A very, very common question I’ve seen when discussing anarchism goes something like this:

“Once people are free of state violence and hierarchy, how can they just stop some bad actor from taking over?”

The assumption is that people who are free from coercive hierarchies are powerless to act in their own self defense, alone or in cooperation with each other.

(The question is usually accompanied by some invocation of the dreaded “war lord” whom the questioner assumes will inevitably overrun a nonstate or non-hierarchical community.)

So, I thought I would take a crack at answering this as comprehensively as I can!

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