Anyone that thought defending an autonomous area with no structure, no organising, no local people's assembly or town halls was absolutely delusional.
If it had been organised, with a local resident's assembly that made resolutions for the area I might have given it 6-12 months of toleration by the state. But without forming its own structures to demonstrate local people's wishes they had no hope in hell of not getting crushed. Having an apparatus to demonstrate support and build the rules of the local area would have made crushing it significantly harder due to the optics of crushing something residents of an area are provably in favour of.
I mean, they'd still send in the cops to crush you as soon as you say "we're not paying taxes as we don't use any utilities and maintain our own roads" but it'd look ugly to a whole lot more people when there's a parallel local institution to draw objective numbers from in support of the policy being implemented.
It all comes down to institutional power. The power of being able to demonstrate a mandate from the masses via parallel institutions is way more powerful than anything else. It is a weapon of political power.
Anyone that thought defending an autonomous area with no structure, no organising, no local people's assembly or town halls was absolutely delusional.
If it had been organised, with a local resident's assembly that made resolutions for the area I might have given it 6-12 months of toleration by the state. But without forming its own structures to demonstrate local people's wishes they had no hope in hell of not getting crushed. Having an apparatus to demonstrate support and build the rules of the local area would have made crushing it significantly harder due to the optics of crushing something residents of an area are provably in favour of.
I mean, they'd still send in the cops to crush you as soon as you say "we're not paying taxes as we don't use any utilities and maintain our own roads" but it'd look ugly to a whole lot more people when there's a parallel local institution to draw objective numbers from in support of the policy being implemented.
I mean i don't disagree.
It all comes down to institutional power. The power of being able to demonstrate a mandate from the masses via parallel institutions is way more powerful than anything else. It is a weapon of political power.