Anarchist Manifesto 2010 by Bogos Kalemkiar
Anarchy comes from the Greek words, an and archia, meaning against or without authority or ruler ship.
Anarchy means self governing. Anarchists believe that we can govern ourselves, by ourselves. We don’t need a big daddy with a big stick to govern us. We believe that we are sensible and innately compassionate beings and that we don’t govern ourselves through fear, but through responsibility for ourselves, for each other and the world we live in.
As opposed to anarchy, authoritarianism is constituted of a single authority in the person of king, dictator, ruler, party or State supposedly governing on behalf of the interests of all. This is obviously an oxymoron. How could one person or party represent the interests of all? Very simply it can’t. It is a lie.
Absolute power usurped by a single entity, whether person, party or faction is sanctified and has its roots in the belief of the One God idea. This idea is a fairly recent phenomenon in human consciousness. Long before the idea of God, people believed in the multiplicity of things, the anthropos or the entirety as observed in Nature, and believed that all things whether animate or inanimate were part of an intricate fabric that bound everything and everyone together in a cycle that includes all the generations going right back to the very beginnings of Life. The inherent mechanism that sustains this eternal continuation is responsibility –the one for all and all for one idea. Whether we like it or not, we are all connected, we are all responsible for one another.
Any State or authority that resorts to violence to enforce “the peace” is a fascist authoritarian, totalitarian dictatorship whether it is democratically elected or not. The modern nation State treats its citizens like domesticated animals ready for the slaughterhouse who supposedly can only appreciate order through violence or the threat of violence. This pre-supposes that we are so ignorant and stupid, so savage and barbaric that the only language we can appreciate for our edification is violence. Many people still believe in the old “spare the rod and spoil the child” nonsense, but any parent caught beating their children with a rod causing physical damage would be prosecuted today. Yet, this is how we allow ourselves to be treated by the State…with guns, beatings, torture, persecution, dispossession and incarceration.
This mindset, the cause of millennia of warfare and bloodshed has turned the world into an armed camp with enough nuclear weapons poised to unleash a holocaust that would eradicate life on this planet. This arsenal of death is there supposedly to protect us from ourselves, say the elites who wield the power whether from Left or Right. The only difference between them is that one monopolizes power to acquire the wealth, while the other, monopolizes wealth to get the power. There is a third stream these days and it is the jingoistic religious fanatics with God on their side who have nothing better to do than hasten the end of the world because God told them to do so as supposedly written in their precious “holy” books. Of course they require the control and infrastructure of the State to bring about Armageddon.
The vast resources of the State today are funnelled primarily into beefing up its security and military forces at the expense of any other infrastructure needs, such as health, transportation, housing or education. The little that is left is fought over by the majority who are forced to struggle against each other merely to survive. This struggle for survival amongst the masses is pointed to as the reason for the need of enforcement by the State, when in fact the violence and greed perpetrated and encouraged by the State is the cause of the mayhem. The more savage and oppressive the control exercised by the State the more savage and vicious the reaction of its oppressed subjects. When this agitation reaches a point where the rulers start losing control of their masses, they resort to the old trustworthy standby, war against an external enemy where all the rage and frustration of their subject masses is directed at someone other than themselves. The threat of war or enemy has to always be maintained as a backdrop through good and bad times…just in case. The population is kept in a constant state of fear and turmoil thus making it more amenable to coercion through outright violence and mind numbing propaganda in the form of news and entertainment in the mass media.
The violence of the State takes many forms and is not just manifest in its enforcement of security, euphemistically called: to serve and protect. The main violence is perpetrated through the greed of a tiny minority who want to control every facet of human existence, be it the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and anything that can be appropriated with the price tag of ownership. This tiny minority at the apex of the pyramid models itself on the idea of the one God…all powerful, all rich etc. and the rest of us, who occupy the same boat in the bilge, and who have any desire to get out of the bilge into some clean air are seen as complicit; meaning that this is what we all really want, given the chance, to be rich and powerful like the tyrants who rule over us. The criminals at the top of the pyramid will spare nothing from keeping the rest of us down below in the bilge where (they think) we are powerless to wrench the power from their hands, to supplant ourselves in their place, so goes the cant. This cant also assumes that the only ones capable of getting out of the bilge are those who are more vicious and ruthless than those who oppress them or those who are collaborators and willing instruments of oppression. This is why anarchism strikes terror into their atrophied hearts.
The tyrants at the top of the pyramid exercise their power and influence by enslaving those “beneath” them through violence. These virulent parasites convert the capital of their subjects into weapons as well as using the capital to buy off the dregs of the bilge, turning them into mercenaries. We call these mercenary maggots, police and the military. It goes without saying that the most eager and willing collaborators of oppression are usually those who have been the most oppressed in their formative years, mostly by their own parents, their teachers, their priests etc. These are the children who were beaten mercilessly, sexually and psychologically abused and grew up wanting to take revenge on the world. Or else they were simply children of loveless families who didn’t care a fig for them. The criminal or lumpen classes however, are innocent as babes compared to the homicidal maniacs in uniform.
The State demands that we conform to the dictates of Law and Order…that we refrain from doing violence to others as a moral duty under penalty of punishment. Any deviance from these demands is seen as sociopathic or psychotic and aberrant behaviour. But the State sees no conflict when it demands that we enlist and kill our fellow human beings on behalf of the State’s interest in war or in policing our brothers and sisters. The more bloodthirsty and savage we are at the behest of the State the more accolades we receive as heroes and champions. In this fundamental contradiction of its demands, the State exposes its true stripes and betrays the corrupt and putrid core of its raison d’être which is its desire not to curtail but to direct violence. Fundamentally, the State is nothing but an organ or an institution predicated on violence camouflaged so as to appear benign and benevolent. The proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.
This fundamental schizophrenia of the State, on one hand demanding docile, obedient non violent subjects and on the other psychotic killers in times of war, betrays the psychotic nature of any given State obsessed with Law and Order and Authority. What it betrays is that the State wants above and beyond anything else, obedient slaves who will under no circumstance question its authority. More importantly what it further betrays is the psychotic dependence on and monopolization of violence as the bottom line mechanism and status quo method of operation supposedly for the welfare of the common good. We see this as the transparent bare-faced Lie of the first order that it is.
The violence of the State can take many forms and is inflicted through a myriad ways from horrendously exploitative working conditions where the majority toil with their blood, sweat and tears for the most basic necessities of life, while the top percentile wallow in the most disgusting blatant luxury; or from the lack of paying work, because working or not we have to pay for everything; and the summary and brutal way in which people are deprived of the little they have when they aren’t able to meet the requirements of their most crucial and basic needs. Any shortcoming on the part of any individual is blamed on the individual and is never seen as a systemic problem. And of course the brutal way any infraction is dealt with, be it incarceration, dispossession and capital punishment etc. And let us not forget war and the constant spectre of the threat of war if unemployment levels rise beyond a certain point.
The only difference between a dictatorship and a democracy or civil society is that in so-called civil society, the authorities guarantee their security forces total immunity from prosecution for any infractions committed during the course of “duty” or else they face the threat of a military/police coup, in which case they turn into dictatorships where the military and police are the de-facto rulers. In authoritarian regimes, whether civil or dictatorial, both the police and military are above and beyond the “Law” through special provisions enacted to guarantee their immunity from prosecution. Regardless of what they call themselves, authoritarian regimes are essentially fascist police/military totalitarian oligarchies. All authoritarian States also enact laws which give them immunity from the results of any referenda undertaken by the people to decide on any given issues outside the auspices of their respective governments or State whether they are civil societies or not.
The brutality of the State brutalizes its subjects. The brutality usually takes place between those who are close to one another, such as between family members or in the work place. It always takes place in situations where people are compromised into keeping their mouths shut for fear of immediate reprisal…mirroring the reprisal anyone would face if they transgressed the Law as set forth by the State. The jails and hospitals of the mentally ill are full to overflowing to the point that the State can’t build their “institutions” fast enough. Of course to the vulture venture capitalists this is a bonanza because they have turned criminality and mental health into a lucrative business, from building and stuffing privatized super prisons to the gills to the designer drugs required to chemically lobotomize half the population into a drug induced catalepsy. It is apparently OK for people to become addicted to prescription drugs sanctioned by the State but not so if the drugs are deemed illicit. The “war on drugs” is another criminal exercise by the State to flex its authoritarian muscle in its voracious need to control its subjects. So are all the laws designed to uphold the “morality” standards such as the laws against prostitution. More than ninety percent of all so called criminal activity is the result of offences related to drugs and prostitution. Not so long ago we had Prohibition, where we couldn’t even have a drink in peace.
The primary purpose of the brutality of the State and its reliance on violence is to instil fear and terror into its subjects. From the police to all the news about murders, crimes and disasters to movies extolling the virtues of the tough guy, everyone is walking around in a state of terror; with the fear internalized, everyone becomes a potential enemy to everyone else. The fear and terror everyone lives in is the fuel fanning the cowardly violence always directed towards those seen as weaker than oneself. Children, women, the elderly and minorities in any given population are always the easiest targets.
We are all somehow complicit to this state of affairs. No one is untouched by the general madness pervading most societies today. No one has to work for munitions factories, or in the prisons, or for the hospitals of the criminally insane, no one has to become a policeman or work for a collection agency or a bank…but in this world we all have to survive and some of us, are more willing to do anything to make that possible. We all make a choice as to how far we are willing to go to put food on the table. It would be simplistic to think that it is all a matter of individual choice; if we all, individually, did the right thing, that all of a sudden the world would right itself. This is the message that is bandied about, not only as the “dog eat dog rat race” that is imposed on us by the collective insanity, but also is the favourite tactic used by the religious and the so-called spiritual elites, the exhortation to personal salvation, for the world to be somehow saved. What a crock. The chosen few sitting on the right hand of God almighty and all the rest will be boiled in hell for all eternity. The rhetorical brainwashing that we are all subjected to on a daily basis boils down to the “me, me, me” complex despite all the drivel about ego and God. Or else it’s “me, me, me, I wanna be a millionaire or a Hollywood Star.”
The reason early Christianity became such a potent and dangerous movement against the Roman State was because its main tenet was the belief in the solidarity of all peoples as being the children of God [sic] and as such necessitating the emancipation of all slaves and women from sub human status. Despite vicious vehement persecution by the State this movement spread like wildfire as most subjects of the Roman Empire were slaves. Christianity was accepted as the State religion of Rome only after the church Fathers [sic] eschewed its original doctrine of emancipation of slaves and universal suffrage when the Roman Church became a State unto its own and disavowed the core teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. The same thing happened with Islam as it too spread very rapidly and for the same reasons only finally to be co-opted by the Caliphates. There was nothing of personal salvation in these early religious movements. They were nothing other than liberation movements dedicated to the emancipation of all peoples.
States at war with their own populations are constantly at war with each other as well, whipping up terror and hysteria against perennial internal as well as external enemies where the bloodletting is unleashed in earnest. This goes hand in hand with all the patriotic and nationalistic bleating of the citizenry sheep at the slaughter.
Authoritarian elites, whether religious or secular, whether capitalist or communist liberal or conservative, all operate on the basis of divide and conquer, all operate within a competitive framework; all operate on the premise of the acquisition and monopolization of power and resources. Ninety nine percent of the wealth of the planet is in the hands of a handful of special interests. These are the alpha carnivores at the top of the pyramid. The rest of us are left to cannibalize ourselves to survive or live off the crumbs they throw our way. They call this “the trickle down effect.” We have been brainwashed into believing that this is human nature. This brainwashing has gone on for millennia and it started with the idea of God, the all powerful carnivore who devours his own children. This brainwashing has been bred into us and forms the very fabric of our consciousness…something very hard to recognize let alone yank out by the roots.
As this trend has been going on for a very long time and as we all individually and collectively are born and bred in this madness, it is clear that it will take generations and generations of de-programming for us to envision life in a different way.
The trend around the world today is encapsulated in two words, globalization and privatization. After the last World War with all the suffering it entailed there was a period of nation building and infrastructure expenditure that attempted to ameliorate living conditions for the masses who had suffered the brunt of a brutal war. We saw the implementation of universal health care, education and public works projects, publicly owned utilities with subsidized costs for everything from electricity and heating to housing etc…all that is history now, as they say. The main reasons given are expanding populations and shrinking resources; excuses which are patently false for the simple reason that if it wasn’t for the abysmal greed of the few there would be enough for all. As we moved from a world of empires and colonialism to the nation State, we now find ourselves in the globalized village, with instant travel and communication as the private domain of hegemonic capitalist elites. Private ownership is now elevated to a new stratospheric status commensurate with the gods. It is the new world order of shareholder interests who laugh at and disparage community because their assets and tentacles are sucking the blood from every corner of the planet. National governments however well intentioned can do nothing to reign in the rampant greed of the trans-nationals because as soon as they make a squeak they are threatened with: “well we’ll just have to go somewhere else.”Protectionism will render them apoplectic. Of course if it was a level playing field, it would be a different story. We all know the dirty tricks the U.S. and the European Union play when it comes to wringing concessions from the rest of the world for the privilege of trading with them. The most recent obscenity is the EU forcing India to reign in its generic drug producers of affordable anti AIDS drugs for unspecified returns and the Indians being very obliging to the European Union. At least under the nation State the Capitalists had to provide a semblance of interest to the communities that serviced them…now under globalization they are under no compunction whatsoever. National governments are now forced to put the squeeze on their subjects who take it out on each other. We have to see how this plays out…but the writing is on the wall.
With the pyramid as the model, most societies world wide (with the exception of a very few enlightened co-operative based tribal peoples) operate on this hierarchical principle of the one ruler at the top. It is these very same alpha carnivores at the top of the pyramid that spawned the idea of the One God. They proclaimed themselves God incarnate. Man was not made in the image of God, but certainly God was manufactured in the image of Man. The alpha carnivores at the top, a facsimile of the godhead and the rest of us below with our own internalized despotism towards one another manifesting through such aberrations as sexism, where women are seen as inferior chattel; racism and xenophobia, with its hierarchy of the whiter the better syndrome; classism, where some are seen as inherently superior such as the caste system and the so called aristocracies and in education where certain types of knowledge are de rigueur such as being literate, and where all other forms of knowledge, such as oral traditions are disparaged and ridiculed.
All these dictates of differentiation are there for one purpose and one purpose only, for us to exploit each other with, and more importantly to rationalize the exploitation. Let us not forget the sectarian insanities that have inundated the planet in blood for centuries. All these differences, instead of arousing feelings of awe at the diversity and richness of the expressions of life have instead become points of contention precisely because these differences have been exploited by those who through demagoguery find it convenient to advance their agendas of greed for power and wealth by whipping up hysteria against the “other.”
The usurpation of power, its consolidation and appropriation for a select minority at the expense of the majority is the historical basis of government as we know it. The very nature of government demands that it monopolize all essential power to guarantee its domination. The rational is: I will protect you from the predators, but you have to pay me for your protection. This is the rational that has divided the world into two camps, predators and prey. In nature there is a fine balance between these two worlds. Predators in nature obey their basic instincts for survival and do not take more than their immediate need. They know that if they exterminate their prey, they will starve in turn. Human predators know no such boundaries. The reason this happens is that not only does the human animal prey on all other creatures and the environment, but on its own species as well (specially its own species). This is the reason that the human animal is the only mammal that has exterminated and wages war on members of its own kind. The enablers, mercenaries and willing slaves of the predator classes are from the classes preyed upon, that have been de-humanized. The recruitment of police, soldiers and security come from these de-humanized dregs of humanity. Their psychological profiles have to show sociopathic and psychotic tendencies. It is not the bad apple rotting the basket. The basket is rotten and anything that goes in it is very quickly “rendered” and “assimilated.” These aggressive homicidal maniacs have to be dressed up in all the frippery, uniforms, and badges possible to become objects of fear and veneration. They all pack a gun and can murder us with impunity.
A good example is someone like Hitler and his ilk throughout the millennia. Hitler did not appear out of thin air, he was a product of his times, the lightning rod of the resentment of a people that had been beaten in a war and left to rot in the ruins of the aftermath of WW1 and it took the combined effort of the rest of the world to counter the Germans in a bloodbath that decimated more than fifty million people through a second world war, ushering in our new world order of nuclear proliferation. Did the German people have a choice about their choice of leader in the person of Fuehrer? I would venture they had as much choice as the American people had when they sent their armies to Viet Nam, or for that matter any empire which sought to expand its dominion come hell or high water. This kind of blood feuding goes on all the time, everywhere on the planet and its original causes are always greed, violence and aggression.
Today we see the same hysteria being whipped up between the West with its stranglehold on the bulk of the wealth of the planet and the rest of the world with the red herring of Communist China looming on the horizon as a potential threat to Western hegemony, the ex Soviet Union with its arsenal of nuclear weaponry on par in deadliness with its Western counterpart, and radical Islam as the patsy through so-called terrorism and of course we all know at the end of the day that when push comes to shove it will all end in another bloodbath. The consequences this time however are much more ominous since the weapons of choice are that much more deadly and catastrophic.
Perhaps the most important issue facing us is the severe and irreversible damage and degradation we have perpetrated against our environment and the ecosystem to the point where we stand on the brink of annihilation as a species if not of Life itself, atomic weapons notwithstanding.
Nature is frightening to the authoritarian mind because Nature cannot be controlled. In the face of nature we humans recognise how puny and insignificant we are. All we have to do is look up at the starry sky, at the Milky Way when we can see it through the fog of our pollution and we realise that we are but merely a speck of dust in the Universe.
This feeling can either be liberating or terrifying. All unscrupulous attempts to control Nature arise and have their roots from this feeling of terror and fear because of our inability to control Nature. It is not because of the nonsense of a seemingly hostile environment. If nature were hostile to life, there would be no life to begin with. Some of us are not fearful but ecstatic with wonderment and we seek Atonement with nature. The degenerate identify Nature with chaos, as something that needs to be controlled, as something lifeless, as dead matter to be exploited. Nature is identified with the Devil, with Eve, the evil woman, who needs to be controlled by man, by God. This is all crap and nonsense and is the primal reason why we are on the threshold of extinction. We are not separate from Nature; on the contrary we are a part of Nature. We are animals walking on two legs. We are her creatures. Instead of destroying Nature by exploiting and trying to control her, we should worship her, if we are to worship anything.
Order, as an organizing principle conducive to life has nothing to do with authority or control. God did not command and create the Universe in seven days despite what the inbred religious zealots blather about simply because there is no such thing as God and even if there was, He, [sic] would either have to be a tyrant or an impotent or both. There is a prevailing erroneous and sinister idea that the notions of goodness and order somehow resulted from our belief in God. That without a God with a big stick, we would be running around bashing each other and the only thing stopping us is the fear of almighty God. This is perversity itself. This pre-supposes that we don’t have a shred of feeling for one another. It is given the lie even by the most savage and deadly creatures (to our minds) who tenderly care for their young. This phenomenon which is universal is the quintessential argument in favour of Nature as primarily a beneficent force dedicated to the perpetuation of Life wherein even the forces of entropy, death and decay are harnessed to the propagation of Life…no God of Hell and thunderation here, folks.
Even if there was such a thing as a grand design, it would have to be considered as a work in progress with the entirety or anthropos participating in its evolution. The knowledge, experience and information of the All embedded in the DNA or genetic code constituting the foundation of all Life. This would be Nature at work. Through billions of years of evolution nature has created an environment in which life is possible. From amoeba, bacteria, viruses, protozoa to single and multi-celled creatures to homo- sapiens, to the elements, the planets, solar systems, galaxies and universes, Nature has organized and orchestrated this dance of life and death. The staggering multiplicity, variety, intricacy, and plurality of information inherent in the genetic code would have to preclude any authority or any dominating or monopolizing factor. In fact authority or the dominance or monopoly or control of any kind would have to constitute a death or cessation of the free flow of information in the never ending struggle for Life to sustain itself throughout the Cosmos.
It is criminally preposterous for anyone for example to patent any sequence in the genetic code and yet there are so called scientists who are trying to do precisely that. They alter the genetic code to make crops and animals sterile so as to force us to buy their genetically modified garbage year in and out. These are the monsters who feed animal products to herbivores like cattle, spreading plagues like the mad cow disease. These trans-national pharmaceutal/petroleum refiners/chemical producers etc. (who are all incestuously connected) steal seeds from indigenous populations and forested green habitats to patent, genetically modify and store them for resale. This robbery goes on now in the name of science and philanthropy. They forcibly evict millions of the poorest farmers and tribals from their lands to push their poisonous “green” revolution…run by machines and contaminated with the worst possible herbicides, pesticides and poisonous petroleum based fertilizers spreading infertility and disease among the poorest people in the world. They turn these salt of the earth into the very billions of homeless who live in the shantytowns of the new urban hellholes around the planet. They call this progress and feeding the planet. Their poison also contaminates all the processed food of the unmentionable first worlders.
Scum is a genus of mould that grows in anaerobic environments. It always stinks to high heaven and some is highly toxic. It has its place in the grand arena of nature, but we wouldn’t want for it to take over our living environment so we keep it in check. We should think of these pseudo scientists, multi nationals and the governments and states in the same vein. They should be tried, prosecuted and punished for crimes against humanity and the ecosystem.
A great deal of fuss is made of certain aspects of evolutionary theory wherein the world is divided into predator and prey. According to authoritarian rhetoric all interactions from the single cell to homo-sapiens is imprinted with this predator and prey, master and slave mechanism. Violent greedy authoritarians pay very little attention to other forms of interaction and relationships between living organisms from symbiosis, to inter, intra and extra species co-operation for mutual sustenance and benefit. Nature is an incredibly intricate complex of interactions and exchanges. From birth to death and renewal, it is through phenomena such as the nitrogen cycle and a myriad other forms of interaction and co-operation that Nature sustains and propagates Life. This master and slave, predator and prey rhetoric should be exposed for the nonsense that it is.
The sharing and equitable distribution of power and knowledge for the benefit of all is through responsibility in recognition of the interdependence of all and not in authority and control, which is solely interested in monopolizing power and wealth for the benefit of an elite few.
Responsibility is not coerced but freely given (just as parents willingly sacrifice their lives for the welfare of their offspring).
It is co-operation and not competition that is the organizing principle in nature. We inhabit a rich and fruitful planet with more than enough to go around. We are all creatures of Nature.
Competition breeds narcissism, a harbinger of authoritarianism. True and meaningful power and knowledge is distributed horizontally and not vertically precisely because it is an organizing principle for the benefit of all without exception. We all inhabit the same planet, we are all born, we all live and we all die.
As anarchists, how do we resist and fight oppression? How do we fight the vicious authoritarian greedy tyrants?
Any open resistance to the State, especially passive, non aggressive open resistance is crushed, undermined through violence and intimidation and ridiculed through the mainstream media controlled by the ruling interests. Peaceful demonstrations and organization of any sort to influence the dictates of the State (within the system) face the armed thugs of the State. If you want to get your head bashed in, be my guest. On the other hand, underground resistance to the State is more feared by the Capitalist and Socialist authoritarian elites than any apparent visible enemy.
The answer then lies in subversion. We must operate under the radar. We can resist and many do so already through the underground economy. Provide as little information about one’s activities as possible. Work and exchange goods and services without paying any taxes…under the radar…because we know that the bulk of our taxed earnings fills the pockets of the criminal ruling elites who in turn, use it to oppress us. This is especially true of jurisdictions where there is virtually no social safety net. Where there is no universal healthcare, or education or housing. On the other hand there are places where even though we are taxed we see the benefits of our industry reflected in a modicum working social safety net, where the wealth is shared more equitably and very few fall between the cracks. There are benign regimes but they are under increasing pressure to conform to the savage capitalist way of doing things. In Japan, the difference in wages between the average worker and company CEO’s is ten times. In the U.S. it is a thousand times.
Anarchists acknowledge that the concept of a “true democracy” is a very dilute form of anarchism. This means that in certain jurisdictions, derogatorily called welfare states, the interests and basic needs of the people are somewhat represented and those in power act on behalf of the interests of the people who vote them into office. Clearly this trend is not taking place today in so-called representative democracies. The voices on the right and the capitalists behind the scenes calling for cutting in government expenditures and less taxation want their governments to gut social expenditures, to spend more money on so-called security, police and the military at the expense of any other needs. The only industry they applaud is the military industrial complex where they stand to gain and profit from government contracts. The only type of government they want is one which is merely a tool of their voracious interests. All other needs are dealt with under the slogan of “user pays.” In other words this so-called democracy is only for those who have the money, and the rest of us can go hang. Just like the good old Greek states where the only citizens were men of a certain class, race and culture, and the rest of the people were slaves including all the women. Some democracy!
While we as anarchists call for subversion, it is precisely for the opposite reasons from what the right wing libertarian boneheads are clamouring for. We don’t want our money and our intelligence to go towards a draconian fascist, authoritarian police and military dictatorship. We want our capital to go towards things like child care, a guaranteed living income, viable housing for all and not just condos for the rich, public ownership of all energy supplies, stopping the trend to privatization, universal free healthcare, universal free education to post secondary levels, free transportation, and dismantling of the military industrial culture that is the rotten core of modern post industrial society. When people ask who will pay for all this, we will say make the rich pay…if not, we will eat them! [sic]...if they say, they will just move their capital somewhere else…what if there is nowhere for them to go to? For example there is a lot of belly aching that all manufacturing jobs have gone to China and gutted the North American economy. Wallmart alone has more than 10,000 factories operating in China making all the products they sell in N. America with the blessing of successive U.S. administrations. Yet the same people who complain about this, shop at Wallmart. These are the very same who belong to national rifle associations and want to go about armed to the teeth, the same people who for all their vitriol about government interference in our lives want government to control women’s bodies regarding abortion issues, the same people who advocate: user pay, the same people who advocate capital punishment, building more jails and relying on military superiority to set the agenda for the rest of the world. These are the bullies of the world. They don’t believe in any level playing fields. For them “might is right.”This is the rational for the “arms race.” “If I don’t do it, the other guy will.” As the saying goes, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You’ve got to share because eating the whole cake by yourself will make you the sick piece of shit that you are. Sharing does not mean living with a gun to the head. Sooner or later it is going to go off. They say, sure, but I am going to make sure it’s your head and not mine…an atomic bomb doesn’t distinguish borders…when the bombs go and once they go there is no stopping them, the planet will be choked in radioactive dust that will usher in an ice age overnight…a radioactive ice age where the survivors will envy the rats and cockroaches. This will be the result of the vaunted technological military superiority that the bullies rely on. This is the criminally insane attitude that is terrorizing and holding the world hostage.
For our self protection do NOT martyr ourselves for nothing. Do not provide an open target. They will single us out and force us to recant to our peril.
Remember that the authoritarian State through its agents infiltrates ALL social and community organizations. When a particular group starts posing a threat however benign the agents of the State act as provocateurs and instigate actions that endanger the lives and livelihoods of members of these groups who are trying to do something worthwhile.
The State has extensive dossiers of all pertinent personal information including medical files, financial info etc. on just about anybody who pops up on their radar screens as a potential adversary to their interests. At their fingertips they have dossiers on ALL of us whether we present a threat to them or not.
Decline your ballot with an expletive. Most people don’t vote anyway and of course they rig it so as to make it look like some of us do. In some places they make it illegal not to vote. So decline the ballot.
If it ever comes to a question of organizing and decision making, the most important thing to remember is CONSENSUS. If there is no consensus, put it off for another day, another year, decade…till there is all around agreement. Nothing is so important that some should be excluded from decisions that would impact their lives.
All organizing and movement building should be a clandestine affair. For our safety we cannot afford to do anything in the open unless we wish to martyr ourselves.
As we refuse to be docile obedient slaves to the State, the State would like nothing better than for us to openly declare ourselves and our intentions, than to rebel with force and violence of arms. But we would be playing right into the hands because the State is already armed to the teeth and the violence it would require for us to topple it with would turn us into something worse than it. The State has become progressively more violent and brutal to the point where it is capable of annihilating all life. The only way to fight the State is to subvert it. There are a million ways to subvert the State. I have mentioned a couple of obvious ones, but it would be counterproductive to let the enemy on to our tactics. I exhort anarchists to come up with the myriad ways in which to subvert the power of the authoritarian State without exposing ourselves to unnecessary danger.
One of the favourite tactics of an authoritarian oppressive State is to squeeze the opposition till the breaking point so as to force them to react aggressively. If you push someone to the point where they feel they have nothing left to lose, if you corner them and leave them no options but to fight back for their lives, they will…and beware when they do. Even a pacific animal when cornered can fight off a larger, more vicious predator. Anarchists, regardless of the propaganda levelled against them will only resort to violence as a last desperate measure. Simply put, violence is the monopoly of the State. Imagine a world in which no one is tempted to become a soldier or policemen.
As mentioned before, the state of the world today has been in the making for at least three millennia. It will take a long time to undo all the damage that has been done and is still being done. There never was a golden age and probably never will be. We cannot change things overnight, and whatever changes come about can only be incremental; but we can keep our eyes and hearts open, we must always question, we must never give up, we need never be complicit to the horror, we can always resist to keep hope alive for ourselves, our children, for the world around us, for life itself.
Finally, always remember that the ENEMY IS GREED AND COWARDLY VIOLENCE.
