FIMBULVINTER - anarko-primitivism på svenska

“- What do we want?
- Peace!
- When do we want it?
- Now!”

We’ve been saying this for 40 years and we still haven’t realized that symbolic action and symbolic discourse is NOT Action!

And this is even better: there was a counter-demonstration, and the anti-demonstrators were yelling at us that we were communists! This is like a civil war reenactment; it’s like people in medieval costumes pretending to be knights and ladies. Totally bizarre. I haven’t been going to demonstrations lately, so I thought maybe a few things have changed. But no! It’s just “a blast from the past” - for everybody, including the fascists who thought that they were still living in 1979. Very strange.

And this is it! You go, you have a march, you say: “Not in my name!” And then you go home and watch TV. You don’t then go out and start an alternative institution: a church, a farm, a commune…

AM: A pleasure club.

HB: Or even a pleasure club! Instead, they just go home and watch TV.

…

I was thinking about this yesterday on the Peace March – nobody who sees this Peace March and hears the “Peace Now!” slogans is going to change their mind about something. Maybe, if they are 11 years old. It’s always nice to think that maybe some 9 year-old kid will see the March and that changes his or her mind. But basically, this stuff is not persuasive and it’s not even what it’s all about. I asked everybody if they themselves or anybody they knew changed their mind about anything from seeing that movie, Michael Moore’s “911 Fahrenheit”, which I didn’t see. I was just curious to know. No - not one person. They all went because they knew that they would either hate it or agree with it. They didn’t change their mind as a result of seeing the movie. This is not about persuasion. It’s some kind of ritualistic reinforcement of class-values.

…

This is why other radical groupings are not terribly interested in anarchism. If you are Black in this country – anarchism doesn’t have much to offer you. If you’re Native American – anarchism doesn’t have much to say to you. We’ve become a very esoteric little cult, or a group of cults, since, of course, every anarchist is her or his own cult. And I’m kind of sick of that. I’d like to see some Action, even if it’s impure! Just for purely existentialist reasons; because, if you go for too long without getting revenge – it’s not good. “Workers revenge” they used to call it. Perhaps, the idea of the “worker” has to be rethought but the revenge part is still relevant.

AM: Does it have to be on the local level?

HB: Whatever. Not necessarily violence, of course, in the sense, that we’ve always talked about direct action and they think that we mean violence, whereas we could as easily be talking about a food co-op. So, when I say “revenge” – a food co-op can be a good revenge, because we don’t have them here. We have one in the whole county.

…

Basically, I see this as a metaphorically military situation: we had a war in 1968 and we lost but apparently we haven’t realized it, so instead of retreating we do this ritual of repeating the prayers of the 1960’s, like I told you about this Peace March. All I can think of is to try to retreat as deeply as possible into something else. … In any case, it seems to me that when you’re beaten – in the military sense – then you retreat. And if possible, you make an orderly retreat towards sources of reinforcement and logistic supply. That was what Napoleon said.

…

The problem seems to be that the Internet is sucking away any energy that would have gone into real action but which instead goes into the “symbolic discourse” - but even more so because now you have interactivity and the “many-to-many” bullshit, so that you have the illusion of accomplishing great things: “O! We have a million hits on our peace website!” And a million people on the march!” And still nothing happens. And everybody scratches the head and says: “Well, maybe we need to get the message even wider. We need to educate the new generation.” “Education! Education!” I’m so sick of hearing about education. How many times do we have to educate these fucking fools? Don’t they ever learn?

…

Capitalism has a niche for everybody including the people who are fed up with it.

…

There was a time when South Africa was the only country that didn’t have television — for obvious reasons, not the good reasons but the bad reasons. Now everybody has got it and that’s it, thatís the end. This is the end of human society. You can’t have television and human society, as far as I can make out. And a car, of course, completes that by making it possible for human society to physically disperse itself into nothingness.

…

It’s like saying that there’s something liberatory about the telephone. Well, yes, in a way; but in another way not. And the two ways cancel each other out. With telephones the lure is that I can call you in Moscow and we can talk, but that’s also the problem, because youíre in Moscow and I am here. And that’s not society that’s just communication. Communication is not the same as community.

So that’s my problem with the current Internet situation and it’s not just theory, because what I see here in America is that ALL the activity on what we call “the Left” is ALL virtual! All of it, except for a few communes here and there, a few bomb-throwers, people who destroy genetic crops. I have a lot of respect for these people even though I think that their tactics are stupid but I still respect them, because at least they’re doing something.

Everybody else is just “on-line” all the time. It’s maddening! It’s maddening! Especially, since I don’t participate in it. If I participated in it, I would soon sink into the hypnotic state that goes with it.

SM: It is the illusion that something actually happens: Youíre producing some thought and people react to it.

HB: That’s right. Back in the 70s, there was a book called Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander. One of his points was very subtle. The other points were quite clear but one was rather difficult to understand. And still many people don’t understand it. He said, for example, let’s imagine that you watch an hour special on PBS about some fucking Indian tribe that’s disappearing. And you go, “Oh, thatís terrible!” And you feel your heart bursting out with sorrow. And then it switches to some game show. And, basically, what’s going on here is that the television is giving you the illusion of doing something, because you wasted an hour, you spent an hour watching this rather bad television show, when you could have been watching the latest horror movie or something much more entertaining. So you’ve done something! You’ve sacrificed an hour of your life. And now you know things. You can go to work the next day and say “Do you know about the Indians and bla-bla-bla,” and everybody goes “Oh, the poor Indians!” And that’s it! That’s the end of it.

And television actually makes sure that they will never go further than this.

SM: Yes, and if it has already been on television, then why study it more? After all, the journalists have done research and got some money from the TV company. So, it’s there. And then people also need to talk about something, so let’s talk about Indians today.

HB: And this completely replaces human relations. There are people, who think that they have friends, but it turns out that they are the people at work with whom they talk about television.

This woman told me that she had quarreled with her mother years ago and that they have finally reconciled. She had traveled to visit her mother many thousands of miles. And as soon as she came into the house, the mother said, “Oh, there’s this special television show that I have to watch now.” And she said, “Mom, I thought we were reconciling after 7 or 10 years and you are going to go and watch a television show?” The mother said, “You don’t understand. I work for a living and my only friends are the people I work with and this show is the show that we discuss on Tuesdays and I have to watch this show, or I’ll have nothing to talk with my friends about. So, you will just have to wait.”