Defacing the Currency: Selected Writings, 1992-2012

354 Pages·2012·1.2 MB·English

by  Bob Black

Bob
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Defacing the Currency
Selected Writings 1992-2012
Bob Black
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Defacing the Currency
Selected Writings
1992-2012
by Bob Black
Defacing the Currency
licensed under creative commons
2012
LBC Books
lbcbooks.com
Berkeley, CA
Contents
Bob Black – A Jester Among Fools ........................iii
by Aragorn!
Defacing the Currency: Diogenes the Cynic ......... xi
by Diogenes Laertius
Debunking Democracy .......................................... 3
A
nArchism
Anarchy 101 ................................................... 37
Theses on Anarchism after Post-Modernism .... 53
Chomsky on the Nod ..................................... 61
Apes of Wrath .................................................... 175
The Salvador Dali Lama Sez . . . ............................ 185
The Divine Comedy .......................................... 188
Don’t Tread on Me! ............................................ 190
L , c , d r
Aw rime And ispute esoLution
An Anarchist Response to
“The Anarchist Response to Crime” ....... 193
The War on Drugs as the Health of the State . 217
“Wild Justice” ............................................... 233
FIJA: Monkeywrenching the Legal System .... 271
Technophilia, an Infantile Disorder ...................... 291
Steven Hawking His Wares .................................. 309
Zerowork Revisited ............................................ 327
Bob Black
A Jester Among Fools
by Aragorn!
It’s been 16 long years since Bob Black’s last book.
This is not because Bob has stopped writing, or even
that the audience for his work has disappeared. Quite
the opposite. It’s been 16 years since Anarchy After
Leftism because for anarchy (beyond the left) to suc-
ceed it has had to do it without Bob Black.
When anarchism was small, a stunted little creature
obsessing about how best to redo the Spanish Civil
War, it made sense that it would travel in odd com-
pany. It was open to a crowd of bohemians, freaks, and
misfits. In this crowd of merry men truth was never in
short supply. Truth is easy when you are powerless and
incapable of doing anything about, or with, it.
In the buildup to what’s now called “the
antiglobalization movement” the imp became a
dwarf. Part of this transition looked like an attempt to
make anarchism mainstream. Never again would it be
tarred with the self-conscious subcultures of punk, art,
nudism, strange dietary choices (like vegetarianism),
iii
polyamory, or any of the other variegated choices that
have threaded their way through the tapestry of anar-
chism over the past hundred years. This mainstream-
ing, or historical rewrite if you will, is best described
as the transition to social anarchism.
In Bookchin’s Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anar-
chism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, Bob Black was already
revised out of the Noble Anarchist Tradition. His
strange conflicts against work, SubGenius, and Pro-
cessed World didn’t map to Bookchin et al.’s terri-
tory of a socialist, historical, organizational anarchism.
Bob’s reaction to SALA was Anarchy After Leftism,
which was an impossible read to the sober dwarfish
shepherds mainstreaming anarchism. They didn’t re-
spond, believing that was all the response necessary
for their self-evidently superior position. Little did
they know that their so-called social collaboration
with the anti-globalization movement wouldn’t grow
anarchism at all, but would merely improve the most
mediocre aspects of the Left. The anti-authoritarian
perspectives of the good-hearted social anarchists pro-
vided a new vocabulary for the current generation of
leftist political operatives. Activists became organizers,
voting became consensus, and, by one definition, an-
archism became “the best of the liberalism and the
best of communism.”
These mediocrities can have anarchism. Anar-
chism was always an ideological fixation on a losers’
revolutionary strategy. Beautiful as the idea was of a
human goodness that could span society and trans-
form it using the alchemy of the most downtrodden
and callused among us, it was always a theory, and
iv
theories, once tested, should change based on expe-
rience. If anarchism is the Constitution of this lack of
change then leave it to the workerists, bureaucrats, and
organizers of the left. As for the rest of us, let us have
glorious chaotic technicolor anarchy. If revolution is
beyond us than at the very least we should live now as
passionately, honestly, and vigorously as possible.
If anarchism is going to be a cold-blooded Eu-
ropean analysis or francophone rhetorical flourish it
may find appeal in certain American metropoles, but
it will have little impact beyond there. If anarchy is
going to be wild eyed, biblical, and pristine it may
find purchase in the US as a new type of evange-
lism. A new holy war against the money-lenders and
corptocracy. But perhaps the energy doesn’t exist to
make it either. It may be that anarchy is merely the
poking at kings with wooden swords, the cutting off
of our noses to spite our face, and a series of pratfalls
with too-high bail conditions. Anarchists are editorial
cartoonists with stones, Yippies in monochrome, and
satirists with a sordid history of utopianism. If anarchy
is the domain of fools than Bob Black is our Jerry
Cornelius: the alpha and omega of foolish anarchy, of
a hysterical seriousness, and of a critical eye out of
fashion since the disbanding of the SI.
* * *
Who would’ve thought that the author of the
Abolition of Work and the punching bag to the San
Francisco ultraleft of the 80s would prefigure 4Chan,
Anonymous, and troll culture in general, but he did.
v
The posters of the Last International (1977-1983) are
a bridge in the cultural history between the detourne-
ment of the SI and the grotesque Photoshop porn of
4Chan. The attacks against Processed World, Murray
Bookchin, and AK press were one man DDOS1 at-
tacks (via Xerox) against political adversaries — in his
reviews, IRL2, and in lengthy (scholarly and bratty)
tracts like The Baby and the Bathwater, Anarchy after
Leftism, and Nightmares of Reason. And like his progeny,
much of this hostile labor was done for the laughs or,
as the kids would say, for the lulz.
The Anonymous slogan (“We are Anonymous. We
are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Ex-
pect us.”) could have come from Bob Black’s mouth,
if anyone were willing to stand up with him to be a
Legion, but his form of ludic play has had little recog-
nition outside of the realm of imps and dwarves and a
few other playmates.
Here is where Internet culture and several gener-
ations of anarchist practice have something to teach
authors like Bob Black (or anyone who stands up to
be counted). Identity, as a political actor, as an em-
ployee, or as a form of self worth, is also a form of
1 DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks are a horizon-
tal attacks against Internet infrastructure. They can involve a se-
ries of compromised clients (aka bots) doing nothing more than
asking for data from a host on a persistent basis. They can also
involve a more conscious effort by a dedicated client. One exam-
ple of this, the so-called LOIC (low orbital ion cannon), is a tool
used by Anonymous to generalize an attack on hosts determined
by the Anonymous “hive mind”.
2 IRL means In Real Life and is Internet slang for interactions
we humans have away from the keyboard (or increasingly, touch
screens).
vi
endangerment. To be known is to be harassed and be-
littled, even more so when you are one person stand-
ing against the world (or the Left). This is one reason
(among many) that many anarchists write anony-
mously. It can be said that privacy will be the civil
rights movement of the 21st century. This relationship
between identity and privacy is why. This battle will
be fought in the tension between personalities and
counting coup.
Today, efforts to destroy, mock, and/or illuminate
the bloviations of the left, technocratic optimism, and
the politicians that love them, are best done from the
safety of anonymity. The obsessive nature of the police
apparatus, search engines, and counter trolls promises
an accounting for dissent (if under your own name).
Harsh critics outside of the mainstream are doomed
to solitary, disrespected, misunderstood lives.
Do not confuse a critic with an angel, or a fool
with a savior. An introduction to Bob Black has to
include, like it or not, the fact that along with be-
ing powerless he is vengeful. Nearly 20 years ago this
included the stupid act of writing a letter to the po-
lice. This letter may or may not have given license to
the police to raid and imprison the target of his ven-
geance, but Jim Hogshire was raided and jailed after
the letter was sent.
Anarchists, and counterculture-ists have more-or-
less rejected Bob Black since this incident. His book
has been banned in several locations, his public ap-
pearances have been shadowed by physical threats,
and Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed magazine, his
vii