by ROGER BLACKAT
Politics and sex go together like gin and tonic, law and order or Northrup and Grummon: not only is the sexual always political, the political life has an erotic tone. One note which may escape notice is the way people have “political orientations” very much like sexual orientations. Like their carnal cousin, political orientations are tricky things—they blur at the edges and everyone carries a few hung up expressions of the others. In both cases the downtalkers of media, education and state act as though there are only two, perhaps three choices. You are gay, straight or bi (but probably lying or “in college”); you are Right, Left or moderate (but probably just an idiot). Of course, there are people turned on by car crashes, fire and women stomping on bugs, guys who like dressing like women and having women sodomize them with dildos, and a class of individuals who get off on total denial of sex. These folks tend to congregate in decadent and ancient sex cults such as the Roman Catholic clergy.
In the same way, your politics are probably not easily demonstrable on those online x/y graph political tests. Those tests seek to flatten something as rugged as our senses ofhow power is and ought to be organized into a short paragraph telling you exactly which of the bosses you ought to like the most. This is why you find yourself dissatisfied with the talking head choices on TV: if the choice is between the bloated dumbasses of the Right or Liberal Left (or the obscurantist arrogance of the “in college” Left), who could possibly care?
But you have a political orientation just as you have a sexual orientation. You might be generally straight or gay, reactionary or revolutionary, vanilla or kinked, mainstream or radical, but amidst these spectra and in consideration of the idiosyncrasies of your desires, there emerge orientations as unique to thee as thy fingerprints. Complicating this process is the way that certain stigmatized ideas are suppressed and repressed. The closet for gay people isn't just not talking about the fact that one is gay, it is a denial to oneself that it is or has to be true. It is a complete refusal to face facts, a compartmentalization of one's identity and a pathological rejection of one's desires in order to conform to the dictates of power. In the same way, political identity can be denied and deprived of a name despite the fact that it continues to program our reactions to objects of desire. That is to say, there is a queer political community you might very well be part of without even realizing it.
You've felt the urges for years, the desires to break the law, break rules, refuse to obey orders, fail to show up on time, the rejection of the requirements for your life set for you by others. There are a few specific manifestations of this desire which are dead giveaways as to the queerness's presence.
First, do you find yourself in more-or-less unrelenting contempt for the political leaders and movements of your day? Do you think that no political party has yet figured out a meaningful program that doesn't merely extend that party's power further into your life? Is the only thing more cynical than your opinion of politicians the scheming of these same scumbags? This sense infects your opinion of political institutions in general: the government is an object of scorn and suspicion, you don't trust bureaucrats, cops, national heroes with hideous secrets of their own, teachers or the mindless spectacle of patriotic conformity. For this reason you end up making up your own law and avoiding the agents of authority to the best of your ability. There are criminal actions—whether traffic violations, drug usage, public intoxication, tax cheating, shoplifting, etc.--which you happily adopt with a clear conscience, while there are “sacred” duties such as voting, snitching and saluting you abstain from always.
Second, do you find the commercialism of our contemporary culture loathsome? Does the sound of Christmas music in October make you nauseous with visions of the orgy of consumption, the fat middle-american, middle-class, mediocre middle-management types and their spouses and children jamming their faces and closets with garbage from McDonald's and Wal-Mart? You likely express this contempt at times as pity, as you realize that these people are just grasping at happiness in a world where their lives are dictated by their bosses, their TVs and their need for acceptance in a consumer culture. You know that while the government can't be trusted in any time, its most dangerous aspect today is its complete ownership by corporate interests. You resent having to sell your life for a paycheck, and you might even find ways to sabotage, slack off, reduce productivity or otherwise obstruct the machinery of capitalist nonsense. You get by pretty simply, and aren't likely to fall thrall to fads and fashions, and you hate waste.
Finally, do you reject the idea of any kind of celestial boss, a kind of burnt out Santa Claus of the skies ready to torture you without end for cussing, drinking and masturbating? Do you instinctively distrust all preachers and avoid all proselytizers? Do you explore the transcendent without needing labels; do you reject the guilt and hateful bullshit of the Bronze Age superstitions destroying all our cultures? Chances are you have found some way to address the inevitable—your imminent death—without resorting to childish and vulgar ideas of eternal happiness in reward for temporal subservience. People incapable of dealing reality as it really is find your independence and courage threatening or mystifying, but you don't really like talking to them about it, because they aren't worth your time.
If you feel at least some of these symptoms in each of the three categories, or note a strong affinity with the general sentiments of each, you are very likely an anarchist, without even realizing it. Anarchy is the idea that there is no power higher than the individual conscience, and that over time efforts to control freedom in the name of grander “social” goods will simply increase the level of chaos and misery in everyday life. It means no gods, no masters: you are king of your own life, just like everybody else.
The first thing that should be realized here is that the primary directive after one commits to freedom is RESPONSIBILITY. Freedom is not easy, it is not the lazy state-sanctioned “liberty” upholstered in consumer crap of everyday American life. It is a battle, because it means rejecting all limitations, because freedom under restraint means nothing more than the absence of restraint under restraint which is meaningless. If you are to be truly free, though, responsibility much reign: thou art responsible for the totality of thy life, for everything good and bad therein. This is a terrifying, liberating idea, but if you aren't willing to take responsibility for your conditions, your attitudes, your opportunities and (most importantly) thy failings you can never be free. Learning to provide, protect and create for oneself is the first step towards coming out of the closet.
But aren't anarchists the ones who throw bombs and break windows and generally wreak blind havoc? Aren't they agents of chaos? YES! Chaos is the only natural order—look at a forest for example. There is no rule here, no order or plan or philosophy or ideology. There is only chaos, and yet it is perfectly balanced and ordered. In order to return order to our political, social and everyday life you must increase the level of chaos, that is to say freedom where you are. The guiding principal for a responsible political movement here is DIRECT ACTION. This means that you aren't interested in writing a check so that the right guy can get elected so the government can take care of the problem. It doesn't mean petitioning management. It means finding something you can do immediately to take responsibility for smashing the forces of control and unleashing the power of creativity.
And these are the parameters of direct action, the criteria by which anarchist action is designed: CREATIVE DESTRUCTION. This idea, developed by the not-anarchist (or perhaps closeted) economist Joseph Schumpeter in the 20th century has been an anarchist impulse for many moons previous. Mikhail Bakunin, the main anarchist voice in early industrial socialism once said “The Passion for Destruction is a Creative Passion.” Your direct action must smash away a part of the old as a means of bringing out some new beauty from the drear pieces of the status quo. Thou must create something new and awesome though the disciplined undermining of what is old. Whether you are scrawling slogans on the bathroom stall at work or setting fire to a cop car, you are creating something to inspire from the wretched refuse of that which oppresses.
Now were this a piece for a church or other religion, for a normal political party or even good ol' Marxism and general radicalism this is where I'd tell you why a particular little cabal of people is the only right one, and how they are wrong about nothing. It would be there that you, the newly enlightened anarchist would throw this away. The fact of the matter is that anarchists, particularly the closeted variety who've been too busy living to read up on all the old theories, are not really joiners. The idea of going to meetings, paying dues, signing up for volunteer hours or whatever sounds about as appealing as an intestinal flu. But this isn't for any philosophy or front such as the ones I mentioned; it isn't for any “movement” at all. It is for you, an individual who has been living a lie and knows that you must be free, and it is an introduction to how you can take care of your own damn liberation.
While anarchism is interesting and worth studying, ANARCHY is older, more universal, more closely akin to an orientation than an ideology. Anarchists have always lived and always will—just as there will always be those more attracted to the same gender as the opposite. You just need to find little ways to create destruction, to destroy creatively, to bring forth a new life in the shell of the old. Little acts of sabotage and trickery can be accomplished, and by acting alone you can slip under the radar screen, generally raising the stakes for a system of life we know can't be sustained. As you proceed you'll meet others of our tribe, of our lifestyle, and you may share affinities which make combined action possible. At times the work of your group may intersect with that of others and whole experiments in demonstrating freedom will arise. Ultimately a movement may result, but you are only responsible for the direct action you do to change your life.
You know that the government can't fix things, and even if they could the expansion of their power would be worse than whatever problems were solved. You know that the money system is a fairy tale told by a very few to enchant the many into wagering their lives in a losing game. You know that no liberation waits after the grave, and that only this life can be perfect and free. You are responsible for creating this life, for building a new world. Do something, build something, destroy something, and remember who you are, THOU ANARCHIST.
(Roger Blackat is Amerika's foremost street propagandist).
