as I said, this brings up a topic I've long been mulling over. The increasing tendency of our community to make celebrities of the most vocal and respected and polarizing among us. In some ways, the most voracious followers of men like Kokesh and Larken seem to almost 'deify' these men as 'gods of freedom'. And that is, honestly, a natural reactions, especially since all of us come from a history of living in a society where celebrity and leader worship is encouraged by the media and our peers.
But aren't we better than that? These are men, flesh and blood, they are not gods, they are not even our 'leaders'. They are advocates for a cause we share. Freedom. That is all. This tendency we seem to have to make celebrities of men such as these and others like Mark Passio, I believe, could be the undoing for many of us. By putting these men on pedestals, when their flaws are exposed they won't just tumble from their heights of fame, they will knock a great many of us to the ground with them.
We need to step back, each of us and all of us, and ask ourselves why we are so prone to look to men who are the 'face' of anarchy in our lives and treat them as somehow sacrosanct simply because they seem to best vocalize and explain and spread our beliefs? We treat them like high priests of anarchy when anarchy is not supposed to be a religion or cult such as seems to be the case with 'statism'. We are supposed to look to OURSELVES for our answers and solutions and then share them and encourage others to do the same. So why do we find ourselves idolizing and raising up these celebrities of anarchy?
Humans are flawed and this is one of our flaws. A need, a want to sanctify those among us that seem the most charismatic and 'awe-inspiring'. But we, as anarchists also know that, as humans, we can better ourselves. I think it is time we do this in regard to these men that we look up to and that have helped many of us realize our own freedom.
In that we should be our own 'rulers', we should also be our own role models, our own gods, our own high priests in our lives. We do not need masters and we do not need celebrities nor the drama such a status brings.
Added in edit
Suffice to say, we, as individuals and as a community, might want to be more careful about 'elevating' those among us that become well known. They are people. They will fail and they have flaws. The higher we raise them, the farther they fall and the more people that can be harmed by it.
We're all people and we are all flawed. If there's one thing we don't need in anarchadia, it's celebrities that are held to a higher standard. We should all be held to the same standard.