Styx on the "LARPing" in the CHAZ

CHAZ = the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, Seattle
LARP = live-action role-playing

"The Chaz" (or "the CHAZ" if we respect the initialism) is a six-block zone in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It was taken over by rioters who were probably led by Antifa (the ironically named "anti-fascist" group that uses fascist tactics to push its political agenda); a rapper named Raz Simone has been walking around the zone with an AK-47 and a sidearm, flanked by his thugs, and dispensing street justice as if he were the de facto ruler of the place, which he may be. Some news outlets are calling Simone a "warlord," a notion Simone himself took to Twitter to deny, all while misattributing the "warlord" accusation to Donald Trump. The idea seems to be that the Chaz has become some sort of "free zone" that operates on more-or-less socialist and/or anarchist principles (does anarchy have principles?). The problem is that, as cooler heads have been saying, this wasn't a well-thought-out move, and observers have noted quite a few ironies, such as the "peaceful" zone's need for armed patrols, its need for a border fence—much like Trump's wall—and, apparently, its need for high-end vegan products to be shipped in so that the upper-crust white kids who are part of this silly movement can have something environmentally friendly and cruelty-free to eat. Is there an actual government in place, or is Raz both police force and autocrat? Have the businesses inside the zone thought about how they're going to get supplies to keep producing their wares? And how they're going to make money inside a zone that seems to have rejected money in an effort to, effectively, declare itself its own country? Are these kids for real, or are they just LARPing, i.e., role-playing all this just for shits and giggles?

Styx ponders all sorts of questions along these lines here: