seriously, i never added this before? this item was the first bit of my writing re-published in the anarchist press, and is one of the few things i’ve written that is included in anarchist archives online. well, here it is (again):
In his book Temporary Autonomous Zone, Hakim Bey suggests that we not worry about changing the world, but instead take charge of our own lives whenever possible. He reminds us that, even though such insurrections as the ones in Paris 1871 and during the Spanish Civil War were ultimately crushed militarily, they at least achieved a period of autonomy for a portion of their lives, which is more than many of us can say.
One recurring argument that comes up with Anarchists I discussed TAZ with regards the word ‘temporary’. “I’m not so sure I agree with his flippant attitude towards permanence,” wrote South Dakota prisoner Phil Smith. “I am interested in changing the world to the extent possible, and it seems that Bey is willing to accept these temporary autonomous zones flickering in and out of existence while capitalism abides. Fuck that! I want more!”
Indeed, we all want more, but the point is that we are nowhere near the point that we can overthrow capitalism. Should that prevent us from creating oases of liberation whenever and wherever possible? Certainly not!
To put things in another perspective, think of time in a geological sense. Ten thousand years is merely a bat of an eye when discussing epochs of geological history. Ten thousand years ago, much of the Americas was under immense sheets of ice or was the floor of shallow oceans. Of course, these were only temporary conditions which have changed radically since.
In a historical timeframe, human beings have only been recording their doings for five thousand years. Capitalism has only been around a minute fraction of that time, and it will eventually disappear, just as the era of Assyrian or Babylonian empires passed.
In the meanwhile, why not ditch the system now and again to make something different?
Though I initially shared Phil’s sentiments about the term ‘temporary’, now I’ve come to understand that nothing is permanent anyway, certainly not on this planet. However, I also want more than an afternoon of liberation or a few months in a squat. I have a fascination about nomadism that led me to scheming about Travelling Autonomous Zones.
Perhaps the greatest example of a Travelling Autonomous Zone would be an ocean-going one. A sixty-foot long yacht could easily contain a commune of twelve people. The ship could spend most of its time in international waters, beyond the laws and borders of most nations. The opportunities for organizational mayhem are incredible in the open sea: pirate radio, clandestine landings, disrupting whaling and other mammalian massacres by commercial fishers, not to mention ferrying outlaw activists to places of relative safety. The only times the ship would have to come into contact with nations would be to stock up on supplies (fresh water, food, medicine, etc.), and the necessity of such contact could be reduced by a resourceful crew. In times of bad weather a harbor would be a desirable place to be.
On land, a bus or small caravan of vehicles could transport TAZ from one area of liberation to another as time and necessity dictate. The members could transport materials from region to region (things like ‘zines and other literature, clothing, small trade items, etc.).
This would be an extremely valuable resource for the anarchist community, as it might lend itself to more secure distribution (though somewhat slower) than the U.S. mail. Also, it seems that nomadic bands are more naturally resistant to hierarchy than stationary communities. Several such rolling communities could expand for events such as national or regional gatherings, and would also create propaganda merely by passing through rural areas that have little experience beyond their own communities.
Of course, this visibility would also be a danger, as it might attract the attention of unwanted, watchful eyes. Still, it would be better to travel in numbers than to do it alone.
In areas where there is not a strong squatting movement, the squats could move from one place to another as their presence became more noticeable than is comfortable for the squatters. By moving from one campsite to the next, anarcho-campers would be difficult to keep up with, even in the anarchist community. These problems are easily overcome by using available technology, such as radios or cellular phones.
All in all, ‘temporary’ or ‘traveling’ autonomous zones can easily be created by people with the will to do them. In this way, a clear demonstration about how non-state communities could function would do more to educate people about mutual aid and cooperation than almost any other vehicle for the promotion of anarchist ideas. It’s one thing to think/talk/ write about your beliefs, but it is much more meaningful to actually enact them!
Let’s get busy, ya’ll!
“Travelling Autonomous Zone” originally appeared in Imminent Strike. Also published in “Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed” #36 — Spring ’93.
i likely shot my mouth off a bit too much. like i care.
but seriously, i’m feeling quite smug about this. like – FINALLY!
they say they will not reactivate it unless i give them my phone number, but they can go fuck themselves! like i really, REALLY need a twitter account.
if i start an account on mastadon or somesuch place, i’ll let y’all know.
When asked what he thought about Western civilization, Mohandas Gandhi replied “I think it would be a good idea.”
Western civilization is generally thought to be that of Europe and the British Empire. This is a fallacy which historians and other people of learning have perpetuated for many generations.
Europe once had a thriving civilization. There is evidence of sea-faring trade systems which transported goods from around the world. There is also abundant evidence of building techniques which created structures all but impossible to replicate with 21st century technology. Yet all that remains of this early European civilization is the ruins left behind. What happened? Why did it fail so completely that European people do not retain any knowledge of it?
Invaders from Southwest Asia (Asia Minor, the Middle East) methodically and thoroughly obliterated it, and replaced it with their own: a highly authoritarian, highly patriarchal civilization of plunder and slaughter.
For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church persecuted people of knowledge. Books not written by the hands of trusted clerics were banned. Book burnings were common spectacles, and anyone with knowledge of healing, or who was literate, or who did not willfully silence themselves or put themselves into the service of Patriarchal authorities was burned alive or tortured to death, and their bodies put on display to terrify the general public into obedience.
This is the genesis of what is today called Western “civilization,” which produced a society that values ruthlessness over compassion, and ignorant servitude to brutal, heartless institutions over knowledge of, and harmony with, the world as it exists.
Plunder and slaughter are rewarded with wealth and power. Smarmy-mouthed imbeciles are elevated to positions of leadership. People of learning are tasked with developing technologies and techniques to further control or destroy anything which has lasting value to life on this planet, and to destroy any people standing in the way of this destruction.
The West’s current incarnation as Industrial Capitalism poses a severe and unprecedented threat to the health and wellbeing of the living planet in general and the human species in particular.
The very basis of this system is the so-called need for permanent “economic growth”, involving a theoretically endless increase in the exploitation of people and nature that, logically, can only end in disaster.
This system justifies and defends itself by means of a mesh of oppressive constructs such as “property”, “law” and “nation”, which today largely go unchallenged, even by critics of capitalism’s worse excesses.
General acceptance of these constructs serves to camouflage and legitimize the violence used by the system to impose its control. It thereby helps to criminalize any resistance to this oppressive violence.
In the Mexican revolution of the early part of the 20th century, the Zapatistas had a slogan: “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
In the West, the pervasive attitude is currently one of ignorance, fear, and slothful privilege, wherein the suffering caused by Western institutions in far-off lands is not of consequence to the people who are causing it through an unquenchable lust for cheap consumer goods.
Few of the beneficiaries are even aware it is happening, and most wouldn’t care if they knew. If told that wireless technology is causing genocide in central Africa, most Western consumers would likely reply “I like my cell phone.” Or their X-box, or their internet-connected refrigerator.
Western consumers have decided that it is – indeed! – much better to live in ignorance and servitude to corporatized, military police states, and to hell with the consequences, rather than do anything to stop campaigns of genocide beyond their field of vision. The products of privilege produced in the process are precious to them, not human lives, or a living planet.
If the society produced in Europe through centuries of bloody violence and subsequently unleashed to ravage the entire planet can be thought of as “civilization,” an intelligent human being can only conclude that this civilization is something which must be eradicated so thoroughly as to never again be obtainable.
If this does not happen, and soon, our planet will become uninhabitable, and life as we know it no longer possible. Something new will evolve in the toxic, ruined wastelands the West creates everywhere. It will not likely be compatible with living things that have been predominant for the past few million years.
To accept the domination of the world by the West as the result of historic “Progress” is to validate genocide against indigenous Peoples.
To refer to this centuries-long, ongoing process of extermination as “progress” is racist. It is the fundamental foundation of White Supremacy. Acceptance of this ideology discards the notion that human beings belong to the Earth and must dwell here with respect, and to live in harmony with the bounty available in the places we dwell. To do so, the life and life-giving aspects of the land must not be over-exploited or destroyed in the process of resource extraction.
This is most evident in the fact that every nation-state where indigenous Peoples still retain traditions and knowledge of how to dwell in harmony with the Earth and the abundance which it provides are still being exterminated today. This despite the many international laws designed to “protect” indigenous Peoples from settler violence, and to protect the Earth.
To live within the abundance the Earth has to offer, and not fuck it up so badly that future generations will not inherit it, requires something the West has no regard for: wisdom.
The idea of a humanity living largely in harmony with nature, in communities founded on mutual aid and co-operation, is not an idle daydream but a real possibility (a possibility that has been realized numerous times, across the world, by people who consider themselves to belong to the places where they dwell).
The industrial capitalist system depends for its survival on a complex web of often-unconscious personal attitudes which normalize and facilitate adaptation to its unhealthy structures of domination and exploitation – examples of these attitudes being sexism, racism, nationalism and the division of human beings into so-called social classes.
In view of all this, it is clear that no mere reform of this system, leaving intact the underlying basis, constructs and attitudes of the industrial capitalist system, will achieve the liberation we desire. A complete destruction, or dismantling, of the entire industrial capitalist system is therefore necessary.
Since no system of privilege and power destroys or dismantles itself voluntarily, a degree of confrontation will inevitably be involved in its removal.
It is important to remember, however, that this confrontation it not an end itself but merely a means to an end.
It is also important to remember that our desire for the destruction of the current system is not nihilistic in motivation, but is born of a yearning for another way of living.
This possible way of living has been denied us not only by the physical violence of the system, which has uprooted us from the soil, imprisoned and isolated us in its machineries of exploitation, but by its psychological violence.
This psychological violence involves the destruction of human dignity and freedom by a process of separation and disempowerment.
Human beings are taught that they are apart from the natural world, which is something to be feared, mastered or exploited. Individuals are further taught that they are apart from all other individuals and that there is no such thing as community and therefore no possibility of societies based on mutual aid and co-operation.
Disempowerment is amplified by the use of constructs of authority, whether in the form of a god, a king or a state and the idea of obtainable wealth for all. People are indoctrinated to believe that their lives depend on their obedience to these authoritarian ideals, that the authorities have everyone’s best interests at heart and that anyone who challenges the legitimacy of these ideals is therefore a threat to all, rather than to the authorities in question.
The first step in overcoming the power of these systems is to reverse the disempowerment and separation which disables any meaningful resistance.
A sense of belonging to community, to nature and to the cosmos was for many thousands of years the bedrock of human psychology and it still survives outside the concrete confines of modern industrial dogma.
In seeking a solid basis for resistance to industrial capitalism, we could look to indigenous cultures for inspiration, as well as to metaphysical currents and heresies that have kept this alternative vision flowing under the surface of Western society, to eco-feminist and deep green philosophy, and to anticapitalist romanticism.
At the heart of all these traditions is the rejection of external divinity or authority in favour of a self-empowerment which begins from within each individual to embrace a holistic sense of belonging to the social organism, the planetary organism and the cosmos.
This deep empowerment and connection combines perfectly with a radical rejection of all the constructs of power mentioned above – from the lies of “law” and “state” to the mental shackles imposed by patriarchal and racist assumptions.
It would strengthen our collective capacity to conduct a pro-active battle against the system and its physical and psychological infrastructures.
Furthermore, we welcome practical initiatives that reject continued existence within the toxicity of the industrial capitalist system in favour of the development of autonomous communities close to the land and informed by practices such as permaculture and simple living.
Our subsequent resistance to the system’s inevitable attempts to bring them back under its control would thus be firmly based on the defence of another way of living, on the defence of real space and real land, rather than on merely symbolic confrontation.
Justice would clearly be seen to be on our side and the resonance of our struggle would attract increasing numbers of people. If they, in turn, launched similar projects with the same underlying sense of empowerment, the system would be unable to cope and the cracks in its supremacy would start to spread.
It is not important that everyone in active resistance to the domination of the West and its civilization of mass destruction be in agreement in their critiques, in their approach to destroying the power Western institutions have over our lives, or in their end goals.
What is important is that the resistance dismantles the systems of oppression and domination used to keep us in servitude to them.
We have no crystal balls or other tools and methods to foresee the future. We do not know which tactics and methods will work best in which places. Therefore, a multitude of approaches will produce a multitude of results, some more effective, some less. The important aspect is that resistance is what we do with our lives, rather than replicating the domination of ourselves and our world through our daily activities: daily activities which are in place to keep us within the parameters set by oppressive institutions of wealth and power.
There will be vast campaigns of propaganda by the privileged elite. They own the mass media. They are over-represented on social media. Our families, friends, lovers, neighbors will often take the path of least resistance in order to live comfortably within the parameters set by the systems of wealth and privilege currently in power. In order to resist this, we must create a culture of resistance.
A culture of resistance would include feasts, dances, and celebrations, as well as on-going campaigns of counter-propaganda and sustained attacks against the institutions of privilege, power, and wealth.
Establishing a culture based on values in direct conflict with those of the West will take time, and will need to be created both underground and in plain sight. Guerrilla forces in past movements were invisible to the federal or colonial forces fighting them. In many instances, it took decades for them to realize that the guerrillas were everywhere, and damn near everyone.
Much of the structures needed to create such a movement in the West are already in place, but need to be pushed into more radical, more confrontational directions.
A culture of sharing should be the common denominator of all resistance movements. Starving people do not have the strength to fight.
We must expend great effort to see to the well-being of our comrades. Few people want to be either martyrs or live monastic lives of self-denial. In order to encourage people to overcome their ingrained alienation from each other and the world we inhabit, we need to embrace one another with new-found passion. We must revel in one another’s joy, and comfort those who are troubled.
The psychological and emotional damage done to most of us by the institutions of power and domination must be healed. Many healing methods will be required, and some amount of patience as well.
The earth has not been damaged beyond repair. We can help it to heal as well. Humans are clever and adaptable beings. Collectively, we can accomplish any task we set for ourselves.
It may take several generations for us to overcome the current systems of privilege, power, and domination afflicting us and destroying our homeworld. It took 1000 years for the systems of oppression to develop and spread throughout the world like a malignant cancer.
We can act to surgically remove the cancer and develop healthier lifestyles to make sure it doesn’t recur.
There is no reason to think that this has not happened before in the long history of human beings. Some indigenous peoples retain stories of such times in their oral histories. We should listen to them.
There is nothing to be gained by continuing to devote our lives to obtaining money through subservience to wealth and power.
The earth will survive and life will continue to evolve, with us or without us. Our mother earth is willing to embrace us, and teach us all we need to know in order to live here with love and respect for the life she provides.
It is up to us to return to her guidance and reciprocate her love.
This collaborative article was written with the desire of sparking a wider conversation. Please feel free to post comments here or via winteroak@greenmail.net
I’ve seen way too many discussions of shenanigans by the FBI in the 1960s and ’70s. Whether they intend to or not, the authors of these articles are implying that these tactics are old relics of a by-gone era. Which is certainly not true.
While methods and tactics used in the quashing of dissent may have evolved over time, much of the core principles remain unchanged. The nation’s intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies continue to be the executive office’s primary tool to discourage opposition to its policies through intimidation and legal harassment. From its beginning as the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Investigation until the present, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been directed by Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump to spy on peace activists, anti-war organizations, environmentalists, labor unions, and anyone else who might get in the way of US foreign and domestic policies, and interfere with corporate activity and earnings.
Since before it’s formal inception, the FBI has served as the US government’s political police and have engaged in campaigns of low-intensity, counter-insurgent warfare against dissidents, often with the help of irregular forces – even operatives of foreign governments – and the backing of civilian financiers and their front organizations.
In addition, the FBI maintains a network of informants. Senate investigatory committees have previously found the number of paid informants had gone from roughly 1,500 in 1975, to 2,800 in 1980, to over 6,000 in 1986. A budget request presented in 2008 asked for $12.7 million to fund its informant network.
Today, years into an era of eroded civil and human rights in the name of a “war on terrorism,” it is even easier for the FBI and their allies in localized law enforcement to entrap unwitting citizens in fantasy plots they concoct, and convince juries that they have foiled a terrorist action. Unlike the 1970s, when many people understood that the government and police were not on their side, many people now seem to be incapable of seeing through such entrapment schemes, and it is only judges who challenge their narrative. But only if they choose to. Many judges are, of course, just there to send people to prison, for any or no reason. Especially people who are not white.
The American Protective League
When the US entered World War 1, concerned citizens were afraid the government was not up to the task of ferreting out German spies and sympathizers, hidden everywhere in the civilian population. In order to assist the government, numerous vigilante groups were financed by the likes of Henry Fricke, J.P. Morgan, J. D. Rockefeller, and numerous others who were certain to earn fortunes off the war effort.
Under numerous front organizations like the National Security League, the American Defense Society, and National Civic Federation, they produced fliers and posters promoting “100 percent Americanism.” Their recruits would publicly shame anyone who spoke out against the war – and often beat them – with no interference from the police. They would often confront people in the streets and force them to sign “Loyalty Oaths.”
A group of war profiteers from Chicago foresaw America’s forthcoming involvement in the conflict and started the American Protective League, which quickly absorbed similar groups around the country and grew at such a rate that just months after the US entered the war, they were able to provide 250,000 people to the BoI and US Department of War’s intelligence forces.
Their operatives opened people’s mail and illegally entered their homes to search for submissive literature and contraband. Many carried badges identifying themselves as “Secret Agents.”
In order to enforce compliance with draft registration laws, they would round up every male of age in entire neighborhoods and cities, then require them to provide proof of registration before releasing them. Often, family or friends would have to retrieve the documents, and men were held for days until such proof arrived.
In just one such roundup, 150,000 men were questioned in Chicago. They were taken from factories, public transit stations, public parks, saloons, baseball games, stores, and dragged out of vehicles. 20,000 were detained, pending proof of compliance. 1,400 were subsequently conscripted and released, while an unknown number went missing. Perhaps a few thousand. Over 10,000 German-Americans were detained during the war, as suspected traitors.
According to one APL spokesperson, Edward Hough, “It was fear that held our enemy population down. Fear and nothing else. It was the league’s silent and mysterious errand to pile up good reason for that fear” (emphasis from original quote).
Although their stated purpose was to enforce conscription laws and discover German sympathizers and spies, much of the APL’s activities centered around anarchists and syndicalists. The Espionage Act of April, 1917 criminalized “treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance to any law of the U.S., or the obstruction of recruiting or enlistment.”
The federal statutes carried penalties of up to $10,000 and 20 years in prison. By 1921, 35 states had passed “Criminal Anarchy” laws, defined as “the doctrine that organized government be overthrown by force or violence, or by assassination, or by unlawful means.”
Over 25,000 agents of the APL kept files on anarchists and their activities, much of it obtained by opening mail and breaking into organizer’s, agitators, publisher’s and activist’s homes. To further intimidate dissidents, they would maintain obvious, heavy-handed surveillance on their targets, and interrogate anyone who approached or spoke with the targeted individual. They would visit their targets at their workplaces, which could lead to people losing their jobs.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before…
Our Nation is undergoing an era of disruption and violence caused to a large extent by various individuals generally connected with the New Left. Some of these activists urge revolution in America and call for the defeat of the United States in Vietnam. They continually and falsely allege police brutality and do not hesitate to utilize unlawful acts to further their so-called causes. The New Left has on many occasions viciously and scurrilously attacked the Director and the Bureau in an attempt to hamper our investigation of it and to drive us off the college campuses. With this in mind, it is our recommendation that a new Counterintelligence Program be designed to neutralize the New Left and the Key Activists. “Subject: Counterintelligence Program Internal Security Disruption of the New Left.” FBI memo, May 9, 1968.
The US government was at war with Black nationalists, human rights groups, and churches in the 1960s. Just the suppression of the Black Panther Party resulted in over 2,500 deaths and more than 12,000 prison sentences. Some of these Panthers are still in prison.
In just three years – 1973-76 – the FBI and its allied henchmen were involved in the deaths of at least 70 Native American activists, and violent attacks against another 300 in the Pine Ridge and Rosebud communities.
In 1979, a “Death to the Klan” rally by the Communist Worker’s Party in Greensboro, NC, was attacked by Klansmen and members of the American Nazi Party. The attackers had been encouraged by FBI and Greensboro police infiltrators. They brought guns to the CWP event, fired on the attendees, killed 5 protesters, injured another 10, and a bystander.
I won’t go into detail about the role of “secret agents” and the FBI from the ’30s through the 70s. That ground has been well-covered over the years. I hope the above examples are enough to convince you of what the government is capable of doing, when it has a mandate from the Executive Office. Instead of retelling of these familiar shenanigans, I want to jump ahead to the 1980s, under the administration of Ronald Reagan.
“I have seen countless people hurt, jailed, even killed. What you’re up against when you take on the FBI, the CIA, the undercover informants who feed the governmental apparatus, is a self-selected group of people who have a messianic vision of themselves.” Chip Berlet, a political researcher who was involved in cases involving the FBI and the Chicago police in the 1980s.
Reagan was an old, hard-line anti-communist and shitty actor. As President and leader of the “Free” world, this Cold Warrior saw the Communist Menace lurking everywhere. When he intensified counter-insurgency efforts around the world, while cutting domestic spending and federal regulations at home, intense opposition arose in the population. This was, of course, all the proof the senile president – in the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease – needed that Communists were hiding around every corner, spewing anti-American sentiment to a gullible public.
As it had in the earlier parts of the century, the FBI carried out a campaign of intimidation, harassment, and disruption against anyone in opposition to any policy put forth by the Reagan administration.
Reagan’s resolve to crush any who opposed him was displayed when he fired over 11,000 members of the Air Traffic Controllers Union, who were on strike for shorter hours and better working conditions. The demented President gave the strikers until sundown to get out of town…excuse me…gave them 2 days to return to work, and when they refused, he fired them en masse. This was just his first action against dissidents. He later unleashed the FBI to go after his political opponents, even going so far as to investigate elected officials who traveled abroad – including those who visited NATO allied countries.
Just as it had during the WW1 era, the FBI visited the homes and workplaces of anti-war, peace and justice, anti-apartheid, and solidarity activists to confront them with accusations of treason and subversion. Their employers were informed of their political activities. Their friends, lovers, relatives, and neighbors were questioned, and sometimes recruited to report on the activists actions.
This heightened state of repression was intensified after a bomb went off in the US capitol building on November 7, 1983. Although the FBI knew who did the bombing, and why, it used the attack as justification of expanded activity, especially in co-ordinating with the CIA, State Department, and Department of Defense. Which, basically meant the US government was at war with its own citizens.
Again, civic organizations like the World Anti-Communist League, and various factions of the Ku Klux Klan and other White Supremacist groups were given material support and encouragement to intimidate, harass, and physically assault dissidents. Foreign agents of countries experiencing insurgencies at home where given free reign to spy on American activists, and attack people from their homelands who had come to the US to seek refuge. Hundreds of refugees from Central America were deported, and many of them ended up disappeared, dead, or imprisoned. Terrorist attacks against Cubans friendly to Castro’s Cuba were tolerated.
Conservative church leaders were recruited to deliver sermons against “ungodly” communism, media pundits were recruited to write anti-communist columns. William Casey, Reagan’s first director of the CIA, is famously quoted as having said “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
During Reagan’s reign, there was very little mention in the mass media about dissent against his policies, and when there was the occasional story, it was usually highly slanted to present the dissenters as deluded, if not outright agents of communist governments. This tight control over the media lasted throughout the Reagan/Bush era.
The media willingly repeated highly exaggerated claims by the Bush regime in order to justify a war in Kuwait. There was immediate opposition by the general population, which quickly grew into the largest anti-war movement in US history. The movement self-destructed through in-fighting, backstabbing, and gossip. Having experienced first-hand the shenanigans the FBI used while involved with Committee In Solidarity With the People of El Salvador in Dallas, Texas, in the 1980s, I can say with confidence that I saw similar tactics used to split the anti-Gulf War coalition in Austin, just a few years later. “Respectable” activists accused more militant protesters of being provocateurs. I was “outed” by some such activists because I chose to use a pseudonym in public. Two self-anointed leaders of the coalition revealed my and a comrade’s names, while others accused another comrade, who had been beaten and jailed for anti-apartheid protests a few years earlier, of being an undercover cop.
Throughout the Reagan/Bush era, people who tried to talk about their harassment were often ridiculed and called paranoid. They lost friends, and often times relatives would distance themselves from activists, which left the activists isolated and vulnerable. They lost jobs, their careers were ruined. Professional journalists were blackballed by the media and could only have their investigative work published in the dissident press, which meant little or no pay. Many activists and journalists became addicted to drugs or alcohol. Many committed suicide, often in shady circumstances.
During the Clinton years, it was possible for the government to mass murder people without much public outcry, as he demonstrated with his siege and extermination of the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas.
Again and again, no matter who was in office, the FBI kept up a campaign of harassment against dissenters. Yet, they seldom went after White Supremacist groups, who have carried out many of the most lethal terrorist attacks in the US.
This is likely because the irregular forces they regularly employ to target activists are often from fascist or racist organizations. After WW1, when much of the APL was absorbed into the newly-formed FBI, many of those left over joined the KKK.
All of this is relevant because these methods are all still used in the 21st century.
Combating property destruction by animal rights activists and environmentalists was identified by former FBI Director Robert Mueller in 2006 as one of the agency’s highest priorities. Despite the fact that not one person has been killed due to any of these activities.
But, since 9/12/01, more than 70 percent of the lethal attacks by terrorists in the US have been carried out by white supremacists or neo-nazi groups and individuals who hold sympathetic views. President Trump has gone so far as to direct the government to focus all of its counter-terrorist activities in America on Islamic extremists.
Under the Obama administrations, almost 100 percent of all so-called terrorist incidents were instigated by the FBI or other, local police agencies. This is particularly true of his administration’s record of entrapping Muslims in terrorist schemes.
The script in these cases follows a similar pattern. The FBI picks a target for recruitment into a terror plot. They use an informant or an undercover agent to contact the person, then begin the process of “radicalizing” the target into joining in on a plot to bomb something. Every person the targeted individual meets along the way – the instigator of the plot, the people providing explosives, even instructions on how to create and detonate the devices – are all FBI, police, or their lackeys. They will even come across with cash. Whatever it takes.
But, of course, when the appointed time for carrying out the action comes: “SURPRISE! You’re busted!”
Then, there are press conferences, where the FBI is praised to the heavens for stopping this horrible thing from happening. But, no matter how many times people – particularly defense attorneys – point out that the person involved was duped by the FBI to do something the targeted individuals were at times very unenthusiastic about, the media sensationalism steamrolls the truth of the matter, and the “terrorist” is sent off to prison.
“The problem with the cases we’re talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents,” says Martin Stolar, a lawyer who represented a man caught in a 2004 sting involving New York’s Herald Square subway station. “They’re creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror.”
Likewise, the government has been entrapping Anarchists involved in anti-war protests into “terror” plots. When it comes to snaring US citizens with their traps, the FBI uses undercover agents to insinuate themselves into a local scene, gain the locals’ trust, then start the plot a-rolling.
During G.W. Bush’s reign, an undercover agent seduced a forest defense activist into a long-term relationship, then encouraged and enabled him to form an underground cell to carry out bombings. She provided transportation, money, explosives, and isolated cabins in the mountains to build bombs. The cell considered her their leader. The cell was arrested, even though they never carried out any actions.
According to an FBI document entitled “Anarchist Extremist Overview,” Anarchists are “criminals seeking an ideology to justify their activities.” The document goes on to wail and moan about how Anarchists are devising new and more extreme weapons to pursue their criminal activity. Of course, they don’t mention that it is actually their own agents who are providing the materials and knowledge to make these weapons.
In a police raid on a Chicago house, 11 people were arrested. 2 of them were undercover FBI agents, who had shown up during Occupy Chicago and became part of the scene. After who’s-who got sorted out, it became known that law enforcement was working with a military and intelligence contractor with ties to the National Security Agency – Booz Hamilton (whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s former employer).
“Mo”and “Nadia,” undercover cops.
The fact that the government is outsourcing its repression of dissent is a harrowing turn of events. Though it does keep within the established practice of the FBI utilizing irregular forces, issues of accountability, oversight, mismanagement, and overly-zealous extremists are much more of a concern when secretive agencies – both public and private – are involved. In today’s current atmosphere of fake news, ass-kissing media, and lazy, celebrity-driven infotainment, if an actual terror attack were to happen, the truth about who was behind it might never be known, and intentionally covered-up in the interest of national security.
The legal harassment of Anarchists and Animal Liberation activists will force their comrades and supporters – who often eke out a subsistent life, near the bottom of the economy – to spend themselves into extreme poverty in order to defend themselves and their comrades in court. Having dozens, if not hundreds of comrades incarcerated can overwhelm an informal, voluntary collection of punks and activists, emotionally as well as financially.
It wasn’t only bullets and bludgeons that destroyed the Industrial Workers of the World. The Feds also tapped out their membership’s finances by forcing them to defend themselves in courts across the country. This left them blacklisted by employers and scarcely able to fend for themselves after the One Big Union was crushed, adrift and pauperized, just before the Great Depression.
And just to let us know what to expect in this new era of reality TVesque horrors, a church in Alabama has been authorized to form its own police forces.
This is in addition to the forces collected together by several regional Joint Task Forces of Terrorism, specially-created entities that co-ordinate municipal, county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to carry out joint actions. Many, if not most, of the Bush II’s operations described above were projects of such JTFTs. And these law enforcement agencies – especially at the federal level – are also hiring mercenary forces to help out, and have demonstrated their willingness to utilize irregular forces to do their “dirty work” when they really want to stir things up.
Fighting Back
To look back at the well-documented era of COINTELPRO as something from a long-ago time is to ignore the challenges we all face if we choose to fight against the Corporate States of America, with it’s new-found confidence in White Supremacy, vast military, mercenary, and police forces, and a weird, religious fervor to excuse everything it wants to force on an unwilling world. America has never stopped its low-intensity war against dissent, and it won’t. It can’t – those currently in power know very well that their continued rule relies on silencing those who speak out against their inhuman agenda.
US foreign policy has revived slavery in Africa, and many Americans truly believe that the ones responsible for this are wonderful, almost god-like people. Do you think they will so much as notice when dissenters are rounded up into detention centers? Or gunned down in the streets by the police? There was scarcely a word of protest against the APL during WW1, when the world was much more aware of class conflict. They appeared as if out of nowhere, in large numbers, and terrorized the public into silent compliance nationwide.
So far, American radicals have refused to learn from the contemporary revolutionaries around the world, who are actively creating the communities they want to see. In many instances, they are reviving older, indigenous cultures, and adapting them to accommodate current tech and social developments. This is the way to revolutionary change, and many of us trapped in the West have yet to undertake this task. Perhaps we consider ourselves too mired in capitalist muck to think we can escape from it.
We face difficult circumstances, and it’s about time we faced up to the facts. Protesting will not create the world we carry in our hearts and minds. Not matter how much we riot.
Certainly, circumstances vary from place to place, with different challenges to overcome, and we face an enemy who seems unstoppable. To many people before us, the divine authority of god-emperors was too terrifying to stand against. To many people before us, the authority and weapons of the king were not to be challenged. Those worlds do not exist anymore, and the only reason this one continues is because we continue to devote our energy to its perpetuation.
One of the greatest obstacles to overcome in the struggle against capitalism is the sense of dependency its methods of production have forced upon us. By forcing people to spend most of their time in productive, redundant, and unskilled labor, people must depend upon the specialized production of other workers to provide the food, clothing, shelter, and countless consumer gizmos that we’re trained to want.
Prior to the era of industrial enslavement, most households and families were considered functional or not by that household’s ability to be more-or-less self-sufficient. This has been true of societies from the time of nomadic bands through the ages of village communities. The dislocation of peasant populations by the various states during the (on-going) period of enclosure forced people into desperate poverty, into factory labour, and immigration to the newly-conquered colonies abroad. Both the rise of industrial capitalism and European conquest of the new world would not have been possible if not for the evisceration of peasant households. After all, why go abroad to seek one’s fortune, why buy shoddy, mass-produced dry goods, when people are able to make almost everything they need themselves, and everything they need is available at home?
Living, in the days prior to industrial enslavement, was what people did throughout the course of the day; preparing food and things that would be necessary for one’s comfort and survival in the future. This was often done under the supervision of a family member, and everyone would learn the basic skills they needed to provide for themselves. Now, however, people must make a living . We are coerced into making profits for corporations, and are also compelled to structure our lives around these labor activities. To make also means to force. Whereas life once flowed in gentle rhythms of light and dark, now we must jump according to the dictates of the clock, every moment of the day measured and portioned out according to some boss’s demands. Our society jumps according to the rhythms of the factory, the school, or some other institution upholding the state or capital.
Most people accept this unquestioningly. Most people are not only unwilling to take a critical glance at these imposed conditions of their lives, but are actually incapable of doing so. All the institutions of power and privilege serve this purpose of enforcing a feeling of helplessness upon the masses. Their master stroke is achieved by convincing people to embrace their dependency as empowerment. Even the most intelligent, capable people of modern societies have fallen into this trap. They can’t help it. They were trained to be self-repressing imbeciles since the moment of their birth.
The nuclear family – incubator for imbecility
All of us are born as free beings in a thriving, dynamic world of abundance. The totality of nature’s plentiful banquet is ours for the taking, for sharing, for cherishing. This must be denied – at all cost – by the forces of the state and capital. Should we awaken to and demand our birthright, all industry and nation states would vanish, made irrelevant by our refusal to accept their limitations.
Unfortunately, the machinations of industry are so entrenched into our lives that the denial of our birthright begins at the moment of our births. Immediately we are subjected to the regimentation of numbers – weighed, measured, timed, classified, documented.
Once in the grasp of the nuclear family, we are shackled into the role we are expected to play all our lives – that of the helpless, drooling idiot. Someone to be looked after, cared for, spoiled, tolerated, kept quiet, or busily distracted. The straightjacket called childhood enshrouds us and few of us escape its bonds during our lives.
In the times before the era of childhood, young people spent most of their time in the company of their families – mainly their parents and extended family. Infants are observant and intelligent. They could see what their parents did during the day: Cooking, grooming, creating things, working their gardens, foraging. By the time they were old enough to walk, they were capable of helping their families out, if only in minor ways. The more the young person grew, the more the person was able to contribute to the maintenance of the household, and the well-being of its members. This was a source of pride for the young person, and was not discouraged. Instead, the family would suggest and encourage youngsters to learn new skills and help out with more tasks as the youth grew stronger and gained experience. Embedded into extended families and others in their local community, it would require nothing but social opportunity for a youth to discover their own talents, abilities, and interests, and to find elders ready to nurture their development, and possibly even share resources in these efforts. Is it any wonder then that a person raised in this manner would be capable of starting their own household at the age of 13, 14, or 15? Having encountered few limitations other than their own physical and experiential development, these young folks could recognize when they were ready to move on to adulthood.
In the contemporary, conceptual prison of childhood, the child is protected from the demands of the real world. Pushed aside, ignored, and neglected, the child is prevented from being an autonomous person, and is instead treated like an imbecile. Taught to be quiet, still, and out of the way, the child is left dependent upon the family, or – more often – total strangers, who take great care to stop the child from growing, from realizing their abilities, from claiming their rightful places as living beings in a world of abundance.
The nuclear family is just the first method of repression the young person experiences. Later, the expectations of society are made manifest through the school system. This is just a training ground for the lifetime of meaningless drudgery to follow.
Into the herd!
The child is forced to undergo years of imbecility training. Total strangers shall prevent the child from developing opinions, from thinking independently, from thinking critically. Children are taught to be quiet, be still, to repeat what they are told, to obey unquestioningly, to speak only when spoken to. But the young person is full of energy and curiosity. To be still and quiet is unnatural, repulsive even. In having the discipline of school forced upon them, young people learn the most important of all lessons: those who behave in the most unnatural way are rewarded and praised. They also learn another lesson: deviations from expected behavior will be tolerated so long as one gives the appearance of fulfilling the authorities’ expectations. Perhaps this is the most important lesson. In this way, the normal acting out of childhood energies is reified as rebellious, troublesome behavior. As the aging children grow past the point where they could have – in an earlier time – passed into adulthood, these same childish urges are still seen as rebellious behavior: talking out of turn, doing what adults do but prohibit their children from doing, not doing what they are told to do, doing things considered naughty or taboo. Imbecilic rebellion is allowable as long as the supposed rebel otherwise goes through the motions of fulfilling society’s expectations.
This isn’t a problem for almost everyone. Their heightened state of imbecility prevents them from challenging society’s hold on their lives, from realizing their birthright.
After serving their sentence, the oldest children are paroled into the outside world. Here they will put into practice what they’ve learned – to obey without thinking and not challenge authority. Abhorred behavior is punished by sending the unruly child to a sexually segregated re-education center called jail. Here the old rules are once again emphasized: do as you’re told, speak when spoken to, lights out and go to bed! The rules of imbecility are simple.
Imbecilic rebellion is mildly punished. More severe punishment is meted out for superseding the rules of imbecility, by ignoring the rules and making a greater imbecile of one’s self, though it is tolerated with modest punishment if violations are committed for the sake of maintaining the role of imbecile. More severe is the penalty for suggesting that one’s existence need not be imbecilic. True rebels are the actual danger to the forces of the industrial nation-states. Not only must unruly imbeciles pay for their thought crimes with their freedom or their lives, but they must endure denouncements by other imbeciles, who will subject them to abuse and humiliation in the process. More interested in kissing the ass that shits on them , rather than trying to stop the flow of shit over them, the imbeciles wail and gnash their teeth to think that anyone, any one person, anywhere, at any time, would dare to live outside the structures of domination which define the life of the imbecile. True rebels against imbecility are labeled as lazy, or haughty. They are rumored to think of themselves as being “better than” the true imbeciles. Or that “their shit don’t stink,” in imbecile-speak.
The rewards of imbecility are a heightening of the helplessness and impotence of the faithful. The more privileged members of the herd must be protected, secreted away behind secured barriers. Unable to perform even the most basic task, the most privileged imbeciles often obtain surrogate mothers to tidy up after them, to procure and prepare their meals, to make plans for their activities. These utterly incompetent fools are worshiped by other imbeciles, who fetishize and envy those who have achieved a greater state of imbecility. This gives the privileged a feeling of power. The implied power is sanctified by the herd, many of whom aspire to partake in this exclusive state of advanced imbecility. To prove their worth, the imbeciles must demonstrate their idiocy through ruthless obsequience to everything that diminishes human existence. Compassion is seen as weakness. Love is a matter of ownership. Annihilation is called progress. Anything that can be done to generate profit is justifiable. Mountains are leveled, rivers dammed, forests murdered, species of every sort of living thing obliterated, just to provide imbeciles their privileges.
Remember, the imbeciles can only survive by forcing the uninitiated, the under-privileged, even the few remaining free human beings, to provide for them. With their lives reduced to destitution, the marginalized can be bribed into becoming the armed enforcers of imbecility, ensuring the comfort and safety of the imbeciles of the world, and removing anything or anyone not being utilized for the never satiated demands of expansive imbecility.
Deathwatch of the imbecile.
A lifetime of loyal service to the continuance of imbecility is rewarded with the misery of gradually dying, in increasing pain. Their bodies have been ruined by their labours, by their exposure to lethal industrial processes and their by-products. They have poisoned themselves with cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, liquor, horrid food, filthy air, stress, anger, hatred. The fortunate ones can then pay for the privilege of correcting and lessening the impact of this damage through medication, surgery, and the intervention of medical technology. These beaten-down, exhausted people do not demand that the people causing this damage accept responsibility for the harm they’ve caused. Nor do these sick and damaged people demand that the responsible parties and their methods of production cease to continue inflicting damage upon their descendants and the world in general. They are, after all, imbeciles. Indeed, many of these people’s continued existence is dependent upon the continuation of the processes of industry which wrecked their bodies and their lives.
What is to be done about all these imbeciles? Those of us unwilling to perpetuate the domination of imbecility must break free of its grasp. We must learn to care and provide for ourselves, and invite others to share in our adventures in self-rediscovery. In this way, we can create a new cycle of expansive, life-enhancing existence, an undertow of liberation to pull back the tide of death-dealing industrial states.
Reject imbecility by embracing your own ability to meet your needs outside the sanctified disability of the imbecile. Claim your place as a person born into a world of abundance, band together with others who feel the same, and break free of domination and control by wealthy scum who depend on our subservience to provide their lives of extraordinary excess.
When I was a youngster, guys were required to register for the draft when they turned 18. At the time, the Vietnam war was still raging. A war, we were continually being told by government spokespeople, which we would quickly win.
Not long after the commander of US forces in Vietnam declared that the war would be over “by Christmas,” this deadline passed by without a decisive victory, and instead, the Vietnamese resistance launched the Tet offensive, named after the New Year celebration there. Fighting broke out in every province of the south and the US embassy came under attack. Clearly, the US had been blind-sided by an enemy it could not see.
I was only 9 years old, so this opened my eyes to the fact that our government lied to us. Which made me wonder why I should put my life on the line for a bunch of lying assholes.
I wasn’t alone in feeling this way.
Nothing makes you wonder what is worth fighting for more than the thought that you could be required to throw your life away by a government that could not come up with any sort of rational explanation for why it wanted to make war on the Vietnamese people, nor explain why it could not defeat an enemy it clearly underestimated. The US was, after all, the greatest military force the world had ever seen.
black panthers stood up for their communities and inspired revolutionaries around the world
This disillusionment hit hardest on those who were approaching the age of registration. In those days, I was hanging out with people of various ages, mostly older. There were lots of reasons for this, but it was mostly because I was looking for answers to questions I had about life in general, and in the US particularly. One question on many youth’s minds then was “What is really worth laying your life on the line for?”
With race riots constantly in the news, I became more and more convinced that something was terribly wrong with America, and that the government was definitely on the wrong side of history. Politicians who dared to speak out against the established power-that-be were persecuted to the point of assassination. People who stood out from mainstream norms were likewise dealt with by right-wing militias – like the infamous Minutemen – and police. If a “hippy freak” was lucky, the cops would beat him senseless and shave his head, then ditch him on the side of a road, whereas women were raped and often disappeared.
By the time the 70s rolled around, I was convinced that the US was under the control of dark, vicious forces which had to be resisted with everything I did or could aspire to be.
Before too long, I became acquainted with revolutionary newspapers, prairie fire (from the weatherman organization) being one. In discussions with college drop-outs and other like-minded youth in my hometown, we came to the conclusion that if we were going to take up arms for any reason, it would be to overthrow the vicious bastards who ran our country.
We stopped viewing the Vietnamese resisters as enemies. We saw black activists as brothers and sisters in resistance. And we began to talk openly about armed struggle.
In order to end the war in Vietnam and prevent the US from further military adventures abroad, we decided the best method would be to force them to bring their military back home. Because we were willing to fight for a revolution here, and the government would need its troops to defend itself from its own citizens.
This strategy was known as “bringing the war home.”
When word of a potential revolution in the US reached soldiers in the field, their enthusiasm for fighting the government’s battles began to seem somewhat unbearable. They were already tired of the vicious, pointless war, far from home, and had no desire to fight against their own countryfolk – even their own families – if the government commanded them to do so. Desertion, draft-dodging, and insubordination became even more rampant among the troops and youth reaching draft age.
As internal unrest became more pronounced, the establishment figureheads more insistent on “law-and-order,” and more people disgusted with government-enforced violence, dissent began to spread to more of the population.
The shenanigans that brought Richard Nixon out of retirement and into the white house eventually became too gross, even for elements of the establishment to stomach. As Hilary Rodham began to prepare to put the President of the United States on trial for his out-of-control criminality, he decided the time was ripe for decisive action.
In order to save his regime, Nixon ordered the Department of Defense to go to on alert, to prepare for a potential nuclear war, and to put America under martial law.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff refused. They conferred with Nixon and explained to him that the country was already on the verge of revolution, that the Pentagon could not control its troops, and that if called out in the streets, they would likely side with the people against the government. In short, the department of defense told Nixon that a declaration of martial law would provoke a civil war, and the government would lose. And they were not willing to destroy the country to save Nixon’s political career.
Nixon had no choice but to resign in disgrace, after making sure his newly-appointed Vice-President would issue him a full pardon, and spare him the humiliation of a public trial, broadcast coast-to-coast.
In short, we – the people – had won our battle. The government had seen the writing on the wall and backed down, rather than start a civil war.
Sadly enough, though, we lost the war. The government remained in place, another election cycle rolled around, and a friendlier-seeming man was elected as President.
The nation as a whole relaxed. The tension that had been building for years in our society was noticeably absent, and the country was ready to celebrate. The drug-and-party crazed 70s kicked into high gear, and talk of revolution suddenly sounded like echoes of a by-gone era.
Anyone familiar with American history knows what followed – the Reagan “revolution,”the escalation of proxy wars, and Americans punished by the upper class for their insubordination. Millions of factory workers lost their jobs, entire regions were plunged into dire poverty, the Savings-and-Loan industry was plundered, and a secret, dirty war carried out on American dissidents.
This has continued non-stop ever since, and there has been little talk of retaliation by those of us left behind by an economy focused on stock values rather than manufacturing strength, on containing inflation rather than spreading prosperity.
In the 21st century, we have been at war abroad for so long and for so little reason, people don’t even talk about ending the costly, wasteful carnage. Many people are content to think “not in my name” and go along with the government’s atrocities abroad. I’m sure most of them know damn well that the wars in Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa are over oil reserves that US consumers demand – even those bleating “not in my name.” I’m also certain there are few Americans willing to do anything to take action against a nation whose main export is violence. After more than a decade of continual, spreading warfare, the American economy is addicted to warfare. And – to be clear – yes, it IS in YOUR name.
There is only one way to stop this. There is only one course of action that can make the US corporate/military state give up its adventurism abroad, and it is the same one millions of us were willing to take more than 40 years ago, and that is to make the government bring their armed forces back here to fight against the revolutionary forces of the American people.
There are literally billions of lives in danger if we allow the fascist American State to continue expanding its warfare economy any longer. And it’s only a matter of time before enough of the world grows weary of American bullying and decides to fight back, just as they finally had enough of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
If we don’t fight against this vile military police state, we will go down with it, much like Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya have already succumbed to international aggression.
We can fight a revolutionary war now, or we can sit on our asses and await an inevitable nuclear war to come.
Historians and anthropologists tell us the human race was once a cave-dwelling, surly, filthy lot who eked out a miserable life for ourselves with crude tools made of wood, bone, and stone.
Here’s something they rarely mention – the caves where we dwelt. Let’s have a look…
Here’s a basic cave structure in Nepal. Undoubtedly very ancient, they have not remained intact over the centuries. There are such structures all over the world.Here’s a cave structure in India.And one in Kazakhstan……this one in Russia looks like Anasazi cliff dwellings in the US Southwest……and I don’t even know what to make of this one in China……these caves in Capadocia, Turkey are still being used by the locals. As storage areas, to keep livestock, and even to live in. Some have even been made into hostels and taverns. More are being discovered.
As mentioned above, there are also caves of this sort present in the western hemisphere, from Nevada in the US to Patagonia in South America. And people are finding more all the time.
At some point in the past, the human race decided that life on the surface of the planet was too dangerous, and they burrowed into cliffs and mountains all over the world.
What happened, and why aren’t we hearing more about this? Don’t you think our ancestors have something to say to us about climate change?
“History is a pack of lies about events that never happened, told by people who weren’t there.” – George Santayana
Don’t defend what you have been taught in a school system designed to make you docile, befuddled, and marketable. We know that much of what the education industry forces onto us is crap. And the useful stuff is usually presented in a way that does not make it relevant to the student. The end result is a piece of paper which certifies a former student as being docile and obedient enough for employment.
What do we know about the past? Mostly what we’ve read in books. How much should we trust this stuff? What if it was all make-believe? What if actual historic events have been jumbled in time and location, repeated as fact in several places, over centuries? How would we know?
There have been dissident scholars in the past, over several centuries, who have pointed out that kings of different countries – with different titles and names – were in fact the same person. There are scholars from the 19 th century into contemporary times who believe that the stories we’re told in daily and Sunday schools have been so convoluted as to make more than 1000 years of history irrelevant; a fantasy presented as reality in order to indoctrinate people into submitting to lives of servitude.
To grasp these possibilities as anything more than paranoid conspiracy, I have to ask the reader to keep historic events in mind in a particular era, during which humanity was enslaved by ruthless, savage raiders from Eurasia, for the enrichment of their aristocracies. This time includes the seizure of the commons in England, the discovery of 4/5ths of the world by the Christian kingdoms, the obliteration of cultures and civilizations worldwide, and ends with the inquisitions, which wiped out generations of accumulated folk wisdom, libraries, and the living memories of people who had seen some of the other land’s actual cultures, prior to their destruction.
After all this had cleared the slate, so to speak, Christian monks began writing much of what we think of as recorded history. Many supposedly ancient documents do not survive today in any form older than this period. As mentioned above, entire libraries were burned over the years. And during the inquisitions in Europe, many books – a much rarer commodity in those times – were burned as well, oftentimes along with the owners and authors. Some fields of science, particularly related to medicine and healthcare, are only now recovering this knowledge in the West. Mostly by learning from the few folks traditions that have survived into modern times.
Before continuing, I just want to add that these cycles of plunder, genocide, and obliteration of indigenous peoples and their cultures haven’t ended.
The famous Roamin’ Aqueduct in Segovia, Spain. In the enlargements below, it ‘s easy to see which parts were made by skilled craftspeople and which were made by slaves.
To further obfuscate what is presented as historic fact, the calendar system used by the West has been “adjusted” several times. There are many, many instances of astronomically aligned stone circles, all over the world, that still accurately depict the passage of time and the cycles of the seasons. This means that thousands of years ago, people could accurately track time, but hundredsof years ago, the calendar had to be “adjusted.” What went wrong? My first guess would be religion.
Literacy in Europe during the time when Christian monks were laboring away their lives by writing out documents and copying manuscripts, was likely somewhere around 2 percent of the population; the clergy, a few of the more intelligent members of the aristocracy, and just enough of their subordinates to make life even easier for the ruling elites.
But – as happens in every long-standing slave-owning society – once a few of the underlings learn to read, next thing y’know, everyone’s writing a book. And with the new-fangled printing press available, the Master Race needed to get their story straight. Then they could impose their bullshit stories by force, on anyone unfortunate enough to be born into their domains.
One of the most obvious examples of make-believe history is the Roamin’ empire. We are told that Romans built a great empire and brought civilization to Europe. They are reported to have built great temples, roads, and aqueducts – all across their domain.
Rome was likely a prosperous trading city before it became overrun by pirates from the Tyrennian sea. It was also the primary place of worship for the goddess Cybil (known as Ninhirsag by the Sumerians) in Europe. These pirates came inland, looking for a good place to hide out from their enemies on the seas and shore, moved in and took over. They likely killed off or enslaved the men of the city and their neighbors, then changed the name of the city to Rome and made up some bullshit story about the city’s founding, before consolidating their power through a kingship.
Romans didn’t really build stuff. They were plundering, raping scumbags who only knew how to kill. They were so adept at it, they were able to build an entire state around it. First as conquerors, later as mercenaries.
The only real industries found in Rome were in pottery, and that was mostly repairing. They didn’t make their own weapons, but bought them from the finest craftsmen in Europe. They didn’t make their own armour, they had it made by Hebrews in Palestine.
Ever seen genuinely Roman-built structures? Made of piles of stones or simple bricks, you can tell it was built by Romans because it is in ruins. Their finest temples – in Rome – are small replicas of magnificent temples elsewhere in the world. Romans were completely incapable of making things like the temple of Ba’al in Baalbek, or the temple of Zeus in Athens. Even their own temples – in Rome – were built by slaves, though they did sometimes think to enslave master stone masons to do the work. And killed them once it was finished to ensure someone else couldn’t one-up them with something even grander, made by the same hands. Then the Roman could brag “There will never be another like it!” As far as Roamin’ aqueducts go, there are such structures all across Rome’s alleged empire. And up into Russia. And in South America. Wow – those Romans roamed a lot, didn’t they?
All of these Roamin’ aqueducts were already there, built by civilizations far older than we’ve been told there were civilizations present. You know how you can tell? Because the basic structure and foundations were built by master craftspeople who didn’t even use masonry to bind the giant stone blocks together. The stone was prepared so precisely, they fit together and stacked up well. There were even elements to these building techniques that enabled the structures to survive all but the strongest earthquakes.
Look at the size of those blocks of stone! Still stacked neatly together, without mortar or concrete binding them together. Below, you can see what Rome was capable of doing with slave labor, at the top. They could repair things, at least.
And another thing – where did the Roamin’ legions learn engineering? There were no universities or other centers of learning and knowledge in ancient Rome.
Architecture during Rome’s alleged empire had devolved to the point that they needed external buttresses in order to hold up 6-story brick-and-mortar walls in the 8th century.
As stated above, the Roamin’ people who were setting up a hide-away to live lives of splendor, far removed from their enemies, moved up the Tiber river from the central-west coast of Italy. Very likely they were Etruscans, as these were the predominant
pirates and settlers in the area at the time of Rome’s “founding.”
We don’t know much about Etruscans. Which is odd, because a great many artifacts from their culture have come down through the ages. Coins, tablets, and murals with inscriptions are available in abundance from the Etruscans. But – gosh-darnit! – linguists,
anthropologists, and other scientists just can’t decipher the alien script. Unless they are familiar with early, proto-Cyrillic alphabets and can read modern Russian.Then, they don’t even have to be a scientist, they can just read it, no translation needed.
Seriously. Ancient Etruscans used an archaic form of Cyrillic and spoke a language similar enough to modern Russian to need no translation.
Why? Why the pretence of ignorance, which persists even now, despite overwhelming evidence that the Etruscan script is rather blatantly easy to read? This is creepy.
Want another example of blatant falsification? Ever heard of the Book of Enoch? Enoch was a patriarch of the early Hebrews. Supposedly Noah’s grandfather, Enoch was a high priest and scribe for one of the primary gods of Mesopotamia. The one who allegedly genetically engineered homo sapiens-sapiens, and made his and our species interbreedable.
Enoch left us a book of “wisdom” and doom. He is categorized as a prophet because he foretold events that later transpired. The main event being the flood which almost completely destroyed human civilization.
He secured for Noah a design for a ship that could survive the raging torrent to come, and told him to keep a few of whatever livestock and wild game he valued.
But the point I want to bring to your attention is that much of the alleged “wisdom” of the new testament – particularly in the letters and acts of the apostles – are absolute plagiarisms of the Book of Enoch, which the Hebrew scribes included in their liturgy, whereas most modern Jewish clerics do not. This includes a stand-alone comment condemning women to second-tier status. There is no context for it, Enoch (or Noah – part of the book is dictated in Noah’s voice) just offers that women are not so great, when all is said and done. He wasn’t listing duties and responsibilities for women, nor giving women instructions on upright behaviour, he just suddenly blurted out: “I assure you, no woman has ever ordered a mountain to move and a mountain has obeyed.”
This seems to be the sole pre-biblical justification for eliminating the place of women in the priesthood. Until the Abrahamic faiths arrived on the scene, high priestesses were often living incarnations of the goddesses they venerated. They bestowed kingships, gave birth to demigods, interceded with the other gods on humankind’s behalf, sometimes ruled as warrior-queens, and could elevate a mortal to godhood, as Cleopatra allegedly bestowed godhood on Julius Ceaser. Enoch did not elaborate on this topic, just made a quick aside and went on with his narrative.
In the 1883 translation of the Book of Enoch, by Richard Laurence, there are 9 pages showing side-by-side examples of plagiarism by the author(s) of the new testament. And I’m certain there are more that aren’t as blatant. The author, after all, was a believer.
The last example of historic shenanigans I want to bring to your attention is Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt.
In the 1600s, a French scholar traveled to Egypt to have a look at it’s ancient wonders. He described the pyramids of Giza as being in such fine condition, they appeared to have been completed within the past few years. In short, they looked like newly-created structures.
I’m not trying to imply they are not truly ancient in origin, rather they were well-preserved into the 19th century. Then Napoleon came in with his army and had the pyramids dissembled, their stone facings used to enhance his own constructions.
He also had a regiment of soldiers line up in front of the Sphinx and fire their guns at its face for an entire day. What a looney!
History is a complete sham. It’s all a load of crap, and we have not been given even a faint glimpse of what the lives of our distant forebears resembled. But, thanks to dissident scholars and the internet, this information is seeping out. We should take this opportunity to research and publish evidence of these lies, and refuse to follow the lead of the lying scumbags who make their livelihood by forcing their bullshit upon us. I doubt the Master Race is going to allow the free flowing of this type of information sharing to continue for long.
if you want to really blow your mind with some alternate history books, i cannot recommend the works of Russian mathematician Anatoly Fomenko highly enough. i can’t say i agree 100 percent with his work, but his series of books History: Fiction or Science? will cause you to doubt just about everything you’ve been taught about the story of human experience on planet earth.
“At five hundred pages, Black Flame is widely considered the first major (non-anthology) anarchist work in some time — perhaps ever — to provide a global historical account of anarchist movements. Many viewed the work as a kind of “Anarchist Bible,” or what Immanuel Ness, a professor at City University of New York and author of New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism(PM Press, 2014), had described as “perhaps the most important contribution [to] the global history of working class movements from an anarchist perspective.” – About Schmidt: How a White Nationalist Seduced Anarchists Around the World (Chapter 1), by Alexander Reid Ross and Joshua Stephens
Black Flame‘s“core theses” include the propositions;
“the global anarchist movement emerged in the First International,
syndicalism is an integral part of the broad anarchist tradition,
this tradition centers on rationalism, socialism, and anti-authoritarianism,
the writings of Mikhail Bakunin and Pyotr Kropotkin are representative of its core ideas,
and this ‘narrow’ definition is both empirically defensible and analytically useful.”
A striking feature of Black Flame is the argument that “‘class struggle’ anarchism, sometimes called revolutionary or communist anarchism, is not a type of anarchism … it is the only anarchism,” and so it does not include ideas sometimes called individualist anarchist, identified with figures such as William Godwin and Max Stirner. Regarding the so-called “philosophical, individualist, spiritual and ‘lifestyle’ traditions,” the authors say “we do not regard these currents as part of the broad anarchist tradition.” – from wikipedia’s glowing review of Black Flame, in the section on Platformism.
It just so turns out that at least one of the authors of Black Flame is a white supremacist, and has been using his influence within the Syndicalist movement to keep Anarchism firmly rooted in an exclusively Euro-centric worldview.
I can’t understand why anyone, much less anarchists, would want to keep their personal worldview so firmly rooted in the 19th century. Over the coming months, I’m going to be writing extensively about WHY it’s ludicrous to ignore technological and observational developments, and thus refuse to adjust to the many, many ways they have altered our society – and what we know about the worlds we inhabit.
The huge trainwreckBlack Flame has caused in the anarchist movement proved to me that conservative, rightwing bigots are not the only white folks who yearn for a simpler time, when white people just WERE the superior race, no questions asked, or they’d KILL your miserable, savage ass!
“Blacks incapable of other than the basest service to the Revolution.”
This is not surprising to me in the least. As I’ve written before, Syndicalism is only one very, very short step away from Fascism, and Fascism almost always includes racism. (see my review of The Friends of Durutti, from Anarchy; a Journal of Desire Armed, which i will post online, soon as i can acquire a copy.)
In the Mexican revolution, Anarcho-Communists and Syndicalists were allowed to organize as labor unions and militias, so long as the militias were under command of Huerta’s junta, which was governing Mexico City at the time. These units were used as artillery forces against the advancing armies of Pancho Villa. Meanwhile, other unionistas were sent against Zapata, though I believe they were mostly held in reserve. In both cases, when the militias were no longer needed, they were disbanded, and many of the workers were eventually executed or imprisoned.
Too much of the leadership of Spain’s legendary anarchist unionists CNT urged the rank-and-file membership to disarm and support the republic. This in return for ministerial positions at the national and regional levels. The workers responded by collectivizing everything that was not nailed down, and forming autonomous militias. These militias would later rescue Madrid from a fascist offensive.
Much of the same can be said for anarchists in Russia, though to be honest, the peasant militias and autonomous villages had mostly been annihilated before many anarchists accepted favors from the vicious Soviet government.
In addition to the tendency of leadership to sell out both their own rank-and-file and to take arms against genuine people’s movements, there is also a tradition within Anarcho-Syndicalism to gestate personality cults and go outright fascist. Mussolini and Mao are the two most famous examples, though there were many others.
I’ve never read a Syndicalist tract from the Anarchist canon which does not advocate for some type of a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” What can be expected from a tradition that has as it’s stated end goal a dictatorship? Concentrate power into a single group or institution, and someone will take it over for their personal aggrandizement. Always and forever, this has been true. That’s why some anarchists do not wish to create more of the same, but would prefer to create societies very unlike the ones we’ve inherited. There is no need for self-serving institutions.
I’m just saying, do what you want. But what DO you want? Do we want self determination? Or inclusion in the colonial system?
It also comes as no surprise that the authors were able to find people around the world, and from every race, who they could point to as examples of “diversity” for their unified, uncompromising, very limited, Eurocentric (of course) definition of what Anarchism is – and isn’t. Who among the people cited did not grow up in a Eurocentric, colonial society? Who did not have the option to support their families through any other means than wage labor? Who did not receive a Eurocentric education? Not one. None of the many people the authors cite from around the world ever advocated for the destruction of the Eurocentric social order and the creation of something more along the lines of how people lived who had never been conquered by white folks.
BF‘s authors also spend considerable time explaining why useless forms of protest and organizing are preferable to armed rebellion or insurrection. The authors advocate for a “gradualist” approach to achieving the goals of working class empowerment. Voting, participating in the political process, and possibly forming a party and running for office were presented as the reasonable, rational approach to social change. Led by white folks, of course.
Again, no surprise, since the authors are more interested in steering anarchists into inaction than they are in creating revolution. As white supremacists, they are more invested in the current social order that creates austerity for the North, and bombs for the rest of the world. And as infiltrators in the movement, I’m fairly sure part of the reason they wanted to keep Anarchists firmly tied to ineffectual Leftistism was in part to make themselves look like cowards, as opposed to the “bold street fighters” of the National Anarchist movement – a transeuropean Fascist organization which has openly advanced a racist agenda from its inception, and uses street violence to lure in bullies and other assholes who just want to knock heads.
Mike Schmidt, “Politico-Cultural Dynamics of the South African Anarchist Movement”
“…platformism is too advanced for the black working class and poor…”
The doctrine of discovery; establishment of the rule of law in the land of liberty.
ROMANUS PONTIFEX, JANUARY 8, 1455 – the doctrine of discovery
“[W]e bestow suitable favors and special graces on those Catholic kings and princes…intrepid champions of the Christian faith…to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and…to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate…possessions, and goods, and to convert them to…their use and profit…“
There you have it, spelt out in fairly clear language – His Excellency, Pope Babyraper the Umpteenth, authorized his co-conspirators to go out and rob, murder, rape, and plunder in every land which had not been “saved” by J-Zeus, the dying/resurrecting sun diety. At the time of the edict, that was around 80 percent of the inhabited world.
It’s easy enough to dismiss this document as an out-dated relic of a long-gone era.
The problem with that is, this is the SINGLE, LEGAL DOCUMENT that created the court systems of the US, Canada, Australia, much of Latin America and the Caribbean, the Philippines, most of Africa, swaths of Asia…
This single document is cited by the US Supreme Court when considering matters of copyright, property, regulation of corporations, and trade agreements – including the current bankster wetdream, the TPP. Yeah, all that bullshit about separation of Church and State…just window dressing. Without this Roman Catholic doctrine, the foundation for rule of law by the court systems in just about every nation on earth goes straight out the window.
Ever heard of a place called Latin America? No one spoke fucking Latin in the god-damn 14th century. Except for the Catholic Church clergy and Lawyers. Who established the court systems that preside over these places to this day. And that’s why it’s referred to as Latin America, because of their Latin legal systems.
Think this is a ridiculous over-simplification (I get that a lot)? Ever read a US law book? See all the Latin phrases? When exactly was it that Latin-speaking people inhabited the US? Isn’t US law supposed to be based on English court systems? And just what is the foundation of English law? Again, written in Latin. Little known fact – “Empress of the Holy Roman Empire” is one of Queen Lizzie the 2nd’s titles.
INTER CAETERA, MAY 3, 1493
“…in our times especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and everywhere increased and spread…and that barbarous nations be overthrown…”
This Papul decree is so much a part of the Great American Mythology that it was referenced by none less than US Chief Justice John Marshall in an 1823 decision, JOHNSON v. MCINTOSH, 21 US 543 to assert American authority over indigenous Peoples. His decision legalized exploitation, theft, and genocide by establishing that indigenous Peoples were indeed not quite people, not being Christians and all, so anything done to or against them is all good and well, and the Good Lord’s work to boot, hallelujah!
And why should it be overturned? It’s necessary to dehumanize indigenous Peoples in order to rob, rape, and murder them wholesale, even over the objections of the more squeamish members of the invading society.
This notion that indigenous Peoples must be “saved” from their ignorant, savage existence by having the gifts of religion and poverty bestowed upon them fuels wars even in the 21st century. This idea has been enacted through many expressions over the years: saving souls, bringing them civilization, educating them, making them into citizens of the state. This is the doctrine of Manifest Destiny – that god almighty has given Europeans superior weapons in order to subjugate other Peoples. Most of whom were not warlike, and almost none of which had standing armies.
This is the notion of Progress. Lands previously untouched by the foul hand of the West had to be incorporated into the European legal systems in order to rule over them, for the benefit of the Europeans. It is solidly, irrefutably white supremacist to the core, an excuse to commit genocide and feel good, even proud, for doing it. There sure is a long list of names – venerated in every nation overrun by Europeans – of murdering, ignorant scum who slaughtered indigenous Peoples and later became well-respected members of the communities where they dwelt. Some of these genocidal pieces of shit are Saints in the Catholic church.
This Progressive ideology has never been refuted by anyone with a Eurocentric worldview. It enables people who depend on markets for everything they need for personal survival – but who must first find a master to serve in order to access markets – to think of indigenous Peoples as poor, filthy, ignorant savages. Even though the indigenous Peoples are able to hand craft everything they need. Food, clothing, shelter – what they can’t do for themselves, was often available from others, as sharing is much more widespread in Peoples who do not have the notion of “poverty” in their lives. They mostly live in abundance.
Hell – right now, pharmaceutical corporations are falling all over themselves to get at indigenous healers in the field. They are making billions of dollars off of the knowledge and experience of indigenous Peoples, then they have the audacity to cry about “intellectual property rights.”
And to FINALLY arrive at the main point I want to make here – Socialism and Marxism are not in any way different from any of the other ideologies of Progress. Indeed, Marx himself stated that indigenous Peoples must submit to proletarianization or disappear from the world. Anyone who did not slave for a master for monetary gain was a lumpen, and Marx saw them – always the majority of the population in industrialized nations – as reactionary and enemies of the working class. He used much the same rationale we hear today from the far-right. Lumpen want to take our jobs (scabs). They are criminals. They are no-good layabout alcoholics and drug addicts. They are ignorant. As someone who has spent much of his adult life either homeless or in prison, but always struggling against the coercive forces of elite rule, I gotta say a big, ol’ “Fuck you!” to orthodox Marxists.
There are Marxists I have some respect for, though – libertarian and autonomous Marxists are at least breaking from the orthodoxy of building a Party to centralize power. Some groups that started out as Marxists have evolved to the point that they no longer spout fiery working-class rhetoric. Instead, they humbly ask the communities they rely on for support what their group can do to help them. The trend in anarchy in the 21st century is for revolutionaries to focus on building autonomous communities instead of taking over industry. Except, of course – in the industrialized West.
In Europe and North America, the white working classes are terrified of losing the few precious scraps of privilege they’ve been allowed until now. Still clinging to their notion of Progress, orthodox Marxists, Anarcho-Communists, and Syndicalists refuse to let go of racist, outdated 19th century ideas that see them – the true and only revolutionaries – as the saviors of the world. Anyone who dares to challenge them to join the rest of humanity in the 21st century is silenced as “ignorant” or “reactionary” or “fascist.”
I’ve written before that Marxism’s main failure was that the working class never seized control of anything. I’m more of the opinion these days that their greatest failure was in only offering substitutions for the social order they were allegedly opposing. Substitute the Party for the working class. Substitute a Chairman for an emperor. Substitute expansion of the revolution for economic expansion. Substitute “safeguarding the revolution” for “protecting investments.” In short, Marxism has never offered anything but more of the same horrors, with just slightly different jargon. In function, the fascist state is little different than a communist one, and neither system is much different than Western-style democracies or republics. They all seek to divvy up the world’s resources for the enrichment of very few people, with treats for their lackeys, jails for the complainers, and bludgeons for the impoverished.
A few notes about this alleged “progress” of his(story)
It took the old European colonial powers centuries to overrun the entire planet and install court systems acceptable to their aristocracies. But it pretty much took until the 20th century for whities to look around at the places they had conquered and think “hmmm – wonder what all that stuff is?”
Naturally, being the superior civilization and all, they had no need for anything the heathens had. Not their medicinal herbcrafting. Not their stories and legends about geological events. Not their ambitions, thoughts, and dreams. Not their extensive written histories which receded far, far past the time when the Christian book of lies was written. And especially not for their heathen technology, which was the work of demons, after all – amen.
Many of the civilizations annihilated by the invading savages were far superior in every way to what existed in Europe at that time. There are irrigation systems in Peru that are thousands of years older than many historians are willing to admit there have been people in the americas. Megalithic ruins all over the world suggest there was a one-world culture of sea-faring people who built magnificent cities globally, until just after the end of the last ice age, when climatic chaos destroyed many coastal areas. Thus, the universal flood myths in people’s written and oral histories. I can write this with confidence because much of this is readily – even scientifically, if that’s your religion – verifiable now. As a matter of fact, it’s getting to be common knowledge. This may well be one reason why education systems are being undermined. There will be no way to keep this knowledge out of textbooks unless there is such tight control of publishing and the educational institutions that traditional narratives remain unchallenged. Religious institutions worldwide depend on this forgetting of the human saga.
Almost all the great dietary “breakthroughs” constantly in vogue in the US have come about as American consumers somehow found out about ayruvedic and naturalpathic medicinal traditions in Asia. As mentioned before, pharmaceutical corporations are scouring Amazonia and Africa, looking for new drugs and other biological knowledge from shamans and traditional healers. That’s not Progress, that’s just more plunder. We could accumulate this knowledge ourselves by TALKING TO PEOPLE and LISTENING WITH RESPECT TO WHAT PEOPLE FROM OTHER CULTURES HAVE TO SAY! Fucksake…
I’m gonna go ahead and put this out there; some people suspect that a one-world, seafaring culture still existed, here and there, until fairly recently. Until the era of conquest. Their civilization had collapsed, for the most part, and they had to rebuild. I’ll write a lot more about this in the future. The points I want to make here are:
Polynesian Peoples sailed thousands and thousands of miles of open, uninterrupted seas at times.
The Hopi and some Australian aboriginal Peoples claim to have sailed to their continents around 30,000 years ago.
Most of the older ruins in the Americas are along the Pacific rim.
Mayan civilization had a written history that covered 30,000 years, including daily records.
Tenochtitlan, the capitol city of the Mexica, was an engineering marvel unmatched by the West: huge stone plazas and gigantic, megalithic pyramids built on a swamp.
There are irrigation systems so old, there are no records of their construction, nor memories; in SE Asia, Russia, Australia, South America…
And even the approved annuls of history tell of the constant attack on knowledge. Libraries burned by invading forces, almost always from the Eurasian steppe; in Alexandria, Heliopolis, Persepolis, Babylon…We will never know how much was destroyed in the era of conquest. How far back did that put the human race, as far as accumulated knowledge? So much for “progress.” Most of this knowledge was lost forever to us, some of it we are actually rediscovering.
One civilization succeeded in preserving some of this ancient knowledge in Buddhist temples, written in archaic forms of Sanskrit. If it isn’t being destroyed by some goddam government or another, that’s where we could find a lot of details about the things i’ve mentioned above.
The history we’ve been force-fed is so much just a load of bullshit, i’m not sure if we should believe anything written up until the end of the last century. EVERYTHING the education system has indoctrinated us into accepting is wrong. Fucking goddam Everything. I hope I can convince enough people in the anarchist movement of this that we can actually band together and use the new knowledge – the stuff being rediscovered – to our advantage.
to make things very clear;
the idea of “progressive” history is racist to it’s very core. not to mention complete Bullshit. anything coming from that tradition is nothing more or less than white supremacist propaganda. not just including Marxism, but ESPECIALLY Marxism because of its failure to understand that industrial society is not the Ultimate Achievement of humankind. Free living people do not have to be enslaved through employment in order to find liberation.
As for myself, i want no part of this wretched deathculture. it’s built on lies, fraud, genocide, rape, and plunder. we are capable of creating something so much better. we should get on with building it. now.
THE OBLITERATION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION – PART 2
It’s difficult to destroy an entire continent full of highly cultured Peoples’ knowledge when most of it was handed down from generation to generation through oral traditions and hands-on apprenticeships. Very few people were literate back in the day, mostly religious scribes, priests, and a select few aristocrats and their highest ranking servants.
After 200 years of slaughtering literate and skilled tradespeople, there was still much killing that needed to be done in order to wipe out any knowledge or traditions that were not condoned by the – by that time – very powerful Christian Churches. There were several different branches of the faith in the middle of the 7th century. Most of them were not obsessed with seizing state power or empire building, the way the Roman sect was. In order to bring about an end to the squabbling over who’s way was most Christian, Pope Worship-me declared himself to be the ultimate holder of divine authority on earth, and demanded all other Christian patriarchs and bishops were subservient to him.
To keep the peace, and because Rome was no longer a threat to middle-eastern lands, most agreed to this arrangement, but continued to conduct themselves as they desired. As you can well imagine, the pope had plenty enough Church business to keep him occupied, without the fuss of prolonged civil wars over who’s doctrines were most Christlike.
Meanwhile, in northern France and the British Islands, a new dynasty was emerging which would provide Christendom’s greatest strongmen of that era – the Pepins.
The Pepins were rule-from-the-shadows kinda guys who lived in what today is northern France.They preferred the life of military plunderers and ratbastard murdering scumbags over that of palace life. Still, they valued scholarship. All the moreso because knowledge had been outlawed and all ancient teachings destroyed. Anyone who produced a book in those days could pretty much write anything, and there was no way to fact-check. Which explains a lot of the stupid-wacko things the Christian Churches passed off as knowledge.
To ensure that future generations would be able to share information across the lands Romans had conquered, Pepin the Short’s son Charles Martel (his true name was undoubtedly Pepin, but he became known by the honorific Martel, which means “the hammer”) came up with two astounding innovations.
First of all, Martel invented the English language to serve as the common tongue for all the lands he subjugated. And by “invented” i mean “codified into written language.” His grandson, Charles the Great – or Charlemagne – was the first ruler to keep a journal in English.
Secondly, Martel founded his own Church – the Catholic Church. His descendants would later force the Roman Church to adopt this abomination; a religion dedicated to slaughter, pillage, and the enslavement of the human race. They also devoted an incredible amount of time and resources to burning people alive as sacrifices to satan (a word that means “adversary”).
Charlemagne trying to torture gold out of Saxons.
The Catholic Church was not much interested in saving souls or otherwise acting in accordance with the teachings of a pacifist Jesus. The Pepins were completely devoted to plunder and bloodletting. Of course, they would look to their newly invented Church to provide divine inspiration for their actions, and the Church (often under the rule of one of the Pepin’s family, or their business partners), would issue proclamations, papal decrees, and even forge documents to give the Pepins what they wanted.
Charlemagne once had 4,500 Saxon villagers tortured; entire families murdered – many by being disemboweled alive, in front of their loved ones. He had invaded Saxon lands and found them filled with prosperous communities who thrived by farming, hunting, fishing, and foraging. They also had some fairly amazing craft, as well as mad metallurgical, skills. They built sturdy structures which lasted for generations with little need for maintenance. To ill-tempered, blood-thirsty tyrants like Charlemagne, these people HAD to be RICH. There was no poverty to be found in their lands! And those wretched people just REFUSED to hand over ALL THEIR GOLD! No amount of torture, no crimes against human dignity, no horrid acts of brutality could convince them to bring out their treasure. The reason he’s known as “the great?” He set the greatest precedent for how Christians were to treat non-believers, and his partners in crime, the Catholic Church, were anxious to issue edicts to bless these atrocities. Papal treasuries don’t fill themselves, y’know.
Charlemagne was so important to the Catholic Church that it began to date documents from the start of his reign. Previously, Church documents were dated according to the presiding pope‘s enthronement. Sometimes there were several, competing popes at the same time. Sometimes there were no popes at all. Which accounts for the histories of these times being quite convoluted. Again, this suggests a ripe area for future investigation.
The Church legalized slavery for non-believers. It codified how much land and treasure would be shared when heathen lands were over-run by the Church‘s mercenaries. Burning people alive as offerings to “satan” was sanctified. Before igniting the sacrificial pyre, the presiding official would say “I commend thy soul to hell!” Jesus sure as fuck did not command that people be burned to death.
Centuries of warfare between Celtic and Germanic Peoples against Roman invaders, and a fanatical obsession with slaughter by the Church, had left much of Europe destitute and under-populated. Which did not leave much for the marauders to pick through.
Mercenaries, Marauders
Reconquista: un teatro sangriento de la fantasía
Everywhere in the Christianized remains of the Roman empire, centuries of civil war and religious bloodlust reduced entire regions across north africa, the levant, and central europe to desolate wastelands, with ruins of villages depopulated through war, famine, and plague being overgrown – pastures becoming meadows, farmlands becoming prairies; abandoned, often burnt-out houses overgrown with moss and ivy.
This is the era when the idea of “the Commons” was developed. Even the nobility – much of it just more ruthless than their subjects, not wiser or more capable – had suffered much during times of plague and famine. There were far fewer people around, and the miserable survivors huddled together to share work, common resources, and their lives. In some places, Commoners were able to live unmolested by rulers or priesthoods for generations, until the elites had recovered enough to seize their lands and force them into wage labor.
In the lands today known as Spain and Portugal, Visigothic Nobility had invaded and set up their reign before the Moors came along. As an illustration of just how badly things were going in the Christian world at that time: in just one battle against the Muslims, much of the ruling Gothic nobility was wiped out, including the king. The battle was a long-lasting defeat, as the Visigoths were a divided and feuding people. They were unable to present a united front to defend against the invaders, and many of the Iberian people who lived under Gothic nobility saw the Moors as liberators.
Christians -vs – Muslims: the forever war
Many of the poor wretches left alive in the wake of the various calamities of the era clung desperately to their masters, and chose to live in squalid camps surrounding the manors and castles of the Masters. Once settled in, they could try desperately to make themselves of service to their overlords.
Insolence was not tolerated. Unquestioning obedience was demanded of the peasants, literacy prohibited, and being raped by priests and nobles just one of many indignities codified by law.
Priests were allowed to rape the brides they had performed wedding ceremonies for, before their husbands were allowed to take them home. The local aristocrats were allowed to pleasure themselves with any man, woman, or child who crossed their paths. This is the reason why rich males and the Catholic Church are opposed to abortion. They needed the bastard children they spewed all over the peasantry for propaganda purposes; to remind the peasants where they fit into the grand scheme of things. The elites also needed them for future wars. And – who knows? – one of them might turn out to be an asset. A huge, bullying rapist, for example, could be valuable for tax collecting. And an intellectually competent person might be of use for the local lord’s manor, particularly if such a person was petty and ruthless.
The depopulation of Europe did not go unnoticed in the ancient world. The conquest-driven religion of Islam was spreading across lands ravaged by Christian-on-Christian genocide, the local populations and ancient aristocracies unable to field enough professional soldiers to resist. Places where the Church had little influence, however, were able to fend off the invaders. The Islamic invaders made a good argument in favor of their incursions into formerly Christian lands: they were rescuing people from the vile Christian Churches and bringing people civilization.
The lands conquered by Moorish invaders in the Iberian peninsula became famous throughout Europe as places of learning, and prosperous peasants, merchants, and aristocrats sent their children to Toledo and Seville to be educated in science, letters, and math. Lebanon and Syria likewise were centers of learning for hundreds of years, while most Europeans were reduced to mucking through the mud for sustenance. This Islamic intrusion was intolerable to Church and Kings alike. Something had to BE DONE!
Pope Baby Raper issued proclamations offering free passage to heaven for anyone who died fighting against the Muslim invaders. This is generally not a great idea, as it emphasizes the dying aspect to combat, as opposed to surviving the conflict.
Later, Pope Bloody Bastard proclaimed to a gathering of Catholic Church bishops that all sins – even the most high sins of murder or heresy – could be absolved by taking the lives of heathen, non-believers. And furthermore, anything done to non-believers was neither a crime nor a sin. After preaching this for several years, and finding wildly enthusiastic support for his ideas within the Church, he demanded that the good Christian people of Europe take up arms and make a bloody pilgrimage to the Holy Lands of the bible and free them from Islamic rule. And don’t forget the Jews – they’re non-believers, too!
There was an unexpectedly huge response to this call. Rabble, cutthroats, and murderers from across central Europe gladly took up the cause.
“Who wants to kill, plunder, and rape in the name of Jesus?”
But, you know…the Holy Lands are soooo far away, and there’s these prosperous Jewish neighborhoods, just right there…so Jewish communities were wiped out in Spier, Worms, Mainz, Metz , Prague, Ratisbon, and other cities.
Though most Crusaders (or “vassals of Christ,” anointed by the pope) were satisfied with that and returned home with everything they could steal from their Jewish victims, others continued on to the rallying place for the invasion of the Holy Lands, Constantinople. Along the way, they pillaged a path through Hungary. Zemun and Belgrade were pillaged, as well as the countryside around Nis, before the Hungarian King was able to drive them out of his territories.
The pope had asked his nobles in the Church to send him men-at-arms. Instead he got a murdering, plundering horde. The Byzantine Emperor enthroned at Constantinople was only too happy to round them up and send them on their way.
Once across the Bosporus, the vile force plundered at will – raping, and murdering everyone in their path. With no real command, just bishops urging them onward to Jerusalem, there had been no thought of setting up a supply chain. This created an armed, starving mob, and there are just too many tales about Crusaders roasting and eating babies to ignore.
And all of this happened before they had even seen a Muslim soldier. When the pillaging horde pushed on towards Muslim lands, they were met by an actual Turkish army and annihilated.
Eventually, professional soldiers and low ranking nobles came to join in the pillaging, and all along the eastern Mediterranean coast, one ancient port city after another fell: Antioch, Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre, Acre. The inhabitants were slaughtered or taken as slaves, and everything not nailed down, hauled away as booty. Some Crusaders decided to stay and live in the places they subjugated, since they’d escaped from the crushing poverty and oppression in feudal Europe.
Several Christian domains were established en route to Jerusalem, which was also captured, and all the inhabitants massacred – Muslim, Jew, and Christian alike.
Jerusalem taken, all the inhabitants slaughtered.
“Kill Them ALL!”
Because there had been no clear leadership, there arose disputes over who should claim which lands, and this left the Christian domains divided, squabbling, and even making war over them. The Crusaders were also not able to offer a united defense against Muslims, who were anxious to drive these heathen, cannibalistic savages from their lands and send them back to Europe or hell, where they belonged. The Crusaders even overran the ancient Christian land of Edessa along the way, exterminating yet another Christian sect not devoted to plundering for the enrichment of the pope.
Over the next two centuries, Islamic warlords arose who would eventually drive the Crusaders away for good. Many of the subsequent Crusades were either attempts to retake Jerusalem or were actually mercenary attacks against Christian cities who the Eastern Roman Emperor or pope had a grudge against.
The most prosperous lands in all Christian Europe were laid waste by a Crusade because the highly literate people of southern France were not loyal to the pope. This was their reward for preventing Islamic penetration into central Europe from Iberia, as well as their punishment for popular literacy. This illustrates one of the major aspects to the continuation of the Roman Empire that led to a great downturn in European civilization. Once finished with a task, the vassal or servant was killed. It’s cheaper than continuing to maintain them, and in the case of architecture, once the skilled craftspeople were dead, their knowledge was gone with them, so that the owner could smugly state that nothing like it would ever be built again.
There were further crusades against Moors in Iberia, and Slavs in northern Germany. There was even a Crusader-vs-Crusader crusade, as nobles and merchants in Genoa and Venice feuded over who controlled Christian domains in the Holy Lands.
It was in the Crusade against the Cathars of southern France that the most influential edict the Roman, Catholic Church has ever pronounced was issued. Having laid siege to one of the cities in the region, the commander of the Crusaders asked the advice of the local abbot. He was concerned that, once the city was obtained, he would have a difficult time telling who were the righteous, pious Catholics, and who were the heretical Cathers Christians.
The abbot’s reply would resound throughout the ages, and is very popular with the armed forces of the Christian world to this very day:
“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.”
“Kill them all, for the Lord knoweth them that are His.”
From the 2nd century AD (according to modern reckoning) until the 17th, the grotesquely sadistic, violent rulers of the West were engaged in an all-out war against the pre-existing civilizations of the world. This doctrine of total annihilation found it’s greatest advancement under the guidance of the Catholic Church.
Catholics plead for mercy from Crusaders
With Much of Europe divided between the Eastern and Roman Churches and the pope eager to unleash his obedient, ignorant armies of slaughter and genocide upon the world, the pope began a campaign of total, bloody war on his unfortunate followers.
Not to be outdone, the Eastern Church launched an even bloodier assault against the Peoples of Asia, and their Russian empire spread the genocidal religion from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific, obliterating civilizations that had stood for perhaps thousands of years. We don’t really know much about those ancient Peoples, because of the complete destruction of their cultures. What we do know is; throughout Christendom, knowledge was reserved for the Church and Nobility, and those wealthy enough to earn their favor. And if the local rulers were less concerned with learning than ruling over their subjects with iron fists, the result would be ignorant, savage assholes in power who NO ONE WAS ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE!
What were the results of centuries of murderous repression and people burned alive in public – all this carried out or condoned by a “religion” that conducted its services in a dead language no one understood, except the clergy?
An entire civilization built upon lies, greed, genocide, and rape.
Entire countries full of people who view education with mistrust, fear, and even hatred.
A civilization which views Nature as evil and unholy, to be brutalized and ravaged – despite the fact that Nature provides them with everything.
People who actually believe superstition is any type of knowledge not handed down from the Proper Authorities.
Ancient laws passed down from ancient despotic rulers, with slight modification to fool the common people into believing they were innovative.
Loss of technologies that built structures standing to this day, some of which are still being used.
A Religion of genocide which allows believers to commit any atrocity against non-believers.
Worshiping ignorant, violent jackasses as civic leaders.
An economy based on plunder and warfare.
And these are the main obstacles preventing people all over the world from overcoming – or even comprehending – the conditions of their slavery to descendants of elites handed down from ancient times to the 21st century.
via the subversion of the early Christian Church, by Roman emperors.
This is the oldest symbol for the Christian faith. It may also be the oldest symbol of divine authority in what passes as “western” civilization. There’s a lot more to say about this particular symbol, but for now let’s focus on it’s elegant simplicity.
Because it was an upstart religion and illegal in the Roman empire, Christians needed a secretive way to identify one another. So, when wanting to inquire about someone’s belief, a Christian could draw half the symbol in the dirt with a finger. If the other party involved finished it, they recognized one another as part of the Church. If not, no harm done, the image quickly erased, easy-peasy.
After the Church was decriminalized, a new symbol was bestowed upon the Romanized religion, the cross.
Constantine and Christ’s Holy Terror
The ruler of the eastern provinces of the Roman empire, Constantine, supposedly had a vision as he tossed and turned in his sleep, worried about an upcoming battle. Either that, or he was given a sign from heaven on his way there. More likely he just made this story up.
Regardless of the inspiration, Constantine was given a sign from some god or another – i’m not sure they ever specify – which he regarded as a license to kill. The two symbols combined in the new banner allegedly signify “by this sign, conquer.”
From this moment on, Christianity was not a religion of love, tolerance, sharing, and community. From this point on, Christianity was some unseen god’s holy scourge, come to rid the world of sinful non-believers with sword and fire. Ever notice how much Catholics have enjoyed burning people alive over the centuries?
The symbol of the cross eventually morphed into the more recognizable “+” form, then further transformed into…something awful.
This is the image of Jesus the ancient Churches like. It’s traumatizing. It’s meant to be.
The message sent by the authorities:
“See that? There’s your god of love for you! He’s DEAD!
If we killed your god, do you think we’ll have any mercy on YOU?”
Christians ever since have been very enthusiastic in slaughter, genocide, rape, and plunder. They are, after all, forgiven. For anything. For everything. By the way, rape is not prohibited in the holey bible. There are a number of responsibilities spelt out for rapists in the old testament, including an obligation to marry the victim. I do not believe the victim is given a say in the matter. And in the new testament, women are encouraged to be submissive to men.
War on knowledge
Constantine undertook a war to eliminate the Zoroastrian religion. Their priests were known as Magi, and were mentioned with quite a lot of respect in the telling of Jesus’ birth.
The Romans killed every living Magi, and burned or otherwise destroyed their teachings.
I can’t help but think this was done because what the Magi taught was self-directed enlightenment and inner growth. What the Christian Church had decided on as it’s doctrine – in the council of Nicea Constantine sponsored ten years prior – was batshit crazy by comparison. Constantine was eliminating the competition. He had to, because no one was going to believe the stupid shit his new Church was passing off as “religion.”
He never made Christianity the official state religion (that would come later), even after his own “conversion.” As mentioned above, this conversion affected the Church more than vice-versa. The emperor had remade it in his own image.
Constantine’s end goal was likely to proclaim himself as the sun god, sol invictus, and Roman coinage, as well as works of art and architecture, portrayed him as Sol’s companion. He never did get around to announcing his own divinity. He did, however, make Sun day the official Christian day of rest and adulation.
Subsequent emperors burned the library of Antioch, and later banned teaching of science in the entire empire. People of other faiths were prohibited from being officers in the army, and a heretical Christian sect – the Manicheans – were exterminated for providing a sane, believable doctrine for Christians.
And just to rub a little salt in the wounds of a bleeding populace, pope Dumbass I outlawed public baths across the empire. Less than century later, unhygienic conditions contributed to a severe outbreak of bubonic plague.
The Church outlawed all forms of date-keeping, navigational charts and equipment, and any reference to the world as being spherical. No one believed the world was flat and the earth was the center of the universe. People started pretending to believe it when anyone saying otherwise was burned alive in public squares.
The Church also outlawed all non-Christian schools and ordered the obliteration of all knowledge kept at the great library of Alexadria – perhaps the greatest repository of human knowledge ever assembled in one place. Not only did they destroy ancient scrolls, books, and other writings, they massacred everyone who had learned to read. Millions of tradesmen, artisans, and craftsmen were slaughtered. Egyptian civilization has never recovered from this atrocity.
A holocaust (burnt offering) of millions of people practicing another “heretical” form of Christianity, the Donatists in North Africa, was ordered. An entire region depopulated. Every man, woman, and child murdered.
The Oronteus Finaeus map,
showing Antarctica with ice-free coasts, mountains and rivers. It was based on older maps, lost to His-story
The church decreed that every book not written by Christian hands be destroyed.
There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.
–Augustine (354 C.E.- 430 C.E.)
Europe becomes Christian
War was declared against the cultures of Egypt and Greece. The ancient library of Athens was torn down, all the scribes and priests burned alive. Roman facades were put on ancient temples. Others were torn down and replaced with Christian churches.
Ireland was likewise invaded, but the mercenary Patrick was not up to the task and relented after merely massacring half-a-million people. He reported to Rome that the “serpents have been eliminated,” but he was really giving the Celts some time to hide their knowledge.
Just around 200 years from the time Constantine remade Christianity for his own bloody purposes, the population of the ancient European world had plummeted drastically, and human civilization set back thousands of years. Some estimates claim over 110,000,000 people had died due to conflict, sacrifice, disease, and hunger.
AND WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WAS LOST AS A RESULT. We can only guess, based on physical evidence left behind.
my homage to a place where i once dwelt…from archive.com’s wayback machine
Out in the woods, off the country road – There! Where the out-of-place welcoming sign stands beside the parked vehicles. Between the greenhouse and the garden beds, there winds the trail – a trail to adventures of the imagination, a trail into the possibilities of the moment. Go that way, up the hill and through the Douglas firs. You have found the Land of the Lost, a place for wanderers, students of rebellion, self-exiled romantics determined to make their lives their own!
The first clue for what is to come is the outdoor brewery. What can be learned about a place with no indoor plumbing, or any indoor whatever, when the first primitive pole-and-plywood structure one finds is the 40-gallon brewery?
Continue up the hill, across the stream and on to the kitchen, the gathering area where meals are shared. Notice the outdoor library. The titles are mostly in five categories: food preparation, gardening (permaculture), brewing, rebellion and fictional works of mayhem, wonder and dread.
Of course you are welcomed to stay, to linger by the creek with your books and journals, to dig in the earth, to play and create music, to drink and share stories around the fires and lanterns. You learn of mutual friends, not only around the area, but around the globe. You combat the mosquitoes and hide from the rain and cold. Each day begins with the anticipation of something wonderful coming, while the view of the surrounding mountain distracts your attention from whatever it was you had in mind, until you want just to be there, overwhelmed with scents and sights and sounds.
It’s a leisure-filled life of unmotivated afternoons and pleasant evenings. The days melt away until the world of clocks and schedules seems but a distant, disturbing memory. Yet, the time finally does get your attention. You were just passing through and have stayed longer than you had planned. There were destinations, goals, meetings to make: time demands that you depart. You leave, wondering why your life can’t always be like this, what makes the compelling reasons for leaving so damned compelling?
As the answer comes to you while travelling the twisting road out of the valley, you have one of two reactions: you vow to return for a longer stay, to learn to live this way so that one day you, too, will have your breakaway station from the oppressive world of consumption and domination. Or you speed away with the greatest haste, fleeing the seductive world you’ve found before it’s too late to turn away.
The colonies are self-destructing – it's a scorched earth policy, a war of attrition, so the survivors are left with NOTHING!
