Silence

by John Zerzan

Silence used to be, to varying degrees, a means of isolation. Now it is the absence of silence that works to render today’s world empty and isolating. Its reserves have been invaded and depleted. The machine marches globally forward, and silence is the dwindling place where noise has not yet penetrated.

Civilization is a conspiracy of noise, designed to cover up the uncomfortable silence. Wittgenstein understood the loss of our relationship with silence. “The unsilent present is a time of evaporating attention spans, erosion of critical thinking, and a lessened capacity for deeply felt experiences.”

Silence, like darkness, is hard to come by, but mind and spirit need its sustenance. Certainly there are many and varied sides to silence. There are imposed or voluntary silences of fear, grief, conformity, complicity. For example, the AIDS awareness silence=death formulation. These are often interrelated states, and nature has been progressively silenced as documented in Rachel Carson’s prophetic Silent Spring. Nature cannot be definitively silenced, however, which perhaps goes a long way in explaining why some feel it must be destroyed.

“There has been a silencing of nature, including our own nature” concluded Heidegger, and we need to let this silence as silence speak. It does still, after all, speak louder than words. There will be no liberation of humans without the resurrection of the natural world, and silence is very pertinent to this assertion.

The great silence of the universe engenders a silent awe, which the Roman Lucretius meditated upon in the 1st century B.C. “First of all, contemplate the clear, pure color of the sky and all it contains within it, the stars wandering everywhere, the moon, the sun and its light with its incomparable brilliance. If all these objects appeared to mortals today for the first time, if it appeared to their eyes suddenly and unexpectedly, what could one sight that would be more marvelous than this totality, in whose existence man’s imagination would less have dared to conceive”.

Down to earth, nature is filled with silences. The alternation of the seasons is the rhythm of silence. At night, silence descends over the planet, though much less so now. The parts of nature resemble great reserves of silence. Max Pickard’s description is almost a poem. “The forest is like a great reservoir of silence, out of which the silence trickles in like a thin, slow stream and fills the air with its brightness. The mountain, the lakes, the field, the sky, they all seem to be waiting for a sign to empty their silence onto the things of noise, in the cities of men.”

Silence is not “the mere absence of something else.” In fact, our longings return toward that dimension and it associations and implications. Behind the appeals for silence lies a wish for a perpetual and cultural new beginning. Zen teaches that silence never varies, but our focus may be improved if we turn away from the universalizing placelessness of late modernity. Silence is, no doubt, culturally specific and thus experienced variously. Neverthless, as Pickard argues, it can confront us with the “original beginnings of all things”, and presents objects to us directly and immediately.

Silence is primary, summoning presence to itself, so it is a connection to the realm of origin. The industrially-based technosphere of the machine has almost succeeded in banishing quietude, and the natural history of silence is needed for this endangered species. Modernity deafens; the noise, like modernity, must never retreat, and never does. For Pickard, nothing has changed human character so much as the loss of silence. Thoreau called silence “our inviolable asylum, an indispensable refuge that must be defended.” Silence is necessary against the mounting sound. It’s feared by manipulative mass culture, from which it remains apart, a means of resistance precisely because it does not belong to this world. Many things can still be heard against the background of silence, thus a way is opened, a way for autonomy and imagining.

“Sense opens up in silence” wrote Jean-Luc Nancy. It is be approached and experienced bodily, inseparably from the world in the silent core of the self. It can highlight our embodiment, a qualitative step away from the Hallmark machines that work so resolutely to disembody us. Silence can be a great aid in unblocking ourselves from the prevailing addictive information sickness. It offers us the place to be present to ourselves, to come to grips with who we are, present to the real depth of the world, in an increasingly thin, flattened technoscape.

The record of philosophy, vis a vis silence, is generally dismal. As good a gauge as any to its overall failure, Socrates judged silence to be a realm of nonsense, while Aristotle claimed that being silent caused flatulence. At the same time, however, Raoul Mortley could see “a growing dissatisfaction with the use of words, an enormous increase in the language of silence in classical Greece.” Much later, Pascal was terrified by the silence of the universe, and Hegel clearly felt that what could not be spoken was simply the untrue, that silence was a deficiency to be overcome. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche both emphasized the prerequisite value of solitude, diverging from anti-silence Hegel among others.

In a commentary on Odysseus and the Sirens, from Homer’s Odyssey, by Horkheimer and Adorno, they depict the Sirens’ effort to sidetrack Odysseus from his journey as that of arrows trying to stay the forces of repressive civilization. Kafka felt that silence would have been a more irresistible means than singing. Phenomenology begins in silence, according to Herbert Spiegelberg. To put phenomena or objects first somehow, before ideational constructions, was its founding notion, or as Heidegger added, there is a thinking deeper and more rigorous than the conceptual, and part of this involves a primordial link between silence and understanding. Postmodernism, and Derrida in particular, deny the widespread awareness of the inadequacy of language, asserting that gaps of silence in discourse, for example, are barriers to meaning and power. In fact, Derrida strongly castigates the “violence of primitive and pre-logical silence”, denouncing silence as a nihilist enemy of thought. Such strenuous antipathy demonstrates Derrida’s deafness to presence and grace, and the threat silence poses to someone for whom the symbolic is everything.

Wittgenstein understood that something pervades everything sayable, something which is itself unsayable. This is the sense of his well-known last line of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “of that which one cannot speak, one should remain silent.” Can silence be considered an approach without reification in the here and now? I think it can be an open, strengthening way of knowing, a generative condition. Silence can also be a dimension of grief, fear, even of madness and suicide. In fact, it is quite difficult to reify silence, to freeze it into any one non-living thing. At times the reality we interrogate is mute, an index of the depth of the still-present silence, one who may be the question that best gives answers, silently and deeply.

“Silence is so accurate”, said Mark Rothko, a line that has intrigued me for years. Too often we disrupt silence only to voice some detail that misses an overall sense of what we are a part of and how many ways there are to destroy it. In the Antarctica winter of 1933, Richard Berg recorded: “I took my daily walk at 4 p.m. I paused to listen to the silence. The day was dying, the night being born, but with great peace. Here were imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless.” How much is revealed in silence through the depths and mysteries of living nature. Andy Dillard also provides a fine response to the din. “At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, to the world, ‘Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.’” It is not only the natural world that is accessible via silence. Seuranne indicated the secrets in the silence of things, deciding that all objects have a language that we can decipher only in total silence.

David Michael-Levins’ The Body’s Recollection of Being counsels us that to learn to think through the body, we should listen in silence to our bodily felt experience, and in the interpersonal sphere, silence is a result of empathy and being understood, without words much more profoundly than otherwise. Native Americans seem to have always placed great value on silence and direct experience, and in indigenous cultures in general, silence denotes respect and self-effacement. It is at the core of the vision quest, the solitary period of fasting and closeness to the earth, to discover one’s path and purpose. Inuit Norman Hallandy assigns more insight to the silent state of awareness, called “Inuinakaktu”, than to dreaming. Native healers very often stress silence as an aid to serenity and hope, while stillness is required for success in the hunt. These needs for attentiveness and quiet may well have been key sources of indigenous appreciation of silence. Silence reaches back to presence and original community, before the symbolic compromised both silence and presence. It predates what Levinas called “the unity of representation” that always works to silence the silence and replace it with the homelessness of symbolic structures.

The Latin word for silence, Solare, “to say nothing”, is related to Sinere, “to allow to be in a place”. We are drawn to those places where language falls most often and most crucially silent. The later Heidegger appreciated the realm of silence, as did Holderlin, one of Heidegger’s important reference points, especially in his late hymns. The insatiable longing that Holderlin expressed so powerfully related not only to an original silent wholeness but also to his growing comprehension that language must always admit its origin in loss. A century and a half later, Samuel Beckett made use of silence as an alternative to language. In Krapp’s Last Tape and elsewhere, the idea that all language is an excess of language is strongly on offer. Beckett complains that “in the forest of symbols, there is never quiet” and longs to break through the veil of language to silence. Northrop Fry found the purpose of Beckett’s work “to lie in nothing other than the restoration of silence.” Our most embodied, alive to this earth selves realize best the limits of language, and indeed, the failure of the project of representation. In this state it is easiest to understand the exhaustion of language and the fact that we are always at word’s length from immediacy.

Kafka commented on this in The Penal Colony, where the printing press doubled as an instrument of torture. For Thoreau, “as the true society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into silence.” Conversely, mass society banishes the chance of autonomy, just as it forecloses on silence. Holderlin imagined that silence draws us into time, but it is silence that holds out against it. Time increases in silence. It appears not to flow, but to abide. Various temporalities seem close to losing their barriers; past, present, future less divided. But silence is a variable fabric, not a uniformity or an abstraction. Its quality is never far from its context, just as it is the field of the non-mediated. Unlike time, which has for so long been a measure of estrangement, silence cannot be spacialized or converted into a medium of exchange. This is why it can be a refuge from time’s incessancy. Gurdemans, near the opening of Wagner’s “Parsifal” sings, “Here time becomes space.” Silence avoids this primary dynamic of domination.

So here we are, with the machine engulfing us in its various assaults on silence and so much else, and intruding deeply. The note North Americans spontaneously hum our sing is “be natural”, which is a corresponding tone of our 60 cycles per second alternating current of electricity. In Europe, G sharp is naturally sung, matching that continent’s 50 cycles per second AC of electricity. In the globalizing, homogenizing noise-zone, we may soon be further harmonized. Piko Eyre refers to “my growing sense of a world that’s singing the same song in a hundred accents all at once.” We need a refusal of the roar of standardization, its information, noise, and harried surface “communication modes”, a no the unrelenting, colonizing penetrability of non-silence, pushing into every non-place. The rising racket measures by decibel upticks and its polluting reach the degrading mass-world, Don DeLillo’s “white noise”. Silence is a rebuke to all this, and a zone for reconstituting ourselves. It gathers in nature, and can help us gather ourselves for the battles that will end debasement.

Silence is a powerful tool of resistance, the unheard note that might precede insurrection. It was, for example, what slave-masters feared most. In various Asian spiritual traditions, the Muni vowed to silence as the person of greatest capacity and independence, the one that does not need a master for enlightenment. The deepest passions are nurtured in silent ways and depths. How else is respect for the dead most signally expressed, intense love best transmuted, our profoundest thoughts and visions experienced, the unspoiled world most directly savored? In this grief-stricken world, according to Max Horkheimer, we become more innocent through grief, and perhaps more open to silence, as comfort, ally, and stronghold.

REALITY


note:
In a previous discussion on the U.S.-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, it was agreed upon by both Hash Thrash 666 and Johnny Cash was Shi'i that Hezbollah fought bravely against a cowardly Israel armed to the teeth with American extravagance. Even Sunnis love Hezbollah! Sunni Palestinians love Hezbollah. Iran supports Hezbollah. The whole Islamic world love Hezbollah. Hezbollah shot rocket launchers at Israel, in an act of open defiance. In an act of magnanimity with the Palestinian people suffering the effects of harsh occupation, Hezbollah’s defensive actions actually had the effect of loosening the Israeli noose on the Occupied Territories by concentrating the Israeli Defense Forces in southern Lebanon, if only slightly and temporarily. Lebanese casualties actually made Hezbollah even more popular, while Israel would not accept casualties on their side.

We also agreed that the world has gone Shia. Nasrallah is arguably the most revered man in both Iraq and Palestine. The four most important men in the Muslim world right now (possibly excluding some East Asian Islamic states), if a poll were taken, would probably be: Muqtada al-Sadr, Nasrallah, the moderate reformist Ayatollah Khameini and his more conservative subordinate Ahmadinejad, who gained huge popularity within the Muslim world for openly defying Israel and the U.S., when virtually all of the Arab states are going directly against their popular constituencies by conceding to U.S. and Israeli demands. It is in this populist vein that Ahmadinejad publicly questioned the Nazi Holocaust of 6 million Jews.


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Act I:

Hash Thrash 666: I love Marxist regimes that impose Atheism on religious populations, especially Muslims.

Johnny Cash was Shi’i: It definitely takes skill you could say. Albania, that was very successful.

H: Yes, I was reading about Hoxha today. Are Albanians religious people?

J: Not anymore.

H: And what percentage of their population is Muslim, do you know?

J: I think that maybe 60% identify as Muslim, but mostly on an ethnic level. Moreso than Bosnians.

H: Yes, exactly.

J: About 20% are/were involved with the Bektashi Sh’i Sufi Order.

H: Do you know anything about the Marxist-Leninist regime in Afghanistan, in the late 70s and early 80s?

J: Not really.

H: Some communists claim the regime improved society through ending womens’ oppression, etc. The Afghan Communists in power allowed private freedom of expression, but they also razed to the ground churches, mosques, and temples. And gave long prison sentences to anyone seen with a Q’uran or a Bible. They were of course opposed by conservative Muslims, a minority within Albanian society.

J: Hell of a backlash.

H: Exactly. I can admire that, but a lot of it was culturally insensitive.

J: Afghanistan, ironically, is historically a fairly liberal place.

H: I’d like to read more about the Afghani Communist Party’s policies at the time, or the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, as it was called.

J: Sufism is very big there, but then again, even the Taliban claimed to be Sufis. Well, a good deal of them were somehow involved in Sufism. Sufi isn’t really a sect though, as you probably know. It’s defined by an involvement with an order. So percentages are hard to get. The Taliban claimed they were Sufis. They actually weren’t Wahhabis either, which a lot of people call them. They were Deobandi Hanafis. Deobandis in South Asia are a lot more violent than Wahhabis anyway. Deobandis were a foreign influence though. The Taliban studied in Pakistani madrasses.

H: I thought the Taliban were Wahhabi.

J: And were supported by parts of the Pakistani government.

H: That’s something you’d learn in an American school. Pop culture Islam. _

J: It’s an easy mistake.

H: George W. Bush’s guide to Islam.

J: Well, their philosophy was similar to that of the Wahhabis.

H: I don’t know the difference between the two.

J: In India and Pakistan, most people are Hanafis. One of the four major schools of thought.

H: Oh, okay.

J: Among those, most Hanafis are either Bralevi or Deobandi. Bralevis are heavily Sunni and tend to be liberal.

H: Is Wahhabiyyah one of the four schools of Sunni thought?

J: No, it’s not. Deobandis are Wahhabi influenced. Wahhabism is a newer school of thought, only about 200 years old. The four classical schools of Sunni thought are: Hanafi, Maliki, , Shafi’I, and Hanbali.

H: Is Bin Laden Wahhabi? Do Al-Qaeda explicitly subscribe to the Wahhabi school?

J: I’m not sure about explicitly, but that is the interpretation of Islam they usually teach and promote. I’m saying that because they share similar features.

H: George W. Bush Islam.

J: Bin Laden probably doesn’t claim to be Wahhabi. But that is most likely his school of thought. A more radical sort of Wahhabiyyah than the one promoted by the Saudi government though.

H: Yeah, feeds into the hands of the U.S. Crude rhetoric and the like.

J: The founder of Wahhabism was most likely a British agent. His name was Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab.

H: I can imagine, the rhetoric is at least a little more dumbed down. The aesthetics seem that way. I wouldn’t doubt it.

J: He banded together with the Bani Saud tribe, and took over most of Arabia.

H: When?

J: The Arabian peninsula, I mean. About 200 years ago. And then the British aided the Wahhabi Saudis again during World War 1. Lawrence of Arabia.

H: I didn’t know the British aided the Wahhabi Saudis, but Wahhabis are the kind of group I can imagine U.S. and British imperialists would get behind. It’s a lot safer than Marxist-Leninist or pan-Arab nationalist ideologies.

J: Yes, and against the Ottoman Empire.

H: For U.S., British, and Israeli interests, at least.

J: Which was allied with Germany.


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H: A fascinating piece by Hakim Bey, “Satanism in Esoteric Islam”. It talks about Satanist communities within Iraq, that are still part of Islam.

J: Does that deal with Melek Taus?... Oh yes, Yezidis.

H: They see it as a legitimate form of Islam. Yes! Fascinating.

J: As far as I understand, their actual religion has little to do with Islam.

H: I can imagine.

J: I mean, even on the most basic levels.

H: Right. It’s heretical.

J: Their concept of Melek Taus is very different than the Iblis/Shaitan of Islam also. So I don’t think they’re “Satanist” per se either. I think they’re a separate, mainly pre-Islamic religion.



H: You know where Sufism is really big? And in a political sense as well, which I thought interesting!

J: Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan?

H: Chechnya!

J: Ah, yes. Which makes the very recent Wahhabi influence on the mujahideen all the more interesting.

H: But apparently in Chechnya, Sufism is a political force as well, not just a quietist mystical sect. They’re armed Sufis!

J: Yes, there’s a history there. Imam Shalil. They’re mostly Qadiri and Naqshabandi. The Wahhabis there are not so bad though, for Wahhabis. Like Shamil Basayev.

H: What are Qadiri and Naqshbandi?

J: Two Sufi orders.

H: Chechnya is a unique place. One of the only Islamic societies in Europe. Indigenous Islamic societies, that is.

J: Yes, along with Albania and Bosnia.

H: Give my props to the Chechen fighters. Got it harder than in Ireland, that’s for sure!

J: Yeah.

H: The Russians are just as cruel, if not more so, than the colonial British.

H: True.

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Black People smell like Poop: I like Nazism and Aryan theories. Odinism, Aryan theories and Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler.

H: That’s stupid. You’re an idiot.

J: Nation of Islam theories are more interesting. An evil black scientist named Yaqub created white people on the Isle of Patamos 5,000 years ago. Or so taught the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And Master Farad Muhammad

H: Nazism is not really all that great.

B: Yes it is.

H: I mean, even from an aesthetic point of view, it’s very glossy cover, nothing inside. Like, there’s no coherent ideology to Fascism even, when you get down to it. That’s the point. It’s a result of disparate social tendencies. And this current resurgence of neo-fascism is largely a result of the widespread anomie in industrial societies caused by, among other things, neoliberal policies and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. I mean, why did fascism explode in Eastern Europe immediately after the fall of the USSR in 1991? Even the KGB and the state apparatus under the last few Soviet presidents would not have allowed freedom of expression for Nazis in Russia. But now they have all the freedom in the world.

J: Black: Nation of Islam is a heretical form of Islam. They don’t accept the Hadith, do they?

H: What’s the Hadith?

B: I want the Goebbels diaries from Amazon.com

J: And the part where Moses led a bunch of white people up on a mountain and blew it up. Oh, very heretical. They’re like our Mormons. They consider Farad Muhammad/W.D. Fard to be Allah in person. And Elijah Muhammad to be the final Messenger of Allah. Moorish Science is even more interesting.

B: Moorish science, hahahaha. Noble Drew Ali.

J: Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

B: That guy that claims there were only Asians and Europeans.

J: Islam! Moorish American. You mean the Asiatic race?

H: The history of the Moors in America is fascinating. I learned it all from Peter Lamborn Wilson. Noble Drew Ali is the shit. Tri-racial isolate communities. Black Seminoles. Indiana! I applaud their heresies.


J: Yeah. Al-ahari.com is very informative too. That guy is a genius. Muhammad al-Ahari El.

H: What is Hadith?

B: I used to rap about Islam on Yahoo. I tried to act like a black separatist.

J: Ahadith are the sayings of Muhammad (SAWAWS).

H: They are anti-semitic and racist.

J: I actually don’t find Moorish Science to be that heretical, in context.

H: That’s true.

B: I believe racism is natural. I believe it’s natural and it’s never going to stop.

H: You’re a fucking moron.

J: I just find it infinitely interesting.

B: As long as you have your race, you will be hateful to other races.

J: Muhammad al-Ahari El is going to start up the Noble Order of Moorish Sufis I think.

H: Cool.

B: Even black people are racist against whites.

H: Cool.

B: They claim they are not.

H: You’re obviously not careful with your terminology, as a social scientist would be, since it’s pretty much agreed upon within the mainstream sociological and anthropological milieux that race is socially constructed, not biological fact.

J: Well, I don’t think he’s a moron. He seems at least well informed.

B: Hashthrash, I got more intelligence in one brain than you would have in 50 brains.

H: I don’t see how one can be an intelligent person and still believe in Race.

J: Yes, but people relate to those social constructs.

H: It’s real in the sense that it’s really socially constructed. In other words, racism is quite real, but race is hardly.

J: I don’t believe in treating people based on their ethnicity, but I think it’s natural for people to deal in tribal ways,

B: Hashthrash, that’s because you haven’t been looking in the right places.

H: Where should I look? German eugenics manuals from the 1930s?

J: I’m going to sleep. Peace. Hope to catch you another time, Hash.

H: Yeah, I’ll be here.

B: George Lincoln Rockwell back in the day seems like he was an intelligent person and he was the founder of the American Nazi Party.

H: He was intelligent because he wore a suit and tie? And had a stated ideology?

B: Yeah.

H: I’ll shoot that motherfucker in the face. I’ll plant my red and black flag into that fuckers’ forehead. I’ll shoot every Nazi fuck point blank in their face. I went to protest those fuckers about a year ago in Orlando, the modern descendents of the American Nazi Party. In reality, they’re just a bunch of obese, miserable cowards. They’re not intelligent people.

B: Eugenics is great. I believe one has the right to improve humanity.

H: We were a bunch of young sexy crust punx with a banner that read “We’re Anti-Fascist and We Shoot Back!” Which side of the barricades would YOU rather be on? They had to have hundreds of riot police protecting them the entire time.

B: LOL. People that claim they are not racist are just as hateful as racists. They hate on people that don’t conform to their thinking.

H: Fuck you, liberal.

B: Let a racist be a racist. Let a homosexual be a homosexual. Let an animal be an animal. That’s my philosophy.

H: If you’re gonna do the Seig Heil thing and wear the silly armband, the whole World War II uniform you bought on the NSM site, I’m gonna smash your face in. That’s my philosophy. At least it will teach them a lesson… for being so fucking lame.

B: LOL. You are mad at Nazis but not at communists who wear Che Guevara shirts?

H: Fuck Che Guevara! But it’s not the same thing at all.

B: LOL.

H: If you think it is, you know nothing. If you think it is, you’ve been misled by capitalist propaganda.

B: I hate Che Guevara. I hate communism. Actually, I hate all politics. I’m into philosophy, not politics.

H: I admire communists when they’re killing Nazis, but otherwise fuck ‘em.

B: Hashthrash, communists have killed more people than Nazis.

H: Yeah… like Nazis!  I prefer their justification for genocide to that of Nazis. It’s a lot cleaner and saner. I like their atheist basis for mass murder. There’s something of the Marquis de Sade in it. Gets me going. A red flag, a gun, and no god.

And Nazis’ hatred of Jews is embarrassing. I mean, seriously dude. You gonna kill the Jews, you gonna kill the talent. Communists love Jews.

B: Jews are fucking retarded.

H: In fact, communists ARE Jews.

B: Most liberals are Jews. I thought you hate liberals.

H: Actually, most liberals are not Jews.

B: I am an atheist. I hate Jesus.

H: Because Jews are only 2% of the U.S. population (actually, slightly less). So that would mean that less than 2% of the U.S. population are liberals, which is absurd. Most U.S. Jews are liberals, yes. So what? What are most Christians? What are most Muslims? They all subscribe to political ideologies I do not agree with.

B: I hate Jesus because his teachings are irrational and his morality is garbage.

ChampionSounds: But if we don’t have morality, then what’s left of us?

H: The Jewish contribution to the world has been profound. And most of these profound Jews were atheists. (Marx, Einstein, Freud, Chomsky). Here’s a secret: the Jewish religion actually ended 200 years ago. Now, Jews don’t believe in god. Not even the Zionists do (okay, maybe the ultra-religious settlers do). The ultimate goal of Jewish is to unite once again with the primordial void of Ohr Ayn Sof, or “Nothingness without End”. What’s more punk than that?

C: Wild savages. Beast men.

H: Actually, “wild savages” and “beast men” were far less violent, probably precisely because they didn’t have morality. Morality is one the most violent things there is.

B: I don’t have a morality, but if I did it would be better than what Jesus came up with.

H: Jesus took LSD, therefore he didn’t believe in morality.

B: LSD was created by Albert Hoffmann in the 1900s. LSD was not even around during the time of Jesus.

H: It was a joke. I’m tuned into contemporary LSD culture, don’t worry.

C: It messes with your perception of reality, which is not good.

H: That’s a crude designation, and not even an accurate statement.

B: I never have taken LSD but if I had the chance I would.

H: You should take LSD and watch videos of white violence toward racial minorities. Or Polish extermination camps.

B: Black: I am not a Nazi. Just because I admire Adolf Hitler and the Nazis doesn’t make me a Nazi. I listen to hip-hop music. I am not even a racist. I let people be racist if they want to be racist. I let nature take its course. I am a Social Darwinist. I let someone be racist if they want to be racist.

H: Your whiteness is yr blind spot. So white you’ve gone blind.

B: A racist that loves hip-hop is an oxymoron.

H: I know several outspoken racists that are big hip-hop fans. A racist can still enjoy the music and culture on a certain level, kind of like how rich whites love the African safari kitsch, while at the same time they still hold to the superiority of the white race over the black race.

B: What’s wrong with believing whites are superior to blacks?

H: Nothing, if you want to hold an ignorant viewpoint.

B: 90% of black people believe blacks are superior to whites.

H: So?

B: I don’t care about any race, including my own.

H: If you don’t “get it”, it’s because yr white. And I don’t mean skin color. The very fact that you so identify yourself with the concept of whiteness is the problem. Go read some contemporary anthropological writings on race, you seem bright enough to manage that.

B: distrust human beings. I don’t even let people into my house. No matter what color they are. I am misanthropic.

H: I am too. I despise many human beings, often pity them. Sometimes I feel genuine compassion for people. Sometimes I hate people. It depends on how I’m feeling on any given day, really.

B: I like to see people suffer. Or get hurt. I don’t care about the Jews that died in the Holocaust.

H: Yeah… sometimes I feel compassion for others’ suffering, because I suffer a lot myself and it doesn’t feel good to suffer, for anyone. I can still laugh at the towers falling down though. 9/11 Bloopers anyone?! Complete with wacky sound effects and all. I care about the Jews that died in the Holocaust. But 9/11… c’mon. They were asking for it. They were all screaming “Take my life… please!”

B: I don’t have any compassion towards people. Not even my friends or family. People think I’m a selective mute because I don’t talk around people I don’t like.

H: Yeah, I’ll talk around them but not to them.

B: That’s what I meant.

H: Like, if I really resent or despise someone, I will interact with them only when necessary, and kind of put them in their place. Otherwise, I’m pretty compassionate. If you’re genuine and honest in your dealings with me, I will probably like and respect you. Nietzsche probably would agree. It’s important to act like a monarchist, even if one is an anarchist.

H: I am a recluse. I love being by myself, and I hate when people bother me.

B: I love you. I feel genuine compassion for you as a human being. But not only for that, for who you are in particular, a good guy.

WampWamp: The love is pretty thick in here.

H: Okay, compassion’s over. Did you feel those vibrations thru the computer screen? You think this computer can tear us apart? Well I say no way.

W: I’m kinda hard to be honest.

H: Your dick is hard, in my mouth?

W: Nah.

H: Oh. 

W: In your butt. No, homo.

H: Oh okay, I didn’t know you were gay. That’s kind of… weird.

W: Waaaaaaait. But if it was in yr mouth, it wouldn’t be?

H: Are you Gay Edge?

W: xxtilldeathxx

H: No, it’s not gay if it’s in my mouth. My mouth is straight, and so is your cock, in my mouth.

B: I always talked to the intelligent and selective mute kids when I went to school. I avoided the people that tried to use me for something, or the people that didn’t have anything in common with myself.

H: Aw. I went through a lot of that too. It’s important to have someone you can talk to without any fear. You can talk to me about anything. I’ll jack you off too.

B: I don’t hate anyone. I let people be what they want to be. I don’t even hate on racists.

H: That’s good. I am more hateful than you are. I knew that already.

B: If I don’t agree with them, I just get away from them.

H: I hate everybody, because I hate myself. I hate Nazis because I’m a self-hating Jew. There, I said it. It’s a way of exerting my strong Zionist air. I will become the Nazi. As a Jew.

W: I eat cuz I feel lonely. I weigh 457 pounds.

H:  Really, dude?

W: Nah, I’m 245.

B: You can admit that you fuck animals around me and I wouldn’t think less of you. It’s your body. If you want to fuck animals, then that’s your choice.

H: I agree, to an extent, on the animal issue. It all depends on the context, I gotta say. I don’t look down upon people for doing anything like that. Except raping little children. That’s not fun, for the children.  Otherwise rape is fine. In fact, I support it as an industry.

B: Actually, I believe all humans are capable of raping children or are capable of killing millions of people. Just look at the time of Greece when all males were fucking teen males. All the Greeks were homosexuals.

H: Do you believe that all humans are capable of raping all children? That would be brutal. Goregrind cover of the year.

W: Fuck, I could go for a Hot Pocket. Or maybe a slice of pizza. With extra cheese.

H: I can go for a hot vagina. And some crack.

W: Because there was no such thing as sexuality. They just admired a beautiful human body.

H: That’s because the teen males had hot shaved cocks. I admire a beautiful human body. It’s very valuable. Especially when it is degraded.

W: I wonder what they used for lube back then?

H: Semen from little boys. Pre-cum from pre-teens.

B: People think there is something mentally sick about Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Ramirez. I don’t think they are mentally sick. I think they were born with a mind that takes pleasure in killing or raping dead bodies. Look at the time of the barbarians. The majority of barbarians didn’t know raping or killing millions of people were bad. Actually there is no such thing as good or evil.

H: Yeah, I agree. I would engage in virtual rape.

B: If murder and rape were legal, 90% of human beings would be killing and raping each other.

H: Raped by Thrash!!!! If everyone was raping and killing each other, it would go back full circle and become consensual once again. PC anarcha-feminists would totally dig it. Like, massive socially agreed-upon murder and rape.

B: The prison or jail system is stopping people from raping or killing people. People don’t have compassion for each other.

H: That’s a sad statement.  I’d hate to have some man’s semen inside me, while I contracted HIV and I’m bleeding out of my dry vagina. Would you enjoy that? To be raped? By a man’s semen?

B: If I was a man, I would cut his dick off and stick it in his mouth.

H: With men, rape is mainstream. An acceptable form of social discourse. It’s the basic “thrust” of male ideology. I think that transsexuals are an ideal candidate for being raped by white men. Men have less guilt about raping a transsexual than raping a woman even.

B: I am a misanthropic individualist Social Darwinist, and I support eugenics for the purity of our children. I hate inferior, weak-minded human beings, whether they are yellow, white, or black. I don’t give a shit about any race of people including my own race. I hate all human beings, especially weak-minded and ignorant human beings, and I am a vegetarian. I care about a dog or cat more than I do a fucking worthless human.

H: You sound like GG Allin in training, dude. Not quite there yet. I especially like that you’re a vegetarian. I eat defenseless creatures and I hate everyone and myself.

Here’s my poem:

Animals are truly wondrous.
From the sea to the sky.
They bring joy wherever they may go.
Joy for you and I.

B: When someones hates on Hitler or racism, I try to defend it and try to justify it using propaganda towards other racial groups of other races. I just defend racism or Nazism to make it look like I am a villain. Richard Butler, William Joseph Simmons, Nathan Forrest Bedford, William Pierce, David Duke, Tom Metzger, George Lincoln Rockwell. Here are some racists. David Duke claims he wasn’t a racist. He claims he is a racial realist.

H: Okay. Racial Realism.

B: I admire GG Allin also. Boyd Rice of the Church of Satan I also admire.

H: All of the above listed individuals, aside from GG Allin, were thoroughly reactionary. As you know, I strictly disapprove of such behavior. Naughy, naughty Nazis!

B: William Pierce was a physicist.

H: A lot of people are a lot of things…

B: He was a white nationalist, founder of the National Alliance.

H: What a total WASTOID, to use a hesher expression. Shot to the face. Boom. No more Nazi. I love violence. Especially power violence.

B: You heard of Boyd Rice?

H: I’ve heard the name before. I don’t know anything about him.

B: He uses Nazi symbolism. He is part of the Church of Satan. He did an interview with Tom Metzger. The interview is on Myspace. He is a Social Darwinist, occult Fascist.

H: I want to compile some of these conversations into a pamphlet. I mean, this is all funny stuff. Edit, you know, brush it up a bit…

Aryans of Ubermensche Eugenics: Yo.

H: Make some copies…

A: LOL.

H: People will eat this shit up like acid cakes.

A:  Black people smell like poop. I changed my name.

H: I figured. I like the new one better, it’s a lot more discreet. This pamphlet is gonna be da bomb. Like, CrimethInc. will distribute it. They love it, they eat it up, mmm… AK Press will publish the hardcover version.

What is with all this insanely good luck recently? In the past few days, me and my friends have found:

-perfectly good, sealed wine bottles in the trash. One was from 1990, the other from 1993, both excellent quality French red wine. Definitely had a kick to it!

-whole pizza pies from Little Caesars, fresh and freegan

-bags and bags of fresh lettuce, other veggies, wonton chips

-a garbage bag filled with Dunkin Donuts bagels, donuts, pastries, munchkins, etc. Felt like 50 pounds.

-a fucking *GREAT BIKE* just laying on the middle of the sidewalk in Brian's neighborhood. It wasn't in a dumpster, but if someone is dumb enough to leave their bike like that, it deserves to get taken.

...it all seems a little *too* perfect, don't want to jinx it or anything.

-And we're starting up a Food Not Bombs in Ft. Lauderdale. Anyone wanna help with cooking/serving/setting up? We want to serve outside of the Main Library downtown where a lot of homeless people sleep and hang out, either weekly or bi-weekly. It's really kind of sad that there is currently no FNB in South Florida, or south of Orlando for that matter (except for Ft. Myers). E-mail me at nabat@hotmail.com if you're interested.

-I can't wait for the Nazi rally on Saturday. If nothing else, I'll get to take out all my anger and frustration on those assholes. We're gonna paint a banner that says "All You Fascists Bound to Lose!" while singing the song. How awesome is that??

-On another note, I went to the dollar movie theater in Tamarac yesterday and saw "The Squid and the Whale". All I have to say is: GET OFF YOUR ASS AND SEE IT!! I haven't seen a film that great in a long ass time. Beautiful indie film with a beautiful indie/folk soundtrack.

I went to the Scripps protest in WPB yesterday and it was really fun. A lot of the people from EF! were still there. I had a plan to dress up like a corporate businessman and find a way to infiltrate and disrupt the meeting. I shaved, gelled my hair, wore a nice shirt and tie, put on dress shoes, etc. I totally fit the part, except for looking really young, and tried to get inside along with Barry Silver (who was also dressed nice). The cops immediately followed us, asked us a bunch of questions, yelled at me that I was standing too close to Barry, and told us we weren't allowed in and would have to leave immediately. I heard that some people managed to pull it off though; they got inside the building and did a banner drop for a brief moment!

On the way back, Brian and I were stopped by what I believe is 90% probably a spy - a middle aged man in a car yelled out to us asking what the flags we had stood for (one was black with a circle-A-heart and the other was just yellow), he asked us where we had been, what the protest was about, what Scripps was, whether the people at the protest were locals or from out of town, and he asked to keep the Scripps protest flyer we had because he was "interested". He told us that him and the woman in the car were tourists from New York, and just wanted to check out what we were doing. We were caught really off guard, but we didn't tell him anything incriminating. After we left, we realized how completely sketchy that was and were really freaked out by it.

Pics of the protest: http://www.pbase.com/lautermilch/wpbbio
I drew the "Stop engineering life!!!" banner, last photo on the first row.

Today a small group of people met up at Old School Square at 5pm at the corner of Atlantic & Swinton (the historical dividing line between white and Black Delray during Jim Crow) and had the first ever anti-Iraq War protest in Delray Beach. It was organized by Pam from the Dasein Collective, a newly emerging organization in Palm Beach County that blends art with activism. Jason Espeland from Bolivarian Youth, Allan Taylor from the Truth Project, Radym from the Anacardecaie collective in Lake Worth, and a local Delray resident who saw our listing in the Palm Beach Post also showed up. Allan came as a lawyer representing the ACLU because we received several phone calls (including one from the manager of Old School Square) trying to intimidate us from protesting, as well as the large possibility that we would be fucked with by the Delray cops. Luckily, the protest went smoothly and we hope for a bigger turnout next week.

This is an excellent article written by a friend of mine about Max Stirner, perhaps the most badass anarchist theorist of all time. It was printed in the Fall-Winter 2005-06 issue of Green Anarchy magazine. You can order a copy yourself by going to www.greenanarchy.org.

Max & I
By (I)An-ok Ta Chai

I’ve had an interesting proposition set before me, something that I’ve been avoiding clearly looking at for a while. How would I delineate a connection between the philosophy of the famous 19th century German individualist anarchist writer Max Stirner and the general “green” or anti-civilization approach to anarchy? I’ve been daunted by this question, for one, because Stirner is simply so old – a dead European intellectual of days gone by – and anti-civilization anarchy in it’s current _expression, in my opinion, is quite cutting-edge. For another, Stirner is quite individual-oriented, some may even say “narcisstic”, while green anarchist analyses address all of world history, the global eco-sphere, and all aspects of life. And finally, I’ve seen a lot of different people love Max Stirner, from Platformists to Libertarians to green anarchists – and all of them strike me as intense and weird individuals, and I’m not quite sure that I would want to attract their attention.

Nonetheless, I must confess – I love Max Stirner. I always have, as long as I’ve known of the guy. Then I realize – I don’t really like Stirner as a person, or even as a writer. He was a German girls’ school teacher who hung out with snotty intellectuals like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and he was married to a wife who admitted to never loving nor respecting him. His writing often went off on unnecessary rants about European history or some other philosopher guy, and he frequently informed his readers about how bad-ass he was because of how free and uncompromising he supposedly was. This is not why I love Max Stirner.

I love Stirner because of what I personally get out of his writings or ideas attributed to him. I would sum this up as – you experience your life as you, not as anyone or anything else. As far as you know, this is the only life that you’ve got. Therefore, you should make sure that all of the relationships and ideas that you come across actively help you to live your life in a way that is free, fulfilling and enjoyable to you in the here-and-now. And fuck anyone or anything that gets in your way of this.

A lot of modern-day commercialized self-help shit vaguely has this same message, so aside from being the original quotable self-help guru, Stirner had some integral unique iconoclastic components to this philosophy on life. Stirner took an anarchist approach by saying that all forms of government, capitalism, and authority destroys people, thereby eliminating the possibility of achieving this self-supporting aim in life. Stirner also had an amoralist angle by holding that the concepts of good/bad, right/wrong, duty and obligation cloud one’s vision away from this self-chosen focus. He came from an individualist direction by believing that conceptually placing society, the collective and/or the group first deters from valuing one’s own life as primary. And he took an existentialist stance by saying that concepts, belief systems, and ideas have no inherent meaning in and of themselves – that you put the meaning into them yourself, and then act accordingly. When you put this all together you then have a direct line of sight straight to yourself – what are you doing here and why are you doing it? Stirner pointed out how chances are that in any given situation you’re not even trying to take care of yourself – you’ve in effect lost yourself in the process.

Stirner helped me to take my anarchist beliefs and outlooks personally. He helped me to clearly situate myself in the midst of all this bullshit society that surrounds me. Government and capitalism directly screws me over, right here and right now, so if I want to personally live a free, fulfilling, and enjoyable life, then it’s all got to go.

More striking for me was how Stirner helped to expose the ghost-like nature of all these different ideas of morality, obligation, family, property, government, and society itself – how so often I view these things as being tangible entities in and of themselves(as opposed to being just concepts in my head) and as a result I see them as making demands and threats upon me. Stirner reminded me that it is people and the physical world that hurts or obstructs me, that all thoughts and relations to that are based on ideas inside my head, so why not choose to think and act differently, in a way that helps me?

One concern that comes up around Stirner’s approach, particularly when considering it in conjunction with green anarchy, is that it can be used as an excuse for consumption, gluttony, and over-indulgence. To this, I can only say that I believe that there is a certain joy and fulfillment that occurs in human experience that is more profound and far-reaching when health and balance is reached than when consumption and over-indulgence is engaged in. I believe that because our body is a natural organism, that we can trust an inner felt-sense (as opposed to whim and habit) to guide us in finding our own personal health and balance, and that we can trust to make our decisions based on that.

This is all great so far, but the tricky part comes when trying to apply Stirner’s ideas to establishing mutually-supportive relationships with other people and non-human life. Stirner had a suspicion that relationships of mutual support and respect with other people were indeed possible, but he really did not know how to do it. His relationship with his wife is an example of that. And as far as non-human life goes, Stirner was more a “dominate nature, make it serve you” kind of guy – not exactly eco-conscious.

This is where I think that it is important to take Stirner’s ideas and “run wild”, so to speak. I see this as best being done by first keeping in mind some basic principles of human social dynamics – if you disregard or screw over other people, then they are less likely to keep your interests in mind. Therefore if you want social relationships that help you, you need to keep in mind and help out others too. Mutual respect and support, voluntary cooperation – aka - anarchy.

Next, if you want people to help you out in a thorough and personal way, then you need to really know each-other and trust each-other. After a certain number of people, the personally-knowing quality begins to diminish, and hence the ease and depth of mutual trust goes as well. This puts a cap on the number of people that a group can have while still maintaining this kind of integrity. Therefore it becomes desirable to personally choose to organize in small-scale groups based on trust and affinity – “tribes”.

If you want to live for yourself, to respect your own enjoyment, satisfaction, and freedom in life, and if you want to include the often over-looked realms of the sensual and the spiritual, all aspects of life as you experience it – chances are that you wouldn’t be choosing to work in factories, till the fields, sit in traffic, go to war, wait in lines, numb yourself to the incessant grating background noise of industrial society, wade through continually-growing piles of trash, or other trademark features of Civilized life. When living your life in this different way, work itself clearly becomes seen as an undesirable choice.

Domestication, an essential pillar of Civilization, when looked at is clearly at odds with Stirner’s philosophical approach to living. Domestication requires displacement from yourself and that which naturally supports you. Stirner’s approach is that of finding yourself and consciously putting yourself in alignment with that which effectively supports you. How can you tacitly accept programming and training from outside of yourself when your whole chosen basis for living is to clearly find and carry out your own standards, assumptions and actions to best support yourself?

Living with others who also choose to live their lives in this way, and respecting and supporting each-other in this, then establishes a social norm which is inherently antithetical to the driving force of agricultural and industrial society, ergo, Civilization itself. This social norm could spread as a generalized mode of interaction among people, or it could serve as a foundation from which to attack Civilization or defend against its encroachments. Either way, this way of relating socially and living your life is inherently fulfilling and supportive of yourself, therefore it is of value. Stirner’s philosophy then becomes antagonistic to Civilization.

Living an uncivilized, undomesticated life consciously chosen and meaningful for myself within a context of a small group of known and trusted people engaged in mutually supportive and respectful relationships towards this end – this is Stirnerite green anarchy. The thought of this as an applied practice in my life sends chills up my spine. The thought of this then generalized to the rest of humanity – no Civilization at all – is simply exhilarating. That crazy dead German loner wingnut didn’t know what he was getting into.

This is just a rough draft. Feel free to offer any comments, suggestions, or criticism you may have. Yeah, I know it is deeply influenced by Marxist economics -- so what?

Much-too-late Capitalism and its Discontents
by Nabat

When the voracious appetite of capital is whetted, it searches for its primitive accumulation.(1) The state-capitalist regimes of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union in particular, mocked the corpses of Marx and Engels in order for their states to conform to the ruling bureaucrats’ real needs, which were the same needs as any newly industrializing (read: capitalist) nation: to colonize a people or class as primitive accumulation (in this particular historical example, primitive “socialist” accumulation). The Russian peasantry, especially under Stalin but even during the rein of Lenin and Trotsky, made a good candidate for this process of brutal usurpation and forced collectivization. The labor of the peasantry and working class are usurped by the bureaucratic caste in power, whose class interests are both disguised by and personified in the figure of the Commissar or Chairman. As the whole illusory community is wrapped up in the fairytale of resolving the contradictions of capitalism – what cannot be resolved (class society) by even the most clever or capable, is strengthened beyond the wildest dreams of the players involved. State power by its very nature is not based on transparency – relationships of domination, authority, and submission are not real, human relations. The official line of the state-capitalist regime is that of a “united people” still warding off the remnants of reaction. In reality, this is just a rallying cry for the continual maintenance of a society based on misery and alienation, a pseudo-community. It differs in no essential respects from American jingoism, a veritable “Support Our Troops” sticker forever branded on the national psyche.

A rotting corpse is emptied of its organs, stitched up, and sprayed with a thick coat of preservatives and sweet-smelling perfumes. It is then carefully placed in a coffin made of thick marble and sealed tight. If left out in the open, the coffin will slowly decompose, the perfume will wear off, and the layers of preservatives will be no match for the ugly reality of the corpse. Hidden under six thick inches of dirt, such a facade will stand a better chance, steered away from the turbulence of the earth above. But one day it will be discovered, as all things are, maybe in a mangled state, but nonetheless a chapter to a mangled history and a pathetic past.

The totality of social relations we live under is a rotting corpse. It demands of us that we pay, that we quantify our existence, that we conform to the nauseating logic of money, of property, of social classes, of authority. If we refuse, they deceive us with their media – if that fails, they bludgeon us to death and mock us in their cells. Those who refuse, those anarchists (opposing all rulers), are the living embodiment of life, of presence, of the repressed desires sacrificed on the altar of commodities. The anarchist laughs heartily in the face of authority, she defies every impediment to the full realization of her freedom, of her potentiality actualized. The anarchist grasps freedom and understands it with her whole being – not only intellectually, but as “the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn” in the words of Emma Goldman. The anarchist is bewildered by the irrational rationality of work, she is confused by the Protestant ethic: to work incessantly for the “value” of commodities personified by “money”. She asks herself, Why do people act as they do? To realize their desires, to fulfill creative urges, to produce valuable things that are of use, whether practical or aesthetic or both? If capitalism is so adamant about “rationality”, why does it produce the most obscene, irrational, and outrageous events in history?: the Nazi holocaust, Stalin’s gulags, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the paramilitary death squads in the U.S. client states of Latin America, and even closer to home in the genocide of the Native Americans and the Black communities in the U.S. And Francis Fukuyama(2), FOX News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and all the other spokespeople of Ideology – why are they so jubilant, so secure, in their “End of History”, in the permanent triumph of neoliberal capitalist democracy? Can’t they see how fragile, how vulnerable, how aching to implode this society is from all its multiplicities of contradictions? Capitalism has always produced its own discontents, beginning with its original process of primitive accumulation. The “return of the repressed” is here, now, at the beginning of the twenty first century.

If history has ended, why are the forces that wish to negate history, and at the same time realize their own his- & her-stories, assaulting the citadels of exploitation and oppression more than ever? If history has ended, and there is no question, they say, that it has, then why at the brink of a new century are people more secure than ever that a “New world is possible – only destroying capitalism!” Why is the sacrosanct commodity being contested on a new terrain, on a terrain that declares itself in opposition to any continued survival of this “post-historical” era? When the French rioters in early November 2005 burned cop cars and smashed corporate buildings beyond repair, when rebellious, pissed, unemployed youth fought bitterly against their miserable existence, when they for once transformed exchange-value into the value of individual subjectivity acting on its own impulses and desires and taking what it needs freely without forgiveness and guilt, when the role of the cop and the hated CRS riot police – notorious for their repression of May ‘68 – as the strong-arm of the commodity and of private property was put into practice (they were responsible for numerous brutal beatings of Arabs), it became evident to all but the hardline ideologues blind in their hardline stupidity and narrow-mindedness – that history has not declared itself to be over, indeed far from it.

In capitalist society, the totality of individual and social relations, are warped. Not only are these relations reified(3), transformed into relations of commodities to each other (and commodities gaining human status), as can be evidenced by the frequent adoption of business and technocratic jargon into everyday conversation and the visible lack of any real community, but also these relations must be subservient to the hierarchical consumption of commodities, of “goods”. This process is hierarchical because these “goods” occupy an illustrious position in contrast to the miserable wasteland the multitudes of humanity are forced to inhabit. As human beings become more and more estranged from themselves, their own wants, desires, feelings, needs, and relationships, their own lives – the commodity gains more and more of a human status. This is the alien-world of much-too-late capitalism, where everything is topsy turvy and nothing makes sense. To capital, the commodity is sacred, while the human is expendable. The human is the means, the commodity the end. It is immoral and criminal to defy commodity logic. And for precisely that reason those who fight back and refuse this nightmare are labeled “criminals” and “immoral”, “barbarians” or worse. The creative individual, as a living subject that makes his own history is merely a pleasant daydream – because not the individual but the ethereal object holds the upper hand, the hand that is invisible, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” guiding the economy and society. Is this hand really invisible? Or maybe the guardians of capital are doing all they can to give this hand the appearance of invisibility. The truth is, the hand is not invisible - and neither is it invincible. It really becomes transparent if we struggle against existing conditions. The “invisible hand” of capital is not transcendental; rather it is the negation of this hand that is transcendental. Negation transcends the space-time of capital and of its domination and suffocation of life, of the dictatorship of commodities. The cracks in the system become blocks and stones – blocks and stones that can be used as weapons, as we tear up every block and stone the whole world over to build our barricades. Negation transcends the dictatorship of commodities. This transcendence, this supersession of the metaphysical rule of Ideas, and not just Ideas but material reality, is the moment when our real individual, subjective her- & his-stories begin and when this “End of History” ends.

From its inception, capitalism has been incapable of creating any cohesive human community in any genuine sense. In its wake, traditional communities, social interactions, and ways of life have been disrupted, poisoned, and severely destroyed. Customs that were based on the collective sharing of the joys of life were deemed the most threatening. The potlatch ceremonial feasts of the Northwest Coast American Indians based on the ostentatious destruction of property (or communal re-distribution of property), containing an inherently insurrectionary spark due to this very questioning of property itself, were banned by the Canadian government up until 1951. Games have been replaced with ESPN, feasts with McDonalds. Capitalism can’t stand to see what it views as “idleness”, but what is actually natural human activity, free of any compulsive or schizophrenic motivation.

If we turn to another corner of the world, Great Britain, we see the same trends emerge. Nature, leisure, and freedom must be sacrificed to the insane demands of productivity and capital accumulation. When the capitalist bosses imposed the Industrial Revolution on the British people, they forced the masses of small-scale peasants and self-employed craftsmen into proletarians (wage-slaves). In 1811, Ned Ludd led a large contingent of these newly proletarianized workers in revolt against work, against the new technologies. They sabotaged their machinery and even clashed in battles with the British Army, who were called in to quell the riots. From primitive accumulation to the present day, workers have detested this imposition of alienating work and its accompanying “leisure-time”.

Capital is not an absolute entity, fixed in time and space. It is a dialectical process that is determined by its interactions with its antithesis – the entire world of humans and nature. The dynamic history of class struggle has created in time a layer of society that claims to represent the cry of the exploited and desperate: the Democratic Party, vanguardist and reformist left-wing political parties, the official labor-union apparatus, NGOs, liberal charity groups. This is nothing other than capitalism’s left-wing. We have to contend with not only the wolf, but the fox – as Malcolm X said on numerous occasions. The liberal psuedo-opposition is vitally necessary for the maintenance of capitalism, because it gives us the illusion that qualitative change is possible under the present system, and it also confuses and debilitates people’s ability to see clearly by misleading them about the nature of that very system – refusing to connect the dots between the various “causes” and “issues” (hunger, starvation, disease, homelessness, war, ecological destruction, racism, etc.) in the world, or to view them from anything but the most superficial and idealist perspective. Capitalism is not an abstraction, a concept, an ideal – it is a set of social relations, wherein every movement, every step, every action is governed by dead objects.

It would be a mistake to view the economy in capitalist society as in any way autonomous from the whole spectacular superstructure of society. It is deeply intertwined and bound up with philosophy, law, government, science, art, religion, sexual relations, mental health, the corporate media and its deliberately false oppositions (Bush vs. Kerry, Support Our Troops vs. Support Al Qaeda, The “Free Market” vs. Authoritarian Dictatorship etc.), every possible gesture of daily life – whether one of submission and contentment or one of negation and refusal. This is not to say that the negation of class society is futile, but only that capitalism has outstretched its tentacles and sucked the life out of humanity like a morbid Leviathan – with a force stronger than gravity. Its tentacles have surveyed every nook and cranny of the globe for its life-denying system to take reign and to find even more sources of capital accumulation as well as various forms of surplus-value to oil its machinery and churn out endless commodities. The capitalist does not just exist in the factory or the fields any longer, this multi-headed hydra can be found everywhere one cares to look. This paradoxically has the effect of broadening and deepening the possibilities for anti-capitalist struggle today: anywhere and everywhere is a potential target of attack.

The government of dead objects over the exploited and oppressed has a most clever tactic on its side. I’m speaking here of the cycle of alienation of production and consumption. Marx pointed out that the worker’s product approaches him as an alien, hostile force; the more he produces, the less he lives. The more time the worker spends producing commodities, the more he himself becomes a commodity. But every producer is at the same time a consumer. The consumer buys the alienation of the producer (entertainment, alcohol) to replace his own feelings of alienation and powerlessness. The worker becomes trapped in a vicious cycle that enslaves him completely. Will we, the “workers”, “producers”, and “consumers” that allow this cycle to go round and round, continue to wallow in our despair and accept the totality of this society – or will we instead take the torch to society, to realize our creative projects and desires not in some future utopia, but through our daily struggle against these conditions? When we revolt, when we destroy – we are at the same time creating. We are destroying whatever prevents us from the fullness of a life lived without hesitation, without dead time or trivial pursuits.

(1)Primitive accumulation is a concept that Karl Marx introduces in part 8 of the first volume of Capital. It explains how the capitalist mode of production came into being in the first place – an original accumulation which did not result from capitalist production, but formed an external starting point to it. It is created by “divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as primitive, because it forms the pre-historic stage of capital and of the mode of production corresponding with it.” Primitive accumulation has been historically achieved through means of colonialism and brute force (i.e. the genocide of the Native Americans, the despoliation of Africa, enclosures of communal land in Great Britain, etc).

(2) Francis Fukuyama is a neoconservative American political economist. He argues in his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992) that the progression of human history as a struggle between competing ideologies and ways of viewing the world is largely at an end, with the world settling on Liberal Democracy after the Cold War as the best society possible.

(3) Reification, in this sense, refers to the consideration of a human being as an abstraction, not as a living, concrete subjectivity. It can also mean to regard or treat an abstraction as if it had concrete or material existence.

"My Body is in Prison, but my Soul is Free"
Jean Juste: Revolutionary!
by Marc Silverstein

On October 13th, 2004, Father Gerard Jean-Juste, Catholic priest and longtime activist for peace and social justice*, was arrested at his parish in Port Au Prince while providing 600 impoverished children with free meals. During the arrest, the police shot a little girl in the backside, as well as two other boys, which they subsequently denied. He was accused by the unelected Latortue regime of “providing guns and money for terrorists” and other baseless accusations. Jean-Juste’s lawyers have repeatedly pointed out that the priest was only charged with “disturbing the peace”, a crime punishable by a fine of up to forty cents U.S. Instead, he was held indefinitely and without charges, locked in a penitentiary where he was made to endure mistreatment and humiliation on a regular basis.

His lawyers advised him that no judge in Haiti would ever hear his case because it was “too political”. After seven weeks of illegal detention, Jean-Juste was eventually released as a result of a worldwide, sustained campaign for his freedom organized by religious leaders, grassroots community groups, and human rights advocates.

Several months later, Jean-Juste spotted an intruder at his parish, who immediately fled after seeing the priest. The following evening, several men in pick-up tricks, all dressed in black, started shooting outside St. Claire’s with automatic weapons. The United Nations Stabilization Mission to Haiti was alerted to the shooting and promised to send police right away. The police never came, nor was the shooting ever investigated by authorities.

Jean-Juste went to St. Pierre’s Catholic Church, in Petionville, an upper class suburb of Port au Price, to attend the funeral of Haitian journalist Jacques Roche. Jean-Juste is a cousin of the Roche family, and went to offer his condolences and support to the family. At the time, Jean-Juste was widely accused by the government of such crimes as smuggling money and guns into the country, and being behind the recent wave of kidnappings in Haiti. Although most people didn’t for a second believe these outrageous lies, they were widely reported in the Latortue-run conservative media. When Jean-Juste walked out of the church, people started yelling at him “Assassin!” and “Criminal!” and calling for his arrest.

He was physically and verbally assaulted by members of the fascist pro-coup Group 184. The leader of the Group, Herve Santilos, brandished a firearm outside the church and threatened to kill Jean-Juste on the spot, as a right-wing mob beat him inside. Group 184 have been described by Haitian progressives as the “brown shirts” or “shock troops” of the country, earning the fascist epithet for their extremely violent and militaristic activities. They are “a fascist movement backed by the US and the UN and funded by the most reactionary elements of Haiti’s traditional economic elite”, as a member of Aristide’s Lavalas party explains.

A man in a suit claiming to be the secretary for security in Haiti threatened to have Jean-Juste arrested for the kidnapping and murder of Jacques Roche. Jean-Juste told the man that he was in Florida when Roche was killed (which has proven to be true; he was in Miami leading a protest at the Brazilian Consulate against the Citi Sole Massacre carried out by the Brazilian led UN force in Haiti), and that he would like to return to his parish at St. Claire’s. The CIVPOL (Civilian Police) in Haiti were very much aware that Jean-Juste was in Florida at the time of Roche’s murder, but they continued to interrogate him for several hours. In the end, he was charged with participating in the murder of Jacques Roche.

Not only Jean-Juste himself, but the entire Lavalas party, was accused of being behind the murder. According to the Agence Haitian de Press (AHP) on July 14th, “The police and justice haven’t announced any investigation yet to find the authors of this murder. The Minister affirms that it is the Lavalas sector that killed Jacques Roche, the poet who wrote against torture and the citizen who committed himself in the construction of civil society.” It is evidently clear that Latortue will do anything to wipe out his political opponents, as can be seen in the fact that over 700 supporters of ex-Prime Minister Aristide’s Lavalas Party are languishing in Haitian jails.

Jean-Juste has extensively reported on the cruel and barbaric conditions faced by his fellow prisoners. During a visit on August 23rd by Bishop Tom Gumbleton and Johanna Berrigan, he talked about his concern for those prisoners who were deported from the US yet still have no legal representation. He spoke of the horrible treatment of prisoners who are mentally ill; they are subjected to unimaginable ridicule, abuse, and torture. He shared a story of one of the prisoners who is mentally ill and being held naked under a very hot stairwell. “It hurts me so much to see this, please hear our call to give justice to all." He told his visitors, "This government should go and the legitimate government should be restored to power. All political prisoners should be released, there should be respect for the human rights of all. I have hope in fighting the system, I may at some point be released - for the other prisoners, forget it."

In August, many of the prisoners began a hunger strike. Their demands were: 1) Freedom for all political prisoners. 2) Freedom for all of the deportees. 3) Respect for the rights of prisoners based on the U. N. charter for human rights. 4) Stop the arbitrary arrests and indefinite detention of prisoners. 5) Allow all prisoners to have religious services according to their faith tradition. 6) Stop the beating and mistreatment of prisoners who are mentally ill.

Father Jean-Juste remains a target of State violence and repression today as a result of his courageous, tireless work among Haiti’s poor and oppressed, as well as for his outspoken condemnation of the Latortue dictatorship. He continues to remain in prison, brutalized at the hands of prison guards and fascist thugs, denied medical treatment and basic human rights, in an effort to break his spirit. This is being carried out with the full financial and military backing of the Bush administration, along with the other imperialist powers, such as Canada and the UN. Despite the beatings, torture, and psychological degradation, Jean-Juste remains as spiritually strong as ever, fueled by his love and compassion for his fellow human beings and his vision of a world where injustice, poverty, and brutality no longer reign supreme.

*Jean-Juste had been involved in Haitian immigrant rights activism in Miami for several decades. He served as director of the Haitian Refugee Center and founded Veye-Yo, a grassroots community group based in Miami. He had been organizing protests against the detentions and deportations of Haitians in South Florida since the 1970s.

BOLIVARIAN YOUTH FILM SHOWING ON HAITI TONIGHT

Bolivarian Youth will be showing the award-winning film REZISTANS (1997) about the devastation unleashed by the 1991 military coup d'etat in Haiti and the bloody dictatorship that followed. It presents a seering indictment not only of the CIA's role in the coup, but also that of the powerful and reclusive Haitian bourgeoisie. Unlike the mainstream media, REZISTANS does not portray the Haitian people as helpless victims. It focuses instead on their creative and courageous resistance, and the deep roots of that resistance in Haitian history and culture. As Haiti suffers under another U.S. backed military dictatorship, watching this film and learning more about the Haitian people's long history of resistance and struggle remains as important as ever.

There will also be a report-back from two members of the Bolivarian Youth who attended the School of the Americas (SOA) protest in Columbus, Georgia the past week along with 19,000 others demanding that the U.S. government shut down this notorious terrorist/death-squad training camp.

WHERE: Radio Miami, 3009 NW 7th St.
WHEN: 8:00pm
HOW: Take I-95 to 836 west and get off at NW 27th Ave./FL-9 N/Unity Blvd. southbound. Turn right at NW 7th St., you will see a large yellow building "China Hardware" on the right. Radio Miami will be a few block down on your right at 3009 NW 7th St.