It’s hardly a secret to anybody who reads this blog on a regular basis that my Libertarian views have blossomed over time. It’s also not a secret that I love radicalization; seriously, I watch every January 6th documentary that I can get my hands on! So, one fateful day recently, I was scrolling through HBO Max for a new documentary to watch (I know, I’m a total nerd), I stumbled across one that caught my eye instantly. It was a docuseries called The Anarchists, I knew I had to give it a watch. After all, the initial premise hinted towards my love of both eschewing Drunk Uncle Sam and of fanning political extremism; frankly, why wouldn’t I watch it? However, reality did not quite live up to the hype.
Essentially, my main issue with the docuseries is that it only focuses on the community in Acapulco (with only passing references to Belieze) to the exclusion of everywhere else. A documentary called Behind the Curve which chronicled the flat earth community did a much better job of showing the width of their followers. Instead, this documentary series opted to go for depth in regards to the interview subjects. By no means am I saying that depth is bad, in fact I love depth to the point of writing a book about it. However, one cannot claim to accurately cover an entire community and then focus on a single pocket of said community.
Moreover, the depth is not entirely positive. The docuseries does a deep dive into the disagreements within the anarchist community. After a while though, the documentary became merely about the petty drama between the interview subjects as it had pivoted away from discussing the ideology, and it’s differing interpretations. Furthermore, the documentary focused solely on the annual Anarchapulco conference; I didn’t come because I was interested in the logistics of a glorified trade show.
The documentary also tipped its hand to reveal the bias of the directors against the movement, as this was apparent in the choice of interview and discussion subjects. John Galton and Lily Forrester as a couple, Paul Propert, Jason Henza, and others were intentionally selected because they represented caricatures of negative stereotypes; some of the worst or most cartoonishly ridiculous that the community had to offer. This choice was understandable to a certain degree; HBO needed titillating characters in order to make the series a viable investment. However, the exclusion of moderates hurt the branding of the movement. Case-in-point; I didn’t feel bad when the topic of John Galton’s murder was brought up; he was a literal fucking fugitive. The docuseries also teased at that he might’ve been involved with the drug trade, which is likely given his backstory. Unfortunately, the filmmakers abandoned the talking point completely to focus on the trauma of his girlfriend following his death and finished the project with the question of his narcotic dealings unresolved.
Speaking of, Lily was suspiciously quick to flip the narrative regarding her partner’s murder. The series began with their depiction as a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, and the couple certainly leaned into that notion. After Galton’s death, Forrester milked her white woman tears (a quite deceptive tactic) and talked a large game about her desire to throw herself off of the balcony. Only after her alligator tears had been wrung for as much dramatic effect as possible did she then bring up how toxic her deceased lover supposedly was; a far cry from her stance just one episode prior. I cannot possibly speak to if any of Galton’s alleged emotional abuse was true or not, though my grander point is I didn’t care, like, at all. I came for the ideology, not a goddamn soap opera.
Paul Propert’s constant saber-rattling was a frequent topic of discussion in the docuseries, however hollow it ultimately wound up being, as the only life he ended up taking was his own. This came despite Propert making numerous threats to the contrary. His declining mental health was another annoyingly common talking point, though this hurt the image of the community. By placing such an emphasis on Propert, the message was sent that this community is only for the disturbed, even if indirectly so. This is a nonsense idea, as there are plenty of well-adjusted people that want smaller government (as nearly 60 million people made clear in 2012).
The docuseries focused heavily on anarchism as a knee-jerk response to the American Drug War, rather than as a deliberate lifestyle. While I disagree with the War on Drugs as a concept, the docuseries displays this as the primary, if not the sole, funnel of people turning to anarchism. There was very little mention of issues such as land ownership, gun rights, and tax rates. The sole focus of the documentary on drug use and decaying mental health makes everyone else associated with the ideology look bad. Just as not all Republicans are racist sociopaths that are indifferent to the suffering of racial minorities and not all Democrats are green-haired GenZs that identify as attack helicopters demanding free healthcare, not everybody who wants to be left alone by the government is suffering or on drugs. The filmmakers clearly missed that memo…
In the spirit of The fucking Man Himself, I’ll offer some ideas. First, it would have been nice to feature a calm and well-spoken representative to the community as well. The ideal subject to counter-balance the negative stereotypes proudly portrayed would be one who is more academic than fugitive, shot in the serenity of a home office. Every ideology has a charismatic advocate willing to discuss in detail the views of their community as a whole. I’m not accepting the no such person exists claim since the documentary featured Ron Paul; interviewing the former Senator would’ve been nice, rather than just using him as a prop.
Secondly, besides a well-dressed champion of the ideology, the docuseries would’ve been more representative if there was more inclusion of everyday anarchists. It would have been nice to see everyday members of the community performing common tasks like buying groceries, negotiating contracts and peacefully settling disagreements. This could’ve been done to show how much the average citizen relies on Big Daddy Government without fully realizing it. The viewer could then be left to feel either indignant of or thankful for the omnipresence of government.
Finally, expanding the scope of the docuseries to include more countries and cultures would have been nice. There is obviously more to the community than a pocket of US expats in Mexico, and the filmmakers clearly knew that. Visiting nations with governments that are on the verge of collapse or countries with no functioning government at all would have served as a great reality check. I’m not accepting that answer of that’s not possible as HBO has produced a documentary called Escape From Kabul which covered the Afghan collapse of August 2021. HBO is absolutely capable of showing this if they wanted, but it’s clear they just plainly didn’t want to…
Whoever said all press is good press clearly never watched a hit piece…
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