Anarchy Essays and Links
"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hard-headed realization, Anarchy in the US by Aimee Whatley Anarchy FAQ Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust
the
management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals,
and
county commissioners."
- Ed Abbey
An obscenely thorough website on anarchy
Anarchy in the US (1998)
And that was when it happened. When we found ourselves in the shoes they had abandoned, smoking cigarettes behind the gym, cussing them out for not understanding, dressing as unlike them as we possibly could in black and death - a foreshadowing of our inevitable apathy.
Who were our role models? Radicals, drug addicts, activists, nymphomaniacs. Ignorin' the cops, burnin' the flags, doin' whatever, travellin'; these people were the shit. They didn't care, they were doing what God had put them here to do - have fun! Where the hell did all those cool people go? We asked. They're right there in suburbia, having traded their pot for pots and pans and their free love and peace for health insurance and retirement. They're the boring ones who look like parents.
They suck! We cried. They sold out! Yes, they did. It took 30 years, but they finally sold out in handfuls, all so that we would have a nice, easy childhood complete with all the luxuries they had. After years of Downy soft commercials and Mr. Square-Makes-It-Big-And-Look-How-Happy-He- Is-Thriving-In-Mediocrity on primetime TV your parents started to believe life would be better if they just gave in. After years of racist stereotypes of black criminals in the city, your tree-hugging parents went to greener pastures to lay their eggs. And everybody started believing the stereotypes forced upon them by the right-wing TV station owners.
Never mind those people who had dosed on acid so many times their veil of bullshit had been permanently pierced. When they sat on the street corners and screamed "They've been keeping you ignorant and poor! They sell you sub-culture so you'll divide yourselves!" your parents were thinking about soft beds in quiet towns where there wasn't so much concrete. They wanted to be away from the sirens that would remind them of how fucked-up the world gets when you don't care. Their 'white flight' was so rapid and self-righteous the crazy trippers saw trails of flapping white sheets and sniffed the inevitable stench of fear. It marked the beginning of the end of the Sesame Street world of understanding and cooperation.
Then the government cracked down on the drug supply, saying people were going insane from too much acid. Never mind that it had started out as a military experiment for mind expansion…lock 'em up! No room for deviants in this world, we're going to become more efficient! All these weirdos are gunking up the machine, like round pegs trying to fit through square holes. Besides, people are starting to take all their talk about government conspiracies seriously. Don't know how long we can say they're just paranoid!
Our parents, newly-reclaimed into the flock of conservative living, were trying very hard to not think about how maybe the establishment profited from separating black from white, Asian from black, poor from middle-class. That maybe it had ever since the days of slave and overseer. That maybe the establishment profited from having an agribusiness that made good food unaffordable and free food impossible. That maybe the police force wasn't there to protect them, it was there to protect their stuff.
Your parents didn't want to think that maybe they were working for the advancement of an established elite that didn't WANT new members. That maybe they had allied themselves with the enemy and they had been smarter when they were younger. The idea of this was too scary to them, so they did all they could to make the lie completely believable to us. They moved us away from the older, burnt-out neighborhoods. They papered our world with bright colors and loud toys that distracted us and gave us short attention spans. The problems began piling up like layers of rot as we coasted through laughably ineffective school systems. Books like Abby Hoffman's Steal This Book and Tom Robbins' Another Roadside Attraction were banned by the withered old ladies who had already seen what that type of filth did to children and knew better. Third grade gave way to seventh grade with no changes and no excitement and we learned barely enough to push pencils around for the next 50 years, but nothing at all about independent thought.
Republicans in office brazenly stole money for their big boy G. I. Joe games and occasionally they got caught. Our parents were no longer optimistic and no longer ignorant, but too beaten down and disenfranchised to speak out. They had forgotten how to organize and protest, and the fear of jails they had helped to make intolerable kept them in their place. Instead they bought new dishwashers, and thought maybe if they could ignore what's wrong it'll all go away, like raw sewage.
Just flush your shit away, and hope you're not downstream of anybody else.
And we, in our cozy nests, placated with Nintendo and Atari and fruit roll-ups, got bored and boring, and incredibly, INCREDIBLY passive. Crappy education made sure we didn't know about Emma Goldman, El Salvador, Marx, Sinn Fein, Lenin, the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, Gloria Steinem, Columbus, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, or Geronimo. Today you would find more people at a Best Buy in Montana than a Free Mumia rally in downtown Seattle. We don't even know what we don't know. We don't even care. And if the day comes when it's our turn to be the victim of an SS, an NYPD, a KGB, or a SAPS, we won't even stand a chance.
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Black Flag and Anarchy
"I hope you know about the Blue Ribbon Campaign to fight Senator Exon's Communications Decency Act by now. Well, some anarchists downloaded the blue banner and tinkered with the color, producing the nifty red and black banner you can see at this page.
The purpose of it is to illustrate that what people value most about the Internet comes from its anarchistic character: the free exchange of information and ideas among people around the world, without the intervention of a governing body.
Capitalists and other authoritarians would like to end this: they want nothing more than attempt to carve up the Internet into an array of corporate/government fiefdoms, to make it just another commodity. The Black Banner is a symbol of solidarity among online anarchists. Which brings me to another point...
The Great Internet Swindle has already taken place, since the National Science Foundation announced that they were no longer carrying the backbone of the Internet, which has been transferred to private, corporate networks owned by companies like MCI, Sprint, IBM, and others.
Thus, the information superhighway has become a toll road, folks, owned and operated by a handful of corporations. Ultimately, since ownership means control, we can expect the nature of the 'Net to change over the coming years...doubtless we'll be provided with endless home shopping opportunities, at the expense of meaningful content.
Does this mean that anarchists endorse the NSF, and, therefore, government? It seems paradoxical, but it really isn't. Anarchists do not support government, nor do we support Big Business -- both are autocratic, authoritarian institutions.
However, while the Internet was kept active at the NSF site, the American people at least had the potential to have a voice in how the 'Net was used, since the NSF is part of the US Government, which at least on paper is run by us (although we know this is not practiced). But the potential is there, and the accountability, therefore, is also there. If we didn't like the way the government was handling the 'Net, we could make a public issue out of it and have an impact on it.
This is not the case with private companies -- they are accountable only to their shareholders, and typically, only to those with the largest shares, who have a controlling interest in said companies. It's inconvenient for a public outcry to be raised against private firms, but that's all it is, ultimately. They are not democratic institutions, and as such, are not accountable to the people at large. If that capitalistic elite wants to turn the Internet into a titanic shopping mall, we will have no say in this, no opportunity to approve or disapprove of this move.
What was once ostensibly public property has been turned to de facto private property, a commodity to be used as the owners of this commodity see fit -- most likely to reduce the 'Net into a tame advertising medium like television or radio.
Thus, it is anarchistic to oppose this changing of hands regarding the Internet backbone, because it is a move from an allegedly democratic system to a bona fide fascistic system -- the capitalist corporation. So, it was a move from a bad situation to a worse situation, rather than a move from good to bad.
The color black has historically been attributed to anarchists, just as the color red is associated with Communists around the world. The Black Flag has been the symbol of anarchism longer than the Circle A. Learn more about the black flag and its historical link to anarchism.
Anarchists also made use of red in conjunction with black in their banners in the late 1800s as a way of demonstrating their opposition to capitalism (represented by the red) and their opposition to government (represented by the black). The Spanish CNT's banners combined these colors in this manner.
In the future, we will set up a downloadable link of anarchist banners that you can include in your own WWWeb pages. Or, make your own banners and post them on your sites to show your support for anarchism!
(which is right before your eyes!)"
-'stolen' from Black Flag
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we are a herd...
Like idiots, we have allowed our culture to mutate from freedom to conformity. This conformity has us all pledging allegiance to a freedom we can no longer have, as if saying that through conformity we have obtained that 'freedom'. Our only freedom is the freedom from having to think.
We are dependent chattal. We are like worker bees. Sure. We are completely free to go where we want, as long as we all come back. And we can even leave for good, except we'll die. For just like the bees, a supreme intelligence controls us; we work for the system, and the system feeds us. We put our work into feeding this great mold, and then we eat off the mold. Our dependence isn't to the other worker bees, but to the system we created. That may be great for bees. Last time I checked, they were still working with less than a brain stem for storing consciousness. Collecting pollen and feeding mold probably seems okay. I'd rather fly, or roll around in the pollen contemplating sunshine, or for god's sakes FUCK ANOTHER BEE!
A long time ago we reached a fork in the road of destiny. One path climbed the hill of understanding towards Nirvana, the other plummeted us down a path paved with the slavery of minds and bodies.
Because of our mental laziness, we chose the easier path and are now teetering at the cliffs of insanity. Someday soon we will dive off the edge headfirst, hoping that going down is better than going nowhere at all...
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