The Anarchists is HBO Original documentary series released on 10 July 2022. It is directed by Todd Schramke and produced by Blumhouse Television, it will be broadcasted on HBO with new episodes airing on subsequent Sundays at the same time, and will be available to stream on HBO Max. It is a six-part series with a runtime of about 52-56 minutes each respectively.
The series will follow individuals engaged in this movement with full access to the drama that ensues as a community tries to live alongside tourists and drug cartels with only the principles of anarchy as their guideposts. The loosely defined ideology proves unable to hold the community together and many of the radical expats eventually find their dream of an anarchist paradise crumbling around them.
-The Anarchists Review Does Not Contain Any Spoilers-
Plot: Search for Absolute Freedom
In 2015, Jeff Berwick, a Canadian entrepreneur turned provocateur, launched a conference in Acapulco, Mexico in hopes of promoting anarchy in its purest form – an ideal espousing the absence of government with absolute individual self-rule. The event called ‘Anarchapulco’ drew an international array of libertarians, fugitives and families seeking to unschool their children to protect them from the bureaucracies of modern life.
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As well as crypto-currency evangelists and others get attracted to the idea of creating a stateless community, free from any governments and central banking systems. Unfolding over six years, the series chronicles a strange and deadly series of events. What begins as an impulsive one-off gathering, turns into a full-on annual event.
But when rule-avoidant freedom activists come together in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, utopian ideology collides with the
unpredictability of human nature. Relationships are fractured, rivalries are forged and ultimately, lives are lost.
Acapulco: A Safe Haven or Maybe Not?
The series starts off with a bunch of people tearing off and burning down the pages of some books and scripts that contain the code of conduct about how one should live their life etc. The people call themselves anarchists, which is a society being freely constituted without authorities or a governing body. It may also refer to a society or group of people that entirely reject a set hierarchy.
Then we are introduced to Jeff Berwick, founder of the Anarchapulco movement. He was a businessman but when his company shut down, he moved to Acapulco to figure out his life, little did he know that his one-time conference to find like-minded people will become an annual event, attracting hundreds and thousands of people.
The first conference was held in 2015 in a very casual manner with no particular schedule or structure. The attendees, Nathan & Lisa Freeman believed that this ideology can be much bigger than just a few people and thus they also moved to Mexico and started building a community which believed in the same, alongside Berwick.
The crowd included people who don’t believe in paying taxes, according to them it’s just government stealing their hard-earned money since we never get to know where it is being utilised. People who got into trouble for possessing drugs that they used for medicinal purposes or families that felt that the current system is faulty.
At first, when the Anarchists community started expanding from just a couple to a significantly bigger number, it felt like everyone’s dream was coming true. Whatever they imagined being free was like, they were living it here in Mexico. Each year Anarchapulco conference grew double in numbers. But more the crowd more voices will be there who might not agree with everything.
That’s when John Galton & Lily Forester come to light, as they thought that the Freeman couple were commercializing their philosophical ideology by bringing Cryptocurrency into the event. They believed that just having a conference every year is not being a true Anarchist, it’s renouncing of the whole bureaucratic system which has wronged them.
But the movement only got bigger when Bitcoin’s value skyrocketed in 2018, making most of the founding members millionaires in one night. Their success attracted more crowds who wanted to get rich via crypto. This marks the highest point in the community as everything starts to go downhill from then on.
Although all the American expats advertised Acapulco as the safest place to be, where they can live a life of luxury. But in reality, it is the sixth deadliest city in Mexico and the seventh-deadliest city in the world due to a massive upsurge in gang violence, drug cartels and homicide numbers since 2014. Yes, if you are a tourist and don’t get involved in drugs etc then you are fairly safe.
But if you are a part of such a big community, there ought to be all types of people and if some people fall into the wrong company, the whole community can be affected by it. That’s what happened with this community as well, which went astray from its original ideology and became a group of extremists who support guns and believe that the covid vaccine will kill you. In fact, they are still going strong in 2022 with their all-natural, anti-vax and crypto agenda.
Final Thoughts: Stream It or Skip It?
The HBO original documentary series, The Anarchists gives us a glimpse and behind the scenes of everything that happened between 2015-2018 in the Anarchapulco community. With their sudden rise in popularity, wealth, followers to their inner conflicts, murder, drugs and deaths. It shows how destructive humans can be and no matter what we can’t escape the system.
American expats migrate to Mexico as it provides them with a better standard of living on the same budget than in their home country. Especially if you are white you might get better treatment and privileges. By following the Anarchy they are not actually becoming Stateless individuals with no authority over them, they are only finding a place where their lives aren’t as mediocre.
The documentary shows the limitations of ideological thinking and the consequences of rejecting consensus. As humans we need something to believe in, a structure to live a life comfortably. Eventually, in every crowd, there will be someone who will become the leader and gain supporters while some might oppose them. And in a lawless crowd, you would end up in the same state as the Anarchists of Acapulco did.
The Anarchists is streaming on HBO Max.
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Anarchism has a rich history going back to the 1800s and has made major contributions to political thought. This is not that but merely exploiting the colloquial meaning of anarchy for commercial purposes. Don’t lose the irony here. This is just a short form Temptation Island.
Can I ask what years did you attend the Anarchapulco conferences? Who were your favorite speakers?.who did you not like? How did you enjoy the weekly meetups in the community and what makes you say the conversations that ensued were only colloquial in meaning? I’d love to hear more about your time in Acapulco with everyone there.
I think what the commenter means is that ‘anarchism’ is a term which, at least outside of North America, is associated with the strands of radicalism which seek forms of individual and collective freedom in ways directly opposed to the forms of capitalism that the subjects of this documentary espouse.
In other words, anarchism as anti-capitalism, in which opposit9ion to state authority is part of broader struggle – usually specifically class struggle – against exploitation and suffering imposed by – in fact defining – the current capitalist prder.
So, not the ideology of the entreneur pretending that their desire to avoid taxes is part of a struggle for everyone’s freedom. And such.
Your father’s anarchism.