Sean has a security review in January 2014. This is a chance for him to have his status lowered. If you want to possibly enhance his chances, send letters in support of lowering Sean’s security status to the below address; or, send an e-mail to D-Block Unit Manager c/o Laura.Gardner@odrc.state.oh.us

Unit Manager D Block
OSP
878 Coitville Hubbard rd
Youngstown, Ohio 44505

Some possible talking points:

1) Sean is not a gang member. He has been sent to higher security to silence his criticism of Jpay policy.

2) Sean is a model prisoner who has signed up for all relevant programs.

3) Shawn Marshall 461-448, another prisoner who has admitted to involvement in the rule violations Sean denies involvement in, has already had his status lowered and is currently at 4A status.

4) Keeping Sean at 4B prevents him from getting to the security level he needs to be paroled in 2016. This means even after his counsel files the upcoming civil action to challenge this disciplinary discrepancy, Sean will suffer the consequences at the parole board, which will necessitate further litigation.

5) To learn more about this the disciplinary discrepancy and illegal activities surrounding Sean’s case go to seanswain.org

The more people who write the better. You can also call OSP @ (330)743-0700 ask to speak to D-Block Unit Manager and relate this information. Please be polite. For now, if denied, Sean’s next review will be in July 2014.
If you find out the review has already happened, ask the outcome and if it was not a recommendation in to lower Sean’s status, try to persuade prison officials to change their minds.

Introduction

By way of introduction, some background:

Crimethinc explored the topic of fascism in their podcast #11. You can probably check that out by clicking someplace where a friend of mine has a blue line under some words, I suspect.

I responded to that podcast and presented a way to view freedom and the State, anarchism and fascism. Again, you can probably expend a calorie by clicking and checking out my full response, but I’ll give a really quick summary here. Freedom is “the absence of external regulation” (thank you, Ward Churchill), so freedom and external regulation are opposites. Where regulated, you are not free; where free, you are not regulated. Imagine freedom as one point and complete external regulation as another with a line between them, and you’ve got a continuum.

A crude illustration might appear here:

Freedom (absence of external regulation)——————————————————-Absolute external regulation   (absence of freedom)

Since the Statee representes external regulation, only anarchists (who oppose the existence of the State) can stand on the extreme point of Freedom. Since fascists advocate for the total transcendence of the State and a negation of all personal freedom, they occupy the opposite point.

I then managed to pose an argument that will piss off roughly 95% of the world’s population when I said that, since all other hierarchical schemes (from socialists to republicans) on the continuum all have the essential features of fascism to some lesser degree, all of them (except anarchists) are some “light beer” fascist formations.

Yeah. I put a Sharpie-marker Hitler mustache on conservatives, liberals, socialists, and everyone in between. I concluded that, to defeat fascism, you must defeat the State…and only anarchists can do that.

In podcast #15, Alanis and Clara gave a fair presentation of my response. Click on the words with the blue line under them and check it out. But, again, for the super-lazy, I’ll summarize their reply to my ideas and then address them.

Alanis suggested that in addition to the continuum that I presented, we have to add another dimension which accounts for “our capacity to act and realize our potential.” This implicates the idea that even if I’m not regulated directly, the oppression of someone else “inhibit(s)…realization of our collective potential.” She also points out that fascists believe their aims and goals can only be achieved at the expense of the “other,” which then implicates racism, sexism, etc., while anarchists employ means that are consistent with self-determination, solidarity, and mutual aid.

Clara then made an important point, I think, that deserves quoting almost in entirety. She said that “characterizing all non-anarchist political ideologies as essentially more or less virulent varieties of fascism [which is really good description of what I did 🙂 ] risks eclipsing some of the specific characteristics of fascism as it has appeared over the past century—not to mention alienating potential allies in anti-fascist struggles. Anarchists can’t defeat fascism alone, but we can used shared opposition to it to introduce others to broader critiques of state power.”

After Alanis suggested that we must judge political theory separate from how it ends up practiced, Clara suggested a somewhat more complex model than my single-axis continuum. If I understand it correctly Clara’s model would have “x” and “y” axes that intersect like the graphs in algebra class, with one continuum representing something akin to my graph, and the intersecting axis representing the continuum between centralization and decentralization.

I’ve summarized those points because I want to address them more in-depth below, and I didn’t bother to recount the points where we all agreed. To recount those would serve no other purpose except to make us all seem brilliant.

And that’s not necessary…everyone knows anarchism and brilliance are correlated.

Besides, disagreement is more interesting. My disagreements follow, and I hope they are interesting.

Response

I note that all of the arguments against my previous response arise fro ma sense that my presentation is somewhat an oversimplification. (Alanis: “…we might try to broaden our notion…by addition another dimension…”; “another key opposition between fascists and anarchists…”; Clara: “…characterizing all non-anarchist political, ideological…risks eclipsing some of the specific characteristics of fascism…”; and “…(there is) another axis we need to consider…”). Alanis and Clara don’t use the term “oversimplification” because their too polite for that, but all of the arguments they made that I intend to address seem to indicate that my single-axis continuum of freedom (“absence of external regulation”) to absolute external regulation (“absence of freedom”) lacks some necessary moving parts and whistles and bells.

From my reading, it seems that there are two principle arguments that originate from this position. The first is, my presentation omits other dimensions that must be considered, and the second—premised somewhat on the first—is that such an oversimplification leads to inaccurate conclusions that are ultimately false.

“Other Dimensions”

Clara suggests that rather than referring to my simple one-axis continuum, we need two intersecting axes. One continuum, by her conception, would represent “centralization” and “decentralization,” while the other would be a range between hierarchy and equality.

This model is instructive for analysis certainly, but somewhat redundant, I think, when contrasted to mine. Here, we have a range of centralization and decentralization. Of what?

Well, whatever your answer—power. Centralization of the economy (socialism) is centralization of economic power. Centralization of legal authority (the State) is centralization of political power. Centralization of gumballs is the centralization of the power to blow bubbles.

Power equals regulation. That which exercises power over something else is regulating.

We’re back to my graph. Absence of regulation at one end, absolute regulation at the other. It follows, naturally, I think, that at the fascist end of the spectrum you have a tendency of centralization—concentrating the power to regulate into fewer hands; while at the opposing end, the freedom end, you have the anarchist tendency to diffuse power in the absence of a State, the absence of a regulator.

Returning to Clara’s model, we have the other axis which ranges from “hierarchy” to “equality.” A quick point here before we proceed, but hierarchy and equality are not necessarily opposites; you either have hierarchy or you don’t, but the absence of hierarchy doesn’t automatically imply equality. But even so, let’s contrast this axis with my freedom (“absence of external regulation”) to absolute-regulation axis.

Equality corresponds easily with the idea of no bosses/slaves—an “equality” of power. Inequality always implies someone having the wherewithal to stick it to someone else. I would suggest that this concept, “equality,” can only exist in the absence of an external regulator because, if an external regulator exists, it has an unequal power. So, equality, in an absolute sense, can only correspond to the “freedom” point on my axis. And, on my axis, as you depart from “freedom,” from the absolute position, you get lesser and lesser degrees of equality as well.

Are we starting to appreciate how phantasmorific my graph is?

But, again, whenever we are on the sliding scale, equality to greater inequality, we don’t bump into “hierarchy.” As I mentioned, hierarchy is not the opposite of equality, but is the opposite of the-absence-of-hierarchy. So for that, we’re back to my graph (phantasmorific!) and we note that the position of freedom, absence of regulation, necessarily corresponds to an absence of hierarchy, and the rest of the continuum is a sliding scale of how much hierarchy sucks. Sucks a lot way over there. Sucks significantly less over here.

So, by my analysis, for what it’s worth, I like all the things Clara’s “x” and “y” axes are measuring, but I think they’re unnecessary. By any analysis, we can see the correlation between equality and freedom and decentralization (diffusion) and diversification and variation and the absence of external regulation; where the opposites of all of those great things are concentrated at the other end where Dick Chaney and Darth Vader reside.

Freedom———————————————————————————————————absolute external regulation

absence of external regulation———————————————————————— (absence of freedom)

(and all the good stuff on Clara’s graph)————————————————————– (the ultimate suck)

Okay. So, let’s move on to an argument Alanis made, that also implies (politely) that I’ve over-simplified. She suggested, “…we might try to broaden our notion of fascism and how it relates to anarchism by adding another dimension to our definition of freedom. In addition to absence of external regulation, we’d add our capacity to act and realize our potential. This is what makes the slogan “No One is Free when Others are Oppressed” concrete; the oppression of others may or may not serve as an external regulation to us individually, but it does inhibit our realization of our collective project” (emphasis added).

As I understand this, Alanis is saying—and I agree—that my own freedom can be diminished by the oppression of another. And before I start drawing distinctions, I first want to point out the essential truth of this that the existence of oppression anywhere is the existence of oppression everywhere.

Everybody act accordingly. 🙂

However, I think Alanis is mixing apples and oranges. To draw a distinction, we have the question of what freedom is, and we have a separate (but related) question of whether or not your current freedom (or current lack of it) will influence or inhibit my freedom.

So, let me approach it this way. We have my freedom, my “absence of external regulation.” In the current moment, I am free. Every possible choice is available to me. And at the same time, Alanis is unfree. She’s oppressed.

But notice, our definition doesn’t change. Freedom and it’s absence is still understood by the degree of external regulation or its absence.

This is “apples”—the definition.

Now, for “oranges”—if Alanis is oppressed now, will that impact my freedom in the next moment? And the answer, of course, is yes. Alanis being oppressed now will foreclose on some of my options ten seconds from now. So, her absence of freedom will become a force that works as an inhibitor, a regulator of my freedom, by foreclosing upon some of my options. I am not free if I cannot choose what I would otherwise choose, all because Alanis is in chains.

But, again, I would suggest that my model does not need modified. You’ll note, the definition of freedom is “the absence of external regulation,” not “the absence of direct external regulation over me.” For me to be totally free, there must be an absolute absence of external regulation.

Its existence impacts me. That’s why taking down just the State of Ohio just the United States would not be good enough. As Rage Against the Machine said it in Renegades of Funk: “Destroy all nations…”

The absence of external regulation.

That’s also the reason that the cop in his police cruiser represents oppression whether he is arresting me or whether he’s eating a salami sandwich. He’s an external regulator. He’s present.

And that’s why we have to drop the bowling ball through his windshield. It’s not personal. It’s principle. His very existence drags us from our absolute position on my (phantasmorific!) freedom graph.

So, that takes us to the next argument Alanis makes, implying (politely) that my analysis is over-simplified and incomplete:

“Herein lies another key opposition between fascism and anarchist approaches to the world. Fascists believe that realizing the potential of a race or a nation can only come via authority at the expense of the Ohter (the non-citizen or the foreigner, the inferior race or religion, the sexual or cultural deviant, etc.) On the contrary, anarchists believe that we can only realize our full potential via self-determination based in solidarity and mutual aid.”

This analysis is certainly accurate, in that fascist and anarchists have a completely different orientation and method of engagement. But, I would argue, this is a result of the points on the continuum we occupy. Fascists reside on the end of the spectrum where the State is all and the individual is nothing.

So, given this orientation, racism and sexism and homophobia are a natural extension of their total State worship. Absolute regualtion translates into foreclosing on freedom, on choice, and this means homogenization of everything and everyone. A reduction of everyone, restricted to the singular example of so-called Fascist Perfection. Anything deviating from that is wrong, is a violation of the regulations.

I would argue that “absolute external regulation” on my graph would invariably coincide with an all-out war on diversity. It’s a natural consequence of fascism.

As a minor note, to support this, consider that in all of the writings by early fascists, the topic of racial purity never came up. “Everyone-bashing” was not part of the platform. Racial hatred was not a conscious component to the program, but was a natural outgrowth of it. Only later in fascism’s development were the sentiments so popularly shared by all fascists consciously incorporated into the program.

Expressed another way, a kooky belief that the State is all, and absolute external regulation is great, and the individual is nothing, typically appeals to hateful white guys…and they generally agree on killing everyone not just like themselves.

(A general principle: stupid white guys who will embrace one dumb idea will usually embrace another one.:) )

At the same time, it also makes sense, referring back to my freedom-to-absolute-external-regulation continuum, that the folks on the absolute freedom (absence of external control, no State, no compulsion, etc.) end of the spectrum would have a totally different orientation and engagement—one that’s conducive to variation and variety and choice and actualization of the transcendent individual through cooperation and wonderful stuff. Not wanting to wax utopian here, because I’m far from the dreamy utopian, but it seems to me that it’s pretty self-evident: if you create a climate and social setting conducive to certain characteristics, you’ll more likely foster them; if you create an environment that is supportive and stress-free, and geared toward the relative peace and happiness of each individual, you’ll have fewer cranky, hateful people hell-bent on accumulating material shit and killing everybody.

Just and idea.

But I think we can easily extrapolate all of that from my simple two dots and a line. Lots of good things converge on freedom. Lots of bad stuff gets worse as you move further away from it…

And fascism blows chunks.

So now we progress to the second major argument that in over-simplifying (my word) I’ve mischaracterized every non-anarchist as “essentially more or less virulent varieties of fascism” and, in so doing, I risk “eclipsing some of the specific characteristics of fascism…”

Everyone But Anarchists are Essentially Fascists…(And They Suck)

I was going to try to find a nice way to make my point. There isn’t one.

Everyone who does not reject the State and who does not reject “external regulation” occupying that singular extreme point on the continuum—embraces and “essentially more or less virulent variety of fascism.” I don’t like saying that. I don’t like recognizing that. I wish it were different…but it’s not.

Except for the extreme anti-State, anti-external regulation position occupied by anarchists, the entirety of the political spectrum shares all—let me capitalize that: ALL—of the component features of fascism. All of those political philosophies—to include socialism—simply contain ALL of the component features of fascism in lesser quantities.

Something I read just today in Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism by Michael Schmidt (p. 3-4) speaks to this very subject:

“…the vast majority of historical Marxist movements strived for revolutionary dictatorship based upon nationalism and central planning. Every major Marxist regime has been a dictatorship. Every major Marxist party has renounced Marxism for social democracy, acted as an apologist for a dictatorship, or headed a brutal dictatorship itself. Even those mainstream Marxist who critique the horrors of Stalin or Mao defend Lenin and Trotsky’s regime, which included all of the core features of later Marxist regimes—labour camps, a one-party dictatorship, a secret police state, terror against the peasantry, the repression of strikes, independent unions and other leftists, etc. Marxism must be judged by history and the authoritarian Marxist lineage that exists therein: not Marxism as it might* have been, but Marxism as it has been… (emphasis added, except *).

All of those core features—labor camps, a dictatorship, a secret police, terror against the population, repression of strikes and unions and other political theories—aren’t just the core features of later Marxist regimes, but are the core features of fascism. And I’m not trying to specifically pick on socialists here, but my thinking is, socialists are the next position over to the right of the U.S. Anarchists, so if this holds true for them, it certainly holds true for every political position situated even closer to fascism.

One of the writers in John Zerzan’s collection, Against Civilization (name escapes me, but perhaps someone can plug that information in here) [no, we can’t, sorry], argued that Hitler and the Holocaust were not some vast departure from the norms of swivelization (my word). On the contrary, Hitler and his ideology were an extreme exaggeration of swivelization and its norms. It was not an anomaly, a drastic departure, a disjuncture from swivelized society, but was, instead, a perfect representation of it: it was swivelization on steriods. It was more Stalin than Stalin…more Reagan than Reagan…more Obama than Obama…but it was not qualitatively “other than” anything else we experience in the swivelized world.

So, back to Clara’s point, she claims that my position “risks eclipsing some of the specific characteristics of fascism…” And I’m not trying to be confrontational here, but I have to ask: Like what? What “specific characteristics” do we find in fascism that we do not find everywhere else at all times. Racism? Labor camps? A dictatorship? Repression of opposition? Nationalism? Patriotism? Invasion? Colonization? Aspirations of global dominance?

Am I missing something?

Please keep in mind that, as Ward Churchill points out, Hitler didn’t devise his Final Solution all on his own, but was admittedly inspired by what the U.S. had done to Native Americans. And don’t forget that prior to U.S. entry into World War II, then-ambassador to Britain, Joe Kennedy, father of future president John Kennedy, advised FDR to enter the war on the side of Germany. Charles Lindbergh and Walt Disney were honored by the Third Reich, and now Disney’s corporation brings you the evening news that ignores the concentration camps called the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, maintained with your tax dollars.

Okay, that last paragraph kind of felt like a rant so now I’ll cool out on the caffeine, let go of your shirt collar, and take a deep breath. Sorry. But all of that is still true.

So, having said all of that, we now get to what might be the most important point. I’ll first quote Clara:

“…characterizing all non-anarchist political ideologies as essentially more or less virulent varieties of fascism risks eclipsing some of the specific characteristics of fascism as it has appeared over the past century—not to mention alienating potential allies in anti-fascist struggles. Anarchists can’t defeat fascism alone, but we can use shared opposition to it to introduce others to broader critiques of state power” (emphasis added).

This, I find, is one of the most prevalent ideas that anarchists espouse—the idea that socialists and other state leftists are allies of ours against the fascists. Because state leftists are further away down the continuum from fascists, and because they are sometimes positioned just to the right of us, we take that proximity as commonality. We ally ourselves with state leftists in common cause against the fascist menace. And, invariably, every single time, the socialists (aka “fascist-lights”, aka state-worshipers with all the components of fascism but to lesser degrees) stab us in the back at a critical juncture and turn the tides in favor of the fascists, with whom they share a god (the State).

Ask Buenaventura Durruti. Socialists did it in the Spanish Civil War, time and again. Then Stalin made a secret pact with Hitler, the most fascist of fascists, white Jews, gypsies and anarchists filled Nazi concentration camps.

To present an analogy:

Clara: Sean, the zombie apocalypse is upon us! We have to fight the zombies!

Sean: Okay. Who are our allies?

Clara: Those dead, rotting, shambling, drooling people over there who are trying to eat our brains.

See how that sounds? We’re going to oppose the enemy who openly aspires to racism, labor camps, dictatorship, secret police, terror waged against the population, repression, nationalism, patriotism, invasion, colonization, and global dominance? We’re going to team-up with the closet fascists to fight the outted fascists?

I would say, “Let me know how that works out for you”-except we have examples of how that works out….over and over and over and over.

I don’t want to “play nice” with someone who intends to oppress me as soon as we bump off his competition, and do most of the fighting and dying in the process. I know how this sounds, but fuck socialists. They are not anti-fascist and they are not our pals. Never have been….and we’ve got the scars to prove it.

There is no long-term benefit from working socialists, unless you’re excited at the prospect of serving time in the gulag under the next Stalin, in which case you’re already a socialist-so why are you even reading this far? And somehow socialists have us duped into thinking that we don’t have “the numbers” to engage in a purely anarchist resistance using anarchist strategies and tactics without compromising on principle and begging the socialists to de-rail our anti-state efforts.

Clara draws the conclusion that anarchists “can’t defeat fascism alone…”. And I hope that’s not true because we’re the onle ones who truly reject fascism. We’re the only ones resisting it rather than watering it down or implementing it on a slower, sneakier timeline. I’m looking around the poker table and I firmly believe we’re going to have to fight the fascists alone, simply because we’re the only ones not giving them hand-jobs at the table.

So I ask, why do we need “numbers”? Do we need a voting majority in order to hack in and melt down government databases, or to take down cell phone towers, or call in fake bomb threats to major corporations? Do we need even a sizeable minority to jam up shipping and rail and trucking; to follow home government officials from their offices? How many people does it take to find all the homes foreclosed by banks and eliminate profits with a bottle, a rag, some gas, some Styrofoam peanuts, and a book of matches? How many people does it take to pull fire alarms? To forage at Walmart? And there are just small activities that if even one million disgruntled people undertook them, the system would be disrupted. Nothing sensational.

So now consider: in the U.S., a population of 300 millions, nearly 20% are unemployed. We’re talking 60 million people abandoned by the larger system. How many tens of thousands of combat vets are coming home to find they tossed limbs down the rich man’s oil well just to get betrayed? Can’t millions of people be reached on-line almost instantaneously? French students can go out on strike to get one immigrant returned, so why can’t U.S. students go on strike…forever?

Consider also: the Roman Empire collapsed not because the socialists amassed the necessary “numbers” to bring it down; it collapsed because the barbarians, the savages, ran around naked and shit in the bushes.

Swivelization is already collapsing. It just needs a few naked barbarians. A few steaming dumps in the bushes.

Fuck the socialist. Fuck “numbers”.

With just fifty committed anarchists who want to take down the system, we can come up with a plan in less than a day that would be so thoroughly devastating that by this time next year, we’d all be squatting or living in yurts, foraging for food. Money would be good kindling. The o-zone would be looking much healthier.

Nobody would be reading Karl Marx.

Please hold off on sending Sean books for a month or two- see note from Sean below. There are lots of other ways to support him:

1. donate to the legal fund- we’re gonna sue the pants off the ODRC for their absurd mishandling of the Army of the 12 Monkeys situation. We’re also working on getting Sean’s original conviction overturned, which isn’t as bad of a long shot as you’d think. These things require money, throw a little Sean’s way: http://seanswain.org/donate/

2. help transcribe / publish / distro writings- Sean is a prolific writer and some of his pieces deserve broader publication and distribution. If you’ve got contacts with radical presses, if you’ve got zine-layout skills, if you’ve got time to do some typing, contact Ben at insurgent.ben@gmail.com and get on board making that shit happen.

3. dozens of other things- Sean is a very imaginative guy, who is trying to stir up every single pot he can find, so there are tons of other (sometimes rather creative) ways to get involved. If you’ve got an idea or are lookin for a project, either write Sean or contact Ben (insurgent.ben@gmail.com) and we’ll plug you in.

From a recent letter:

“I haven’t had much time for reading. If possible can we put a quick note on the site that as of now I have like 19 unread books stacked up because I had so much writng to get done and I’m just now getting to those books, so it might be a good idea to hold off on any more books until maybe March 1st. Not that I’m not grateful, but I plan to read them all and write something for posting on each, and if books keep rolling in, it will begin to feel overwhelming. Like Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” only with pages instead of wings.

I better get this out. 2014 will be monumental.

Stay dangerous. Freedom, Sean.”

This past week, Nelson Mandela died at the age of 95. The vast amount of reportage about his life and achievements has already begun that necessary and inevitable revision, cleansing the record of everything that might make us a little uncomfortable, leaving behind the Walt-Disney-singing-animal-musical-cartoon-version of Nelson Mandela and the world.

While everyone else is generating pure bullshit, I’d like to take the time to remind you of a few things that a provably true about Nelson Mandela, first and foremost the fact that he was a freedom fighter who approved and carried out bombings against a repressive government, and that he was an advocate of political violence.

In 1964, Nelson Mandela used his trial as a political forum. His government accused him of hundreds of acts of sabotage and, as the leader of the African National Congress (ANC), approving of bombings. The evidence of Mandela’s involvement in planned political violence has never been doubted nor refuted, not even by Mandela himself.

Nelson Mandela was found guilty of criminal acts, to include plotting to overthrow the government. He spent 27 years in prison largely because he refused to disavow the ANC’s path of armed struggle.

Sure, in the 1990’s, after his release from prison, a gray-haired Mandela smiled kindly and waxed peaceful with the likes of Bono and Oprah, and we all think of Nelson Mandela like a kind, gentle grandfather figure. Sure. And that makes the historical revision so much easier. The conversion of reality into a Walt Disney cartoon takes less effort, deleting any references to bullets or bombs or Mandela’s advocacy and use of both.

Our revisionist historians don’t want us to think about Nelson Mandela’s armed struggle because Mandela proved to be such a reasonable, thoughtful guy…and we would have to ask: Why would such a reasonable, thoughtful guy resort to such tactics? And then we would ponder other stuff.

We would consider how repressive the South African regime was. How unjust. And we would come to recognize that such an injustice was artificially maintained by support from the United States.

We would consider that a racist and repressive regime was propped up by the U.S. for decades while a freedom fighter sacrificed the best years of his life, refusing to compromise on principle, struggling from inside the bowels of a cold, dark prison.

We would think about how Nelson Mandela and his political organization remained on the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s list of Specially-Designated Global Terrorists until 2008.

Yeah, 2008.

The United States considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist until he was 89 years old.

If the full context of Nelson Mandela’s life was treated fairly, we might have to wonder why a kind, reasonable, thoughtful 89-year-old remained labeled a terrorist by the United States. And how many other kind, reasonable, thoughtful people are labeled as terrorists by the U.S.? How many of them are driven to be “terrorists” by the U.S.? And what does that say about the true character of the U.S.?

So let’s not honor Nelson Mandela with an accurate view of who he was; let’s not continue the struggle against oppression to which he dedicated himself, by first speaking honestly of the necessity of his armed struggle and what that implies for us. Let’s not question how those forces that drove such a thoughtful and reasonable man to the tactics of bullets and bombs are still operating to drive other thoughtful and reasonable people down the same path, or we may have to stop and think about domestic heroes like Marie Mason, Leonard Peltier, Mark Neiweem, the Cleveland 4 (Brandon, Doug, Skelly, and Connor), Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Lucasville Uprising prisoners…dozens of Nelson Mandelas who will never receive a hug from Oprah and Bono. Instead, let’s just peddle bubblegum.

This way, through historical revision, powerful forces not only mark the physical death of Mandela, but can create a future where the real Mandela never existed, much as they have done with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and even Mohandas Gandhi. It’s a future where true freedom fighters can remain imprisoned and viewed as irrational and thoughtless, no frame of reference to bridge the information-disconnect in our minds. Then the real danger of Nelson Mandela, the deeper truth he embodied, is neutralized. The powerful forces that shaped him won’t have to stand guard over his grave to make sure he stays dead…

But now they do.

***

Note: The U.S. State Department arranged a propaganda film with poet Maya Angelou a year and a half before Mandela’s death… (Maya Angelou interview, CBS, December 8, 2012, “Face the Nation”)

I can’t even tell you how many times delusional hierarchs have accosted me with the question of “morality.” It seems that somehow, in the minds of the swivalized and domesticated, “anarchist” is synonymous with “immoral.” It is as if rejecting the idea that others have an inherent right to boss you around–when they don’t–somehow makes you an advocate for butt-fucking house pets and throwing bricks at little old ladies.

The reasoning of deluded hierarchs is, if you reject the definition of right and wrong imposed on you by others, then you reject the idea of right and wrong entirely.

And, just a quick observation here, it’s always seemed funny to me and more than a little ironic that any hierarch would even raise the issue of morality. What could a hierarch possibly know about “right” and “wrong,” other than the programmed belief that “right” and “wrong” are always determined by someone else, by some authority beyond you, above you–the parent, the teacher, the priest, the boss, the coach, the cop, the military commander, the legislator, the voice in the dashboard telling you to turn left? The first and most-rehearsed lesson that a hierarch learns is to defer to someone else’s definition of right and wrong, to never draw your own conclusions about what you “ought” to do.

Don’t take my word for that. Stop for a moment and consider the totality of your life’s activities in hierarchy. What percentage of those activities do you freely choose to do simply because you firmly believe with conviction that such-and-such activity is the right thing to do, and that it should be done the way you’re doing it?

Nothing at your job, if you have one, qualifies. Everything you do at a job is done according to what someone else dictates. You are a machine made of flesh, dragging stones up the pyramid.

Then rule out all the activities of necessity–like shopping or getting gas or driving to and from work–because what you do and how you do it are dictated by forces beyond you. You could “choose” not to buy food and go hungry, or you could “choose” not to buy gas for your car (and run out of gas, and show up late for work, and lose your job…), but there are strong forces that compel you to conform.

So what have we whittled your moral universe down to? The question of which 2 hours of corporate cop-shows you watch on TV?

News flash: In a hierarch world, your whole life is dictated to you. Hierarchs are rendered totally incapable of contemplating right and wrong, or planning freely-chosen moral conduct. Hierarchs’ moral capacities are as atrophied as the muscles inside of a cast after a long period of non-use. No, I would have to say that whole communities of “little Eichmanns” who thoughtlessly march in lock-step and assume their assigned seat, lack an essential component of analytical thought necessary for the fullness of moral inquiry.

I would say that moral inquiry–real moral inquiry–requires that essentially-anarchist engagement begins with asking, “Should I defer to someone else, or should I listen to my own conscience? Should I march in lock-step? What are the ramifications if I accept my assigned seat? Who are the authorities, and are they moral and do they know more than I do?”

In short, by my thinking, real moral inquiry demands that we constantly question authority, to include the question of what makes authority the authority, and this is not an inquiry hierarchs can engage in…and if they engaged in it, such an engagement would necessarily make them anarchists.

So, considering that, I always find it ironic when deluded hierarchs (who are incapable of complete moral inquiry) raise the question of “morality,” as if anarchists are somehow morally inferior rather than morally superior to deluded hierarchs.

By the way, the question is frequently thrown out there, you would think that it was an anarchist who was given an award for being the most peaceful human on the planet and then maintained 3 wars and invaded the privacy of billions and approved drone strikes against civilians and maintained “black site” torture centers around the globe…you’d think that was an anarchist rather than a die-hard hierarch of the highest order. So, to answer the question of morality, I tell deluded hierarchs that I can only speak for myself, but as an anarchist, I don’t believe in funding terrorists…like the United States, bombing water treatment facilities, dumping depleted uranium all over people while “liberating” them, mass-murdering children through draconian sanctions, supporting a top-ten human rights abuser that launches missiles from Apache attack helicopters into civilian traffic in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, destabilizing other governments through assassinations and proxy death squads.

But hierarchs’ tax money pays for that…every day.

If you live in the United States and you go along with the program, money from your labor has been extracted from your paycheck to finance the murder of children somewhere in the world today.

I don’t know how to conduct a serious conversation about “morality” with baby-killers. I try, but I’m not very good at it.

And that’s just one aspect of hierarch immorality. Consider the millions who are locked in cages, kidnapped and subjected to suffering, both innocent and guilty alike, financed by thoughtless zombie hierarchs who shamble through their unconscious lives… Or the millions who are arbitrarily fenced off into pockets of poverty on one side or another of artificial national boundaries so the obscenely wealthy can continue profitable exploitation of all of us…paid for by the oblivious supporters of hierarchy who question the “morality” of abolishing the mass-grave of the hierarch machine… Or the toxification of water, and land, and air; the mass-destruction of the natural world carried out by the obedient hierarch slaves committing omnicide for cheese puffs…

It leaves me little option but to shrug and admit that anarchists have a very different idea about how to define “right” and “wrong.” An anarchist concept of morality is quite different from the one maintained by deluded hierarchs.

The United States has a long history of “helping” others. It appears the Syrian people are next on the list. I oppose the U.S. helping the Syrian people, and I suspect the Syrian people do too.

Some historical context:

The first instance of the U.S. helping people involved Native Americans. The U.S., in a benevolent effort to civilize “poor,” “backward” people who were perfectly happy living as they were, nearly exterminated them. Those who survived were “helped” again and again, until they were reduced in such numbers and their cultures so obliterated that the stragglers were put out to pasture in concentration camps called “reservations.”

The nation “helped” most in the Americas is Haiti. The U.S. has intervened there more than anywhere else in the world. Haiti is the poorest, most desperate, most languishing nation in the Western Hemisphere. So, it would seem, the more the U.S. “helps,” the worse things get.

In my lifetime, the U.S. has done lots of “helping.” In Vietnam, the U.S. helped the Vietnamese repel Communism. American troops sometimes went village to village, burning them down. This was not purposeful destruction of innocent civilians’ ways of life. No. As our military leaders would explain it, it was necessary to burn down the villages in order to “save” them.

Save. As in “help.”

Then, of course, there came Iraq, where the U.S. imposed a decade of sanctions to “help” Iraqis depose Saddam Hussein. Yet, each time anyone attempted to rise up against him—the Kurds in the North or the Sunnis in the South—the U.S. stood idly by as the resisters were obliterated. The sanctions imposed to “help” the Iraqis prevented necessary aid and medicine into the country, as well as technologies to repair the water treatment facilities that the U.S. bombed contrary to international law. As a consequence, more than 500,000 children under the age of six died in just a decade.

U.S. “help” in Iraq murdered a whole generation. Children. Gone.

Also, just as in the former Yugoslavia—where the U.S. “helped” an ally back to the Stone Age—the U.S. used depleted uranium in its armaments, a low-level radioactive material that gets disbursed into the air to be breathed in, causing long-term health damage for entire populations (to include U.S. troops on the ground). No one uses depleted uranium but the U.S.

Just like no one ever used nuclear arms against an opponent except the U.S.

But, back to Iraq. The U.S. helped them. Now, after a decade and a half, in some places, thanks to multi-billion-dollar contracts to Haliburton, the electricity sometimes stays on for a few days at a time.

Sometimes.

Now, the U.S. wants to “help” the Syrian people because their terrible tyrant has allegedly used Sarin gas to kill a small fraction of the children that U.S. sanctions killed in Iraq (half a million, remember that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright confirmed was worth it, if only Saddam Hussein was deposed). To stop Syria’s president from Sarin gas on his own people, the U.S. proposes dropping bombs (depleted Uranium) on his people.

A few points to be made here.

First, apart from any debate as to whether Syria’s government used Sarin gas (it seems really convenient that the attack was launched a year and a day after President Obama’s “red line” comment, and that it was launched in an area where U.S. intelligence has been sneaking aid to rebels), are the children killed by the chemical attack any more dead than the children who are going to be killed by falling U.S. bombs or cruise missiles?

Second, isn’t President Obama the same guy who authorized drone attacks on Americans overseas? And are those dead Americans any more or less dead than the Syrians killed by Sarin gas?

Third, when did the U.S. become concerned over the lives of children?

Fourth, should the only nation to used depleted uranium—on its own troops—waggle its finger at Syria?

And fifth, why is it that when the U.S. decides to “help” somebody, help involves cruise missiles and bombs? Why can’t the U.S. just send these people some quilts and cans of soup?

And I think this speaks now to something far more fundamentally flawed in the thinking of the U.S. government. It doesn’t know how to do anything except destroy. Its whole reason for existence is to crush, kill, maim, obliterate.

That’s pathological.

The United States is a sociopath, armed to the teeth, stomping around the global neighborhood. This sociopath has set its sites on the Syrian regime, which will, then, involve destroying Syria’s infrastructure and the standard of living of the Syria people.

Even if the U.S. is successful at stopping the Syrian regime, we are confronted with a far more disturbing question:

Who will stop the United States government?

People have accused me of being unpatriotic. Having read “In Support of the Troops…Who Frag,” or, more recently, “Against Helping (Bombing) Syria,” some people have questioned my loyalty to the United States of America.

They should. I have none. And neither should they.

What is “patriotism”? At base, it is a belief in loving, supporting, and defending one’s country. That’s what the dictionary tells us.

Now, accepting that definition, what does it mean? Well, first and foremost, to believe in loving, supporting and defending your country, you have to have one. Someone who is country-less cannot very well love a country they don’t have .

So, before I can be patriotic, I have to ask: Do I have a country?

I suppose if I had some sort of “ownership” over a country, that would make it mine. In the U.S., we have this pervasive mythology, almost a civil religion of sorts, the idea that all of us jointly “own” this country. Of the people, by the people, for the people. But I can’t imagine that anyone except the most unthinking rube could still be buying into that faerie tale when everything we see and hear and experience directly contradicts that mythology.

Is there anyone in the U.S. who is not part of the ruling elite who says, “This is running exactly the way I think it should…”? Or are there millions of people deeply disturbed by the conduct of a government that has long ago stopped consulting them and has, for some time, dictated the terms to them?

I am reminded of a protest sign I saw prior to the invasion of Iraq. It featured a picture of George Dubya with a voice bubble that said, “I don’t care what the American people think…They didn’t vote for me anyway.”

The U.S. government long ago stopped caring what we think. In that sense, it has “gone rogue,” has assumed the right to operate without consent of the ruled. That being the case, the United States is no longer out country—it is a country under the control of complete strangers who reserve the right to act like your enemy if it suits them, and reserves the right to treat you like their enemy if it suits them.

Can you feel like an “owner” of a country where you wake up every day with a shotgun in your face? Where the Apache attack helicopter (you paid for) has its cannons pointed at you?

I can’t. All mythology aside, I have to face the reality that the entity declaring itself my government is not “my” country. My relationship to that entity is not voluntary, not consentual, but is one of forced obedience.

We are reduced to slaves.

I don’t believe that slaves owe any allegiance to a master. I believe slaves owe allegiance to themselves and to their own liberation, by whatever means necessary. But that’s me.

At any rate, if we do not “own” a country, if we are, for all practical purposes, excluded from the joint ownership of the United States, then it is no more “our” country than is Bolivia or Iran or Belgium. It’s just geographically closer to us and excercises its power over us in a more direct way—which, reasonably, is all the more reason to hate it rather than love it, if you think about it objectively. Yes, Bolivia and Iran and Belgium do exist, but they aren’t in your face and in your wallet if you’re in the U.S.

But the U.S. is.

Important to point out, I think: We’re not working with “What I believe,” and, therefore, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and all beliefs are equal; what I’m describing is a factual truism. I’m not declaring that the United States is not my country; the United States, through its actions, declared that a long time ago.

It makes no real effort to hide its animosity and distrust of its subjects. We are enemies to be spied on, controlled, manipulated and neutralized.

I cannot “love,” nor “support,” nor “defend” anything that spies on me, controls me, manipulates me, and neutralizes me. Anyone reasonable could only despise such a creature as that, not pledge allegiance to it.

One can make the false argument, I suppose, that the U.S. government isn’t “so bad”–that is to say, that a lot of other governments treat people worse than the U.S. generally treats us. This is a kind of relativity argument—that the U.S. looks good relative to other governments. But, this is a false argument. First, we have no way of knowing for certain what it’s like to live in any other country under any other regime because we don’t live there and we don’t know. Second, it’s really irrelevant anyway, because to say the U.S. is not treating us terribly is to say the U.S. is not treating us terribly yet. But if we accept that the U.S. operates without our consent, and we are subjects in a ruler-and-subject relationship, then any argument that the U.S. treats its citizens better than some other regime treats its citizens is nothing more than an observation that we haven’t yet provoked a really serious atrocity—not that a serious atrocity isn’t possible. And we know that in any situation where the government operates without the consent of the people, not only are serious atrocities possible, not only are they probable, but on a long enough time line, they are inevitable.

It’s probably worth pointing out that of all the millions and millions of Germans who lived under the Third Reich, only a small percentage were jailed, killed, or tossed into concentration camps. So, the same argument that “the government’s not so bad” could be (and probably was) used by the vast majority of Germans, just as it is now used by the vast majority of Americans.

Relating all this back to the question of patriotism, do I—or, of any of us– “have” a “country” to “love,” “support,” or “defend”? At the very least, I would have to say that if this is “my” country, it certainly doesn’t seem to know it.

Having said all that, all of the traits that should define a “good American”–honesty, integirty, courage, loyalty, kindness, responsibility—all these virtues militate against “loving” and “supporting” and “defending” the United States. Given the conduct of the United States, it is not possible for freedom-loving, honest, life-affirming, conscientious people to love, support or defend the United States. Good, decent people cannot support things such as genocide or the purposeful and deliberate murder of children.

After the bombing of Iraq, U.S. government documents were declassified, detailing a well-thought-out plan to bomb water-treatment facilities (a crime under international law) because the resultant lack of water would cause dehydration, which kills children much faster than adults; all the dead children would then provoke the Iraqi people to ruse up against the ruling regime.

The U.S. government deliberately murdered children. All tolled, the U.S. murdered more than 500,000 children in a 10-year period, a death toll that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said was acceptable.

To love and support and defend the United States is to love and support and defend child murder, wholesale child murder. And that’s just one event. If you look at the conduct of the U.S. in world affairs, that atrocity is not an exception to the rule. (In fact, the language and perception is so utterly twisted that, in 2008, in the presidential elections, candidate John McCain, who participated as a cog in the U.S. death machine in Southeast Asia, disparaged opposing candidate Barack Obama for Obama’s “associations” with Bill Ayers—a man who sacrificed in order to end the illegal war. The American conception of things is so upside-down that a mass murderer candidate questioned the integrity of someone who opposed wanton violence by calling him a terrorist.)

No one with vaulted American virtues can love or support or defend the indefensible. No one can love or support or defend a ruling elite that has highjacked our world imposed an agenda to the benefit of a few and to the injury of many—all maintained through forced and the treat of force.

Allegiance to tyrants is never patriotism. It is treason against conscience.

Dear Heroes of France Formerly Known as Students,

I am writing to all of you to thank you for the inspiration and hope that you have given to a world in desperate need of both, a world where bad guys are bad guys and so are the good guys.

In the face of injustice, where the wealthy and the powerful counted on the complicity and silence of everyone, you learned the power of “no.”

You said laws are not laws if they serve injustice.

You said the capacity to oppress does not make it right to oppress.

You said you would not go back to your assigned seats until your demands were met.

Heroes formerly known as students—1

The wealthy and powerful who make bad rules—0

Final Score

You saved a 15 year-old girl from a terrible injustice and you have shocked the Republic of France, which is instituting reforms. This is a cause for celebration. You have made history.

But I remind you, we live in a world gone mad. You have saved a 15 year-old today, but what of her future, and yours, and all of ours? In a world of seven billion people, almost all of us have become invisible and silent, but you have learned to glow in bright and radiant colors; you have spoken with a voice that echoes across oceans.

Please don’t hand power back to oppressors. Please don’t return to your assigned seats.

You saved a 15 year-old girl.

Now there’s a world to save.

No more wars. No more immigration control. No more spying. No more privileges for the ruling elite and struggle for bread for the rest of us.

You cannot stop now.

There is a future to save.

The truth is dangerous. Stay dangerous.

Freedom,

Sean Swain

Ohio State Penitentiary

Fascist States of America

31 October 2013