The Nihilist #2
Texts:
Why should I be Moral?by Peter Kropotkin
My attitude towards Nietzsche
by Emma Goldman
The Early Nihilists
by Sergei Stepniak
Sergei Stepniak
by Peter Kropotkin
Comix:
The Invisibles
My attitude towards Nietzsche
by Emma Goldman
The Early Nihilists
by Sergei Stepniak
Sergei Stepniak
by Peter Kropotkin
CIA goes in. They place animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigation they conclude that rabbits do not exist.
FBI goes in. After two weeks with no leads they burn down the forest, killing everything in it, including their rabbit, and they make no apologies. The rabbit had it coming.
NYPD goes in. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear. The bear is yelling: "Okay! Okay! I'm a rabbit! I'm a rabbit!"
Must I be moral because Kant tells me of a categoric imperative, of a mysterious command which comes to me from the depths of my own being and bids me be moral? But why should this 'categoric imperative' exercise a greater authority over my actions than that other imperative, which at times may command me to get drunk. A word, nothing but a word, like the words 'Providence,' or 'Destiny,' invented to conceal our ignorance.
"Or perhaps because such has been my education? Because my mother taught me morality? Shall I then go and kneel down in a church, honor the Queen, bow before the judge I know for a scoundrel, simply because our mothers, our good ignorant mothers, have taught us such a pack of nonsense?
"I am prejudices, - like everyone else. I will try to rid myself of prejudice! Even though immortality be distasteful, I will yet force myself to be immoral, as when I was a boy I forced myself to give up fearing the dark, the churchyard, ghosts and dead people - all of which I had been taught to fear.
"It will be immoral to snap a weapon abused by religion; I will do it, were it only to protect against the hypocrisy imposed on us in the name of a word to which the name morality has been given!"
Such was the way in which the youth of Russia reasoned when they broke with old-world prejudices, and unfurled this banner of nihilist or rather anarchist philosophy: to bend the knee to no authority whatsoever, however respected, to accept no principle so long as it is unestablished by reason.
Need we add, that after pitching into the waste-paper basket the teachings of their fathers, and burning all systems of morality, the nihilist youth developed in their midst a nucleus of moral customs, infinitely superior to anything that their fathers had practised under the control of the "Gospel," of the "Conscience," of the "Categoric Imperative," or of the "Recognized Advantage" of the utilitarian...
...Take the employer who cheats his workmen to buy jewels for his wife or his mistress. Take any petty scoundrel you like. He again only obeys an impulse. He seeks the satisfaction of a craving, or he seeks to escape what would give him trouble.
We are almost ashamed to compare such petty scoundrels with one who sacrifices his whole existence to free the oppressed, and like a Russian nihilist mounts the scaffold. So vastly different for humanity are the results of these two lives; so much do we feel ourselves drawn towards the one and repelled by the other.
And yet were you to talk to such a martyr, to the woman who is about to be hanged, even just as she nears the gallows, she would tell you that she would not exchange either her life or her death for the life of the petty scoundrel who lives on the money stolen from his work-people. In her life, in the struggle against monstrous might, she finds her highest joys. Everything else outside the struggle, all the little joys of the bourgeois and his little troubles seem to her so contemptible, so tiresome, so pitiable! "You do not live, you vegetate," she would reply; "I have lived."
- Peter Kropotkin
We're living in modern times, and nowhere is more modern than the USA - the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. But what is it that makes "the American dream" fundamentally different than any society that has existed before us? The answer is mass consumerism, or to be precise: commodification. In our society everything is made into commodities; goods or services that can be exchanged on a market. Surely markets and money have existed for thousands of years, but it only comprised a tiny fraction of society. Not until this century did the market economy become the dominant way of life; increasingly taking over every aspect of people's existence.There is no longer any obvious relationship between production of goods and their use. Instead all products are produced for the sole purpose of making a profit for people who are not even part of the production process. It make no difference whether or not the products are actually useful for someone. As long as a company is making a profit, it is considered contributing to the national economy and the common good. Not for profit activities are on the other hand not counted as "real" production, no matter what kind of usable goods or services they yield.
But things are worse than this. In order to obtain the necessary goods, most people are forced to make their own bodies into a commodity; renting it out at a market for the highest price. To improve your value on the job marked, you might invest in education, but your most important "job skill" is to learn how to take orders and preform your tasks like a robot. Remember, the customers are always right, because with their money, they buy a small slice of your time. At work, you are no longer free, you are a rented tool to be used in the production of profit. The job market not only makes yourself into a commodity but even time itself. Your working hours cease to exist as your own, but are made into rigid units of measurement, dead time that serve you no other purpose than earning money to be spent in your remaining "free" time. This "free" time is where you are supposed to realise your desires and live out your dreams. But dreams and desires are like everything else made into commodities to be bought and sold on the market. Thus modern life has no other meaning than to consume.
Politics and elections are likewise made into commodities that are marketed in the exact same way as deodorants or cars or any other product. 30 second soundbites tell us that if you choose presidential candidate X instead of Y, the country will prosper and you'll have a better life. Of course, everyone knows that the commercials lies and that there are no significant differences between the candidates. But then, there are no significant differences between Pepsi and Coke either, and no one really believes the commercials that tell you that "things go better with Coke." Why should politics be any different? People generally pay little attention, and simply vote for the guy who looks best on TV.
The only part of life that is considered exempt from this dreary routine is the "family." In the past, families were the fundamental building blocks of society. Today they are the negation of society: The family is where you escape from the world around you. The family is where you can take out your frustrations on your loved ones, without making waves in the social order. This is of course why conservative politicians love the family so much.
The tyrants of the past defended their rule by declaring that they were appointed by God himself to be his representatives on earth. Likewise today's rulers claim to be put there by the actions of the holy "invisible hand" of the market. And just like the scholars of the past studied the holy scriptures to discern the will of the almighty; today the bourgeoisie send their sons and daughters to universities to try to learn the laws of the market. But no matter how hard they study; they never manage to penetrate the inscrutable ways of the capitalist economy. Every time a new economic crisis hit; the capitalists are just as perplexed. Even though the world is their own product; it appears strange and foreign to them. So strong is the alienation of today that even the rulers of our society are blinded by it.
What is then left to be done by the few of us who are not content with being spectators to our own exploitation, and who still wish for a free life? Are we to "hurl ourselves at the wheels of the machine to try to stop it with our own bodies," as was the cry of radical students in the sixties? Or are we to turn our back to the empire in order to eke out a living on the margins of society where we can attempt to build our own free communes? Or perhaps we should bide our time and wait for ampler opportunities to come for an all out assault on the establishment. Maybe we can't halt the juggernaut of capitalism, but let us at least strew some sand in its machinery, if only to maintain our own dignity and self-respect.
- Felix Frost
But today much has changed. Most of the squats are gone, and the few that still exist face constant threats of eviction. The emptying of squats is but one of the aims of the European police coordinating project TREVI. TREVI is an acronym for Terrorism Radicalism Extremism Violence International. It markets itself to the public as fighting international terrorism and drug smuggling. Its real purpose is to curb all resistance to the establishment of the new European superstate. The European Union is to be turned into an economic and military superpower in order to keep up the competition with the US/Nafta and Japan/Asean trade blocks.
As part of the European integration, the internal border control between the EU states will cease, while the borders to the rest of the world will be tightened. Vast computer registers are being set up to keep track of all "shady elements" not wanted in the new Empire. All asylant applicants are to be registered; as are criminals and subversives. Another suggestion from the EU planners is that all EU countries must have laws against participation in "criminal organisations." Most of the European countries have such laws already, and in recent years they have been put in use across the continent:
In Italy, over 70 anarchists are still on trial for "subversive association" and for belonging to an armed anarchist group that only exists in the runaway imagination of the Italian prosecutors and judiciary. Earlier this year, two of the accused anarchists died in custody. (See following pages.) Despite a total lack of evidence, this farce of a courtcase continues in the high security "Bunker" of Rebibbia Prison in Rome.
In Germany, the police regularly search the homes and centers of the "autonome" movement in their hunt for the editors of the banned magazine Radikal. They never actually find the makers of Radikal, but succeed in their goal of harassing and intimidating the radical left. Last year 500 cops came breaking through doors throughout Berlin, this time looking for the editorial staff of the weekly autonomist newsletter Interim. The cops confiscated computers and disks, but were unable to find any incriminating evidence. Charges against 14 people arrested in connection with the raids were eventually dropped. With the growing European integration and police cooperation, the German authorities hope to stop Radikal from being distributed from Holland (where it is still legal).
In England, three editors of the magazine Green Anarchist were recently sentenced to three years in prison after being found guilty in a "conspiracy to incite persons unknown to commit criminal damage," by writing about illegal actions in their paper. Two more writers are waiting for their trial to come up.
During the EU summit in Amsterdam last year, an entire demonstration of several hundred people were detained by the police. The charge: being members of an "criminal organisation." In Spain, Greece, Austria the story repeats itself. In Europe today you don't have to actually commit any acts of resistance to the new European Empire to be considered a criminal; just writing about it or discussing it can land you in jail...
-Felix Frost
The Italian city of Turin, having put forward its candidature for the Olympic Games in 2006, along with local businessmen and various police authorities, has initiated a systematic purification of all possible opposition to its Olympic prospects - local squatters and anarchists being the first targets.
On the nights of both March 5th and 6th, the police launched an operation in Turin to reclaim three squatted houses: L'Alcova, La Casa, and L'Asilo (the eviction of L'Asilo being particularly violent, with police going even as far as urinating on the occupants beds). However, on Friday, March 6th, L'Asilo was reoccupied.
As a result of these evictions, three people from La Casa were arrested on warrants that accused them of "criminal association with terrorist aims" as the police thoroughly ransacked the building for "arms and other explosive devices" which were thought to be stored. They only found a smoke bomb. However, since then three occupants of La Casa - Edoardo Massari, Silvano Pelissero and Maria Soledad Rosas - have been kept in custody accused, without proof, of being members of a terrorist group.
On March 28th, Edoardo Massari was found hung in his prison cell. As a result of this tragedy, a protest of over 6000 people, consisting of many anarchists and Italian, French and Swiss squatters, along with the Italian Anarchist Federation, filled the streets of Turin on Saturday, April 4th. This demonstration was organized by 12 squatted social canters which called for the immediate release of Sole and Silvano along with an explanation of how Edoardo met his death in prison. The demonstration, which took place under heavy police presence, erupted into violent street fighting. Police were attacked with rocks and other projectiles, windows were smashed, shops were vandalized, and a number of abandoned public buildings were seized and occupied and made into makeshift squatted social centres. Smaller protests also broke out in many other Italian cities.
Italy's Prime Minister Romano Prodi publicly expressed his concern over the events by stating, "These types of problems reveal areas of deep discontent which can only worry the government."
Soledad hanged herself (we don't have any reason to doubt it) on Friday night (between July 10 and 11, 1998) in Benevagienna (Italy), where she was living under house arrest in the community "Sotto i ponti". Her body has been taken to the hospital of Mondova, as required by a magistrate who was very upset because of the unexpected interruption of his fishing-day. Actually we don't even know his name. Many journalists, as usual, arrived immediately but they were chased away.
Soledad was an anarchists 22 years old and she was Argentinian. She was in Italy since September, 1997. During the investigations on the sabotages against the High Speed Train Project (TAV) in Val Susa, she was accused of being a member of an armed organization called "Lupi Grigi" (Grey Wolves) which claimed itself as responsible of only one such sabotage (there have been a dozen of them and almost all happened before Summer 1997). She was arrested with other two anarchists, Silvano Pelissero and Edoardo Massari at the beginning of March, 1998. The charges were reduced after the suicide in jail of Edoardo Massari.
Soledad then obtained house arrest in Benevagenna; Silvano was moved instead to the high security prison of Novara. At the moment he is at his 20th day of hunger-strike asking for house arrest and in order to know the date of his trial. The magistrate who holds the inquiry about the sabotages against TAV (the inquiry was supposed to finish on May, 7th) is Maurizio Laudi.
The famous "arsenal" found in the cellar of the Casa Occupata in Collegno (Turin), where Silvano, Soledad and Edoardo lived, has been never showed to the public and any expert evidence has been never presented. The Media are working to construct a part for Silvano, describing him as an agent provocateur.
Right now there are no public manifestations scheduled, and we hope there won't be, given the results of the mass demonstration held on April, 4th: just a sort of exorcism after which nothing really meaningful happened. Let's leave apart any mere conventional form act. Anyone wanting to express his thoughts and sentiments and rage should simply do it, in the place and the situation where one lives, by one's own times and ways.
There is nothing to add and nothing to be shouted out. Move.
(think globally and act locally)
El Paso Occupato
centro sociale... squat
Via Passo Buole 47
10127 - Torino - Italy
tel. 0039-11-317.41.07
- The A-Infos News Service