SPOONER, Lysander. The Anglo-Saxons Were Robbers and Pirates in Their Own Country

10/11/2018 The Anglo-Saxons Were Robbers and Pirates in Their Own Country - Videshi Sutra
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Oct
6 The Anglo-Saxons Were Robbers and
Pirates in Their Own Country by Videshi Sutra
https://videshisutra.com/2016/10/06/the-anglo-saxons-were-robbers-and-pirates-in-their-own-country/ 1/11
Lysander Spooner. Image Source: Volokh
Wipe out, then, these feudal robbers – the whole race of kings, and
queens, and nobles, and all their accomplices in every grade of life, and
take possession of all the spoils which they and their predecessors have
wrung from you and your ancestors. Put an end to their Parliaments
and Courts. Blot out forever their statute books. They contain little or
nothing else than the records of their villanies. Free England and
Ireland, and thus all the rest of the empire, of the tyrants and robbers
that are plundering, enslaving, and crushing, and starving you.
Sorry Anglo-Saxons, this post is not for you. It culminates in one of the most cutting
anti-Anglo rants I’ve ever read. You can just skip to the last block quote if you are
short on time. Its low effort on my behalf because I’m mostly just quoting Spooner,
but its worth it. Lysander Spooner wrote this letter entitled Revolution: The Only
Remedy for the Oppressed Classes of Ireland, England, and Other Parts of the
British Empire. He is one of my favorite Anarchist writers and if you aren’t familiar
with him already, well you should be.
Heres the setup: The impetus for the letter is a letter which Spooner received from a
certain “Dunraven” apparently defending landlordism in Ireland. It leads him into a
polemical rant on empire, revolution, liberty, and history. He initially makes an
attack on Dunraven’s position by attacking feudal landlordism in general as the
product of thievery:
The whole force of your letter, as a defence of Irish landlords, rests

upon the assumption that they are the real and true owners of the lands
they now hold. But this assumption is a false one. These lands, largely
or mostly, were originally taken by the sword, and have ever since been
held by the sword. Neither the original robbers, nor any subsequent
holders, have ever had any other than a robber’s title to them. And
robbery gives no better title to lands than it does to any other property.
A moment later however, he goes on to extend this criticism to England:
And what is true of the lands in Ireland is equally true of the lands in
England. The lands in England, largely or mostly, were originally
taken by the sword, and have ever since been held by the sword; and
the present holders have no better titles to them than simple, naked
robbery has given them.
This is all rather obvious stuff for someone who has even a faint grasp of history
(Spooner says as much himself: “It cannot be supposed that you are so stupid as to
be ignorant of all this…”) but it leads to a funny conclusion. Namely, that the entire
“social structure” of the British Empire (which Dunraven holds in such esteem) is
predicated on nothing but robbery, and should therefore be abolished. This leads to
the most thrilling passage in the letter, wherein Spooner characterizes the ruling
class of England (and indeed, the Anglo-Saxon people in general) as the enemy of
humanity, and as a race primarily defined by a proclivity towards robbery and
piracy.
One of the forebears of the British Empire. Image Source: Heroes n’

Pirates
This designation – enemies of the human race – has more generally

been applied to pirates; to men who committed their crimes upon the
sea. But there have been other hostes humani generis; men devoted to
plunder, who committed their crimes upon the land and who were
equally indifferent, with pirates on the sea, as to the persons on whom
their crimes were committed. The ruling classes in England, from the
time the Anglo-Saxons first came there, have been hostes humani
generis: enemies of the human race. They have had only one motive,
viz, plunder. And so long as this motive was gratified, they have cared
not whom they plundered, enslaved, or murdered.
The Anglo-Saxons were robbers and pirates in their own

country, two thousand years ago; robbers on land, and
pirates at sea. Such was their sole business. The men
performed no useful labor. Their useful labor was all
performed by their women and their slaves. They themselves,
as history tells us, scorned to labor for anything they could
take by force. They came into England on their usual errand.
They seized the country by military power, and reduced the
native Britons to slavery. And they have maintained this character
ever since. The Normans were equally robbers. The real government of
England, the actual ruling power, for more than a thousand years, has
been a mere band of robbers; a mere confederacy of villains. And it is
nothing else to-day. They have not only plundered and enslaved the
great body of the people of England and Ireland, but, as far as possible,
the peoples of all other parts of the globe. They have their chains to-day
upon more than two hundred millions of people; and their whole
purpose is to extort from them everything that oppression, in every
form, is capable of extorting.
It then concludes with the passage which I started this off with up top, just beneath
the portrait of Spooner.
I love it!
This entry was posted in british raj, History, Short and tagged anarchism, anglo, anglo-saxon, british
empire, dunraven, empire, evil, freedom, India, ireland, libertarianism, liberty, lysander spooner,
pirates, polemic, racism, slavery, spooner, state.
← Covert Lokayata III: Orthodox Darsha… Ancient Indian Aristocratic Republics →
11 comments on “The Anglo-Saxons Were Robbers and

Pirates in Their Own Country”
Anglo-Saxons Are Savages – mahakala7777 says:

October 6, 2016 at 9:05 am
[…] This guy just made a post about this and I’m just going to steal the last bit of it.
Because it is a perfect representation of at least half of the British psyche. It is a quote
from Lysander Spooner: […]
R Nanjappa says:
As we read history, we realise that every country in the world has been plagued by
violence in the past- without exception. Why single out Anglo-Saxons? It is unfair.
If you read the history of the Tamils 2000 years ago, you will find that the three major
kings and the petty chieftains under them were constantly engaged in warfare. Tamil
kings marching on another and causing wanton destruction to other Tamils is described
in graphic detail in the ancient Tamil poems which called it valour! So, the Anglo-
Saxons were not exceptional or particularly bad. If you want to judge them, do by the
standards of those times, not with today’s ideas.
The Buddha preached his dhamma and converted most Kshatriya kings to his way;
India lost the spirit of self-defence and sense of valour or honour; it fell easy prey to all
the invaders subsequently.
On the whole, the Anglo-Saxons have been instruments for all the good things that we
now boast of: parliamentary democracy, rule of law, separation of powers, limited
constitutional monarchy, ideas of liberalism, gradual reform in place of violent
revolution, etc The Scots might have been the authors of the Enlightenment, but it was
the Anglo-Saxon British rule that enabled it to spread worldwide.. Yes they looted India
and introduced a system of education which made Indians forget their past and their
own strengths and made them mere imitators of foreign ways. But why are foolish
Indians continuing it even after Independence? But looting- any imperial power would
have done it! But it was the arch-imperialist Anglo Saxon Churchill who understood
after World War !! that India, the gem in the crown, had become a liability and it no
longer served imperial interests! ( Britain would have to spend to defend India, instead
of deriving monetary benefit out of the colony., which is the justification for keeping a
colony.)See how hastily they transferred power and ran away from India! He also is
reported to have said that they were transferring power to men of straw- which has
proved correct! Anglo Saxons looted then. globalisation and WTO do so now. So, what
has changed?
We Indians have also to be thankful for many Anglo-Saxons who supported India:
Burke who impeached Warren Hastings, Adam Smith who warned that a group of
merchants would never administer a territory for the benefit of the natives; Annie
Besant, Sister Nivedita, and numerous others.
let us not judge anything by bad specimens.
Videshi Sutra says:

October 6, 2016 at 12:46 pm
if I had found such a vitriolic and passionate remark made about Tamils I
probably would post it as well. I don’t really view this as a racist tract, as any
group which subjects others to predation is worthy of condemnation in
proportion to the level of predation they engaged in.
But lets not confuse things here. The Anglo-Saxons are unique for several
reasons one of which is their unparalleled ability to conquest and loot. There is
no really intrinsic reason to single out the Anglo-Saxons for criticism in this
respect… beyond the fact that their spate of robbery was arguably the largest
and most extractive imperial operation ever conducted by human beings. There
is a reason why it is the British Empire who draws the eye of libertarian and
anarchist critics of the period, and not the Tamil kingdoms. Sorry, but the
Tamils for all their warrior virtue simply cannot compete in this respect.
True, the Anglo-Saxons are also the architects of much of liberalism But again
here, don’t confuse the history. Some of the products of liberalism were garbage
(Constructivist utilitarianism, socialism, moral universalism, radical
egalitarianism, jacobinism, the willing destruction of The Ancient Constitution,
eurocentrism). One of the most damaging things the British ever did to India
was to introduce the idea of socialism and liberal social engineering. And on the
other hand, the portions of liberalism which are indeed of value, were for the
most part either invented by the subjugated Scots, and/or constitute a rejection
or limiting of the authority of the Anglo state. Parliament for example was an
evil tool of Anglo-Saxon nobility and landlords, to cooperate with royalty in the
shared project of exploiting the celtic-blooded slave classes, which was
progressively subverted by the slaves until it began in some sense to act in their
favor. Rule of Law was (in its original and true sense) the concept that the
Anglo-Saxon monarch should be constrained by common law, i.e. the law of the
commons, the law which naturally arose between and amongst the subjugated
classes of Britain (only now do we hypocritically apply this concept to statutory
law). This wasn’t a gift of the Anglo-Saxons, it was wrested from them by the
slaves in their own country.
You will never hear me say a word against the Britishers you mentioned. They
were all excellent. But lets just go through that list real quick, shall we? Burke
was partially Anglo-Norman by ancestry, true, but he was also an Irish Catholic.
Smith was a scotsman as far as I know. Annie Besant was of Irish blood. And
Sister Nivedita was Scots Irish. So this list of “the good ones” is again, actually a
list of people who emerged from under the Anglo-Saxon heel to enlighten the
world nevertheless.
We come from dreams ~ says:

You are getting a reblog, Nick. I had gotten a copy of Spooner’s writings in 1976, I
believe, and long since lost; thanks for the reminder!
Roy
Videshi Sutra says:

Glad you enjoyed. Spooner is really the most precious gem of the American
Anarchist tradition. A true individualist. Unfortunate that you lost your classic
copy of his writing but with the internet we have full access to the breadth of his
thought: http://www.lysanderspooner.org/works/ .

Ohboyohboyohboy, talk about a kid in a candy store! Just downloaded a

whole bunch of .pdf’s! Thank you kindly!

Reblogged this on We come from dreams ~ and commented:

Ahh, sweet anarchy!
Sha'Tara says:
Reblogged this on ~Burning Woman~ and commented:

After reading this article about the real “government” running the British Empire, it is
well to remember that the same empire was grafted upon the so-called “republic” of
“America” and today it is that imperial power that continues to oppress and extort
resources and slave labour from the rest of the world through propaganda, lies, military
force, arming and abetting terrorists groups, mutilating and killing unarmed civilians,
most of whom are children and forcing millions to flee their homes to die, end up in
refugee camps for life or become refugees in foreign lands that are increasingly
becoming hostile to them. Food for thought.
franklparker says:
I agree with R Nanjappa. You are being a little unfair to the Anglo-Saxons. Many of
them were slaves too. And the ‘original’ Britons and Irish were pretty good at stealing
land and/or cattle long before the Vikings and their descendants, the Normans, turned
up. And then there are the Dutch, Spanish who built admittedly smaller empires. Not
that I approve of what any of the ruling classes did in their empire building days. I call it
a lack of empathy. And it still goes on today as R Nanjappa says. The Chinese are getting
quite good at it. It’s about taking what you can regardless of the harm it must do to
someone else. I think I’ll be cheeky now and point out that it is an Indian businessman
who wants to shut down the UK steel industry, putting the few hundred Anglo-Saxons
still working in it out of a job. As they say, ‘what goes around comes around’!
Videshi Sutra says:

As this conversation continues, I think it is elucidating one of the fundamental

flaws in contemporary discourse. Namely, an inability or unwillingness to
correctly parse statements about aggregate populations, or about long term
trends. Instead there is an eagerness to interpret such statements as absolute
and universal. “X group is does Y” or “X group inclined towards Y” is
interpreted as “X group always does Y” and maybe even “X group only does Y,
and nobody else does Y.” Very strange that the discourse has devolved to this
point.
In the original post or in my response to Nanjappa’s comment did I say that the
Anglo-Saxons were never enslaved in history? Did I say that the Britons and
other Celts did not engage in robbery as well? Of course not (and in fact,
Spooner repudiates that very notion in the letter I’m referring to). I didn’t refer
to those facts because they are outliers relative to the main current of history,
i.e. the overall trend of history. The Anglo-Saxons may have been slaves, but
probably less frequently than the Celts overall. Likewise the Celts engaged in
robbery, but didn’t build a world spanning empire.
If you cannot bring yourself to examine the full breadth of the history of (for
example) the Anglo-Saxons, the Tamils, and the Irish, and rank them relative to
one another in respect to how aggressive and warlike they have tended to be,
how many resources they’ve extracted by force from neighboring peoples, etc,
then you are just choosing to stay in the mindset of radical egalitarian thinking
rather than confronting the reality that different ethnic groups have highly
divergent patterns of behaviour throughout history.

It is easy to lose sight of the thrust of Spooner’s writings, and, for that matter,
the other ‘anarchists’ of the era (like Kropotkin). What Spooner says near the
end of the quote, vis:
“The real government of England, the actual ruling power, for more than a
thousand years, has been a mere band of robbers; a mere confederacy of
villains. And it is nothing else to-day. They have not only plundered and
enslaved the great body of the people of England and Ireland, but, as far as
possible, the peoples of all other parts of the globe. They have their chains to-
day upon more than two hundred millions of people; and their whole purpose is
to extort from them everything that oppression, in every form, is capable of
extorting.”
is a symptom of a larger disease. In this context, he’s talking specifically about

the British empire, but the principle, or disease, is the imperialism which comes
when a few individuals take it upon themselves to “rule” by looting, invasion,
pillaging of whomever and whatever they can – until a larger, more powerful
demagogue does the same to them. This can be seen today as the Wahabbi
heresy within Islam is making its mark by blowing up and killing anyone and
anything that its followers can; it’s “merely” one brand of imperialism (which
has its roots in Saudi Arabia these days) locking horns with US imperialism. It’s
also a reflection of a very large meme: that humans are warlike by nature, we
have always BEEN warlike and always WILL be warlike. This kind of thinking is
very recent and very Western in terms of human history – and it simply is not
true. Again, it is a MEME.
I find it exasperating on a personal level to attempt to explain this to people

whom I encounter in the day-to-day; should I be granted space to make the bare
claim of our “warlike nature” being a crock, I’m usually interrupted and shouted
down as being naive. Here on the Internet I can at least make my claims in the
space of a couple of paragraphs, and anyone is free thereafter to disagree with
me. However, the facts, as gleaned from a wide variety of disciplines –
anthropology, archaeology, ethnology, ethology, evolutionary psychology among
them – show that this is indeed a MEME. There are a number of books which
patently illustrate what I’m saying. Science writer John Horgan’s “The End of
War” is the most accessible, and it’s probably the best thing that he’s written.
Raymond C. Kelly’s “Warless Societies and the Origin of War” is a more
scholarly take on the theme. While it is somewhat accessible to lay readers like
myself, it seems geared more to other anthropologists; but if you can wade
through it, he makes the point clear. A third volume, Douglas P. Fry’s “The
Human Potential for Peace,” is the most thoroughgoing one which I’ve read to
date. While also scholarly, he makes a lucid presentation which lay people can
easily understand.
If I were to find fault with Spooner, it would lie along the lines of his “kick out
the jams” idea. Getting rid of kings and queens simply ain’t gonna happen
anytime soon. We’re stuck with presidents, premier, imams and other rulers
and there will be no populist uprising that will take them down. In lieu of this it
is imperative to spread the idea that we aren’t necessarily condemned to
perpetual warfare (such as the US is committed to doing).
To those who feel it is all hopeless, I would remind you that we have had nuclear
weapons since 1945, chemical and biological weapons even longer – but we’re
still here. Every day that passes where we haven’t started Armageddon is a plus.
To round this out, since this blog is devoted particularly to India (from a
Westerner’s view), I’d like to recommend a book about the Indus civilization
written by Cambridge scholar Rita P. Wright, “The Ancient Indus.” It covers the
entire span of this ubiquitous culture and on of the things which became
apparent was that they did NOT indulge in warfare, nor does it seem that they
had a strong, centralized government presided over by priest or king. This is in
stark contrast to the Empires near unto them, whether the earliest Chinese
dynasties which arose to the East, or the Elamite, Sumerian and Egyptian
cultures to the West – all of which were based upon some form of imperialism.
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Lysander Spooner. Image Source: Volokh

The whole force of your letter, as a defence of Irish landlords, rests

A moment later however, he goes on to extend this criticism to England:

One of the forebears of the British Empire. Image Source: Heroes n’

This designation – enemies of the human race – has more generally

The Anglo-Saxons were robbers and pirates in their own

← Covert Lokayata III: Orthodox Darsha… Ancient Indian Aristocratic Republics →

11 comments on “The Anglo-Saxons Were Robbers and

Anglo-Saxons Are Savages – mahakala7777 says:

from Lysander Spooner: […]

let us not judge anything by bad specimens.

Videshi Sutra says:

We come from dreams ~ says:

Videshi Sutra says:

We come from dreams ~ says:

October 6, 2016 at 6:16 pm

Ohboyohboyohboy, talk about a kid in a candy store! Just downloaded a

We come from dreams ~ says:

Reblogged this on We come from dreams ~ and commented:

Reblogged this on ~Burning Woman~ and commented:

Videshi Sutra says:

As this conversation continues, I think it is elucidating one of the fundamental

We come from dreams ~ says:

is a symptom of a larger disease. In this context, he’s talking specifically about

I find it exasperating on a personal level to attempt to explain this to people

Comments are closed.

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