"This is not a new idea, the utopian thinking around technology, linking technology to progressive politics, or rather: replacing progressive politics with technology. The modern variant of this thinking in the 50s and 60s came out of the Cold War computer science apparatus that was born during WWII but really exploded in America after the war. A very utopian communal libertarian view of the world, where everyone was equally empowered to do things, there would be no discrepancies in power, no one could suppress us or exploit us or dominate us. And I think Tor appeals to people because it seems to be one of those things: a powerful tool, a people's tool, that could equalize power on the internet, give us the same power that the NSA has, meet their power and neutralize it. [..]

The ideas that surround Tor are the same ideas that float around NRA speeches: guns are liberty. If everyone has a gun, there will be no bad guys, there will be no crime, no government tyranny, because everyone will be equally powerful. It’s a libertarian utopia, it’s about equalizing power, but it ignores the deeper social, and economic, and political issues of power in society.

What really appeals to the cyber libertarians and the cypherpunks is that by using Tor you can create a government-free zone, a zone of pure liberty. Silk Road was kind of a utopia for these people. "

https://surveillancevalley.net/blog/interview-in-german-magazine-konkret-about-tor-and-the-cult-of-crypto