Rev Left Radio - Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI): Insurrectionary Political Violence

Episode Date: September 25, 2017

Content Warning: Descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Please be advised. NSA Disclaimer: Revolutionary Left Radio does not advocate the use of political terrorism, the initiation of violence,... or the breaking of any laws. This is a scholarly, journalistic approach to the theory and history of the FAI, not advocacy of them or their methodology. Dr. Bones is an Egoist-Communist, Conjurer, Occultist, and Gonzo Journalist who writes for The Conjure House and Gods and Radicals.  Brett sits down with Dr. Bones to discuss the FAI (the Informal Anarchist Federation).  Topics Include: Political terrorism, Propaganda of the Deed, Antifa, the history of insurrectionary anarchism, Red Brigades, Nihilism, Cell Structure, and much more.   Our Outro Music is "Red and Black" by The String-Bo String Duo which you can find here: https://tsbsd.bandcamp.com/album/smash-the-state-distribute-bread   Their FB: https://www.facebook.com/thestringbostringduo/  Please support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio  and follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio  Follow us on FB at "Revolutionary Left Radio"

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Starting point is 00:00:42 and turn it up loud Revolutionary Left Radio starts now Welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio I'm your host Anne Comrade Brett O'Shea And that is our brand new intro song By the String Bow string duo
Starting point is 00:00:58 shout out to those guys for making our new intro song we'll go ahead and link to their Facebook and their band camp in the episode summary of this episode and if anybody else is interested in making an intro song for us try to keep it under a minute and go ahead and submit it to us through Facebook and if we like it we will play it and we'll link to your band and your Facebook page in our episode summary if and when we do use those intros
Starting point is 00:01:20 so thanks again to the string bow string duo go check them out now let's go ahead and get into the show Today we have back on the Honorable Dr. Bones to talk about the informal Anarchist Federation. Dr. Bones, what's up? How you doing, man? Oh, fantastic. Just slamming beers and hard liquor, as always. Absolutely. Okay, so you've been on before, so people are probably familiar with you. But for those who aren't, can you go ahead and just remind them what your political tendency is and kind of what some of your background is? Okay, I'm Dr. Bones. I am an egoist communist, which is a foremost.
Starting point is 00:01:55 of communism sort of takes less from Marx and more from Sterner that focuses on insurrectionism, individualism, and as much as you can burn down and destroy in pursuit of your own liberation. I'm also an occultist and a gonzo reporter. All right, and before we get into the questions, I know you were down in Florida during that hurricane, man. A lot of us were worried about you. How did that go? How did you hold up? Oh, they haven't killed me yet. It's going to take a hell of a bigger storm than that. it's pretty wild so a lot of interesting things you know naturally it was the state of florida so a heavy combination of pills meth and high octane alcohol that's really more suited
Starting point is 00:02:36 for like fueling cars than human consumption was at play uh saw a lot of interesting things uh you know and i have an article coming up on gods and radicals should drop this thursday where i sort of basically talk about a lot of things that i did see and uh how they sort of relate to anarchism and i think a lot of people who enjoy that yeah before we started recording we were kind of talking about some of the things you're going to touch on in the article and it's pretty interesting so i'm i'm looking forward to that article and i hope other people keep an eye out for you said it's going to come out on thursday uh yes should come out thursday all right now this is going to be a kind of a touchy topic this is somebody that this is an organization the informal anarchist federation that is listed on the
Starting point is 00:03:14 terrorist watch list so did you want to give any up front um caveats about anything before we start yes of course that number one naturally i want to assert that brett has been Nice enough to have me on as no affiliation with the Informal Anarchist Federation. This is a journalistic enterprise. I'm putting on my reporter hat here. And I certainly would never, ever advocate any of the things that the FAA does in public. Beyond that, this is just, of course, a scholarly, intellectual, journalistic endeavor about an organization that's worldwide and currently active in the anarchist community that a lot of American anarchists have not. heard of. However, I will say this
Starting point is 00:03:56 to any of the listeners, the sheer fact that the Informal Anarchist Federation is on the terrorist watch list should immediately peak your curiosity. Absolutely, and it certainly peaked mine. So let's go ahead and get into it then. Let's start with some background. I think a lot of people on the
Starting point is 00:04:12 left might not even know that this organization exists. So what is the Informal Anarchist Federation and how did it begin? The Informal Anarchist Federation is this sort of nebulous network of independent cells that operates globally. They have cells in Russia, Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, all over Europe. Some, it looks like cells appearing in Australia. And the informal anarchist federation is a distinctly different brand of anarchism than a lot of Americans are unfamiliar
Starting point is 00:04:45 with, and we'll definitely get into that more in the show. It's a individualist organization. It's a nihilist organization. It's an insurrectionist one. So you may not even have seen them in any news cycles. You probably haven't read any of their texts. The informal anarchist federation started officially, according to government records, at around 2003, though its first action was actually a bombing of a Greek embassy in 1999. That sort of started in Italy. It was a group of five different independent cells that sort of federated amongst themselves. They acted independently. They made their own sort of alliances, but they sort of united under this common banner. Now, that, you know, went on for a little bit, but things really didn't kick off until about 2005. Now, for a little
Starting point is 00:05:39 background, this was when Greece was really in the shit economically. And there was a whole anarchist scene there that hadn't been seen since the early 1900s. So, So in 2005, a small circle of anarchists begin a propaganda campaign using the phrase, think revolutionary act offensively. As this huge raging debate begins, the anarchist communities and the assemblies in Greece, and the refusal of work as a revolutionary act, there's a string of bank robberies that begins to take place, there's arsons, there's commando attacks, there's assemblies and meetings and almost like this new society forming in the decay of the Greek one.
Starting point is 00:06:23 And it's from this strange amalgam of an illegalist, insurrectionary, terrorist environment where anarchists were really just fully committed to the anarchist ideals that a organization called the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire was born. And that was in about 2008. The conspiracy of cells of fire, the conspiracy of cells of fire, just CCF, we'll call them from now, began bombing campaigns, specifically they would attack judges, they would attack bankers, they would attack state offices, letter bombs, arsons, all sorts of stuff, until eventually several members of theirs were arrested and are still currently rotting away in Greek prisons today.
Starting point is 00:07:04 However, this didn't stop the CCF, and Chile was actually one of the first countries to pick up the banner of the CCF, begin using their symbols and stuff like that, and almost out of nowhere, this international scene began, this international conversation between comrades that sort of felt the same way that the FAI did or the CCF did and started acting like it. So you'd have an arson here, and there'd be a communique released and say, you know, long live the FAI or, you know, solidarity to our imprisoned comrades and they'd list the Greek ones And all of a sudden, especially you'd have these debates raging in these communiques as to what they were about and everything like that. So that's sort of a little backstory as to how they started.
Starting point is 00:07:52 And one thing I definitely want to stress is this is not a historical organization. This is not a chapter in leftist anarchist history. This is something that is going on today. Yeah, absolutely. They're very active. You said that they kind of, I don't know if this is the best way to frame it, but kind of split. from more, I don't know if this is the right word either, mainstream anarchist organizations, especially in the Greek context. So, like, what is the underlying values and philosophical
Starting point is 00:08:20 ideology of the FAI, which is, of course, short for informal anarchist federation? And what differences do they have with other anarchist organizations? Sure. Well, one thing you got to remember is in that Greek scene, you know, as the Greek economy was falling and everything like that, there was, to your average American, what would look like a very extreme scene. You know, European anarchism has always been Remember, these people are throwing Molotov cocktails at cops
Starting point is 00:08:48 whereas we American, you know, the idea of maybe like holding a sign in the general direction of a police station might make someone piss themselves. So the European scene has always been a little bit different. But the specific sort of strain that came up out of the FIAI has
Starting point is 00:09:04 a couple of things and I actually have a quote here from one of their manifestos and I think it really describes perfectly their mentality here. The enemy can be found in every mouth that speaks the language of domination. It is not exclusive to one or another race or social class. It doesn't just consist of rulers in the whole pot-bellied suit and tie dictatorship. It is also the proletarian who aspires to be a boss,
Starting point is 00:09:28 the oppressed whose mouth spits nationalist poison, the immigrant who glorifies life in Western civilization but behaves like a little dictator among his own people, the prisoner who rats others out to the guards, every mentality that welcomes power and every conscience that tolerates it. We don't believe in an ideology of victimization in which the state takes all the blame. The great empires weren't just built on oppression. They were also built on the consent of the applauding masses in the timeless Roman arenas of every dictator. To us, the revolutionary subject is each one who liberates herself from the obligations of the present,
Starting point is 00:10:02 questions the dominant order of things, and takes part in the criminal quest for freedom. so there's a couple of things you can pull from that number one um the informal anarchist federation is 100% committed to direct action and direct action even the sense that these they you know release some texts on theory and stuff like that but their number one goal is actual physical attacks um they've often rid about how they're tired of talking about things that no argument is going to sway the people you know we've been talking about anarchism for you know, 150 years plus, there's no variation of anarchism that's going to suddenly sweep the globe and have people accepted as gospel, which ties into a second idea, which is this very
Starting point is 00:10:47 individualist position and sort of anti-social criticism. And it's sort of a criticism that exists in the individualist, you know, world as well. Regular sort of anarchism absolutely despises masters, you know, people who rule over others, who command all others. But in the individualist position, there's also the critique that slaves also create their masters, that it's the willingness of the people to rule, or to be ruled, to follow, to, you know, just generally accept an authority figures words as truth that ends up creating this situation. So there's an anti-social criticism in that the FAA isn't here to liberate society. The FAA is not here to make a better society. It is a weapon of war. It is an organization for those who realize they are under oppression that they are in a world
Starting point is 00:11:38 that is detrimentally set against them and seeks their destruction. And rather than argue about it or spend their time dreaming about another world, they want to destroy that, which destroys them. This takes into place through an anti-state struggle. As we've discussed, you know, this is bank robberies, you know, arsons, attacks, everything like that. But also a key point to the FAA, which is a very real international anarchist solidarity. You know, it's difficult enough for a lot of American anarchists to just get something going in our city. The FAA is able to coordinate attacks across continents. And in a very simple way, to take, for example, Black December, there was a call put out through an attack that said, you know, December's coming up. We want December to be Black
Starting point is 00:12:26 December. We want it as a time of violence to remember all of our comrades that have fallen or are imprisoned? And again, in a very anarchist fashion, there's no overarching system that controls the FAA. So each of these comrades, each of these cells, had to decide, wow, you know, that's a great idea. And they unleashed Black December, which was, I mean, all these, all of South America was ablaze with, you know, arson's bombings, Greece, France, Germany, Indonesia, Russia, there were all these different attacks. And they're all communicating with each other during all these attacks saying, you know, solidarity, hey, we loved what you put out, so it's this very inside the FAA. It's very comradly. They recognize in one another,
Starting point is 00:13:10 individuals trying to seek repression, and it's those people that they're fighting for the liberation for. It almost reminds me of the communities, the maroon communities in like Jamaica and other Caribbean nations, these sort of runaway slaves who went off into the jungles or the mountains, and they created their own communities. Rather than sort of wait for slavery to be ended or Jesus to come back or anything like that, they ran out, existed outside of the dominant society that sought to oppress them. And it wasn't just enough for them to escape, but they actively attacked it. So they're doing this through a nihilist, individualist, anti-society, anti-state lens.
Starting point is 00:13:52 Yeah, and we're going to get to some of those, the nihilism and what role that plays. Would you say that it's fair to think of the FAA as a sort of outgrowth of egoism? I would say 100%, and they mention egoism. They mention themselves a lot as unique ones, stuff like that. I wouldn't necessarily, like, they've read Sterner, they enjoy Sterner, they are individualists, but it's certainly not like they're like, like, dick beating to like the ego in his own. You know, like they probably aren't like laughing at Sterner memes, but there definitely is, This is a continuation of a strong individualist current that we've actually seen historically through anarchism.
Starting point is 00:14:30 I see. Okay, so getting on this next question, because this is a term that I think a lot of people might have heard of. It's propaganda of the deed. A lot of people might have heard of it because Emma Goldman back in the day with her comrade, Alexander Berkman, they actually attempted an assassination on the wealthy industrialist Henry Frick. That assassination attempt failed. Berkman got 22 years, but they did it under this notion. of propaganda of the deed.
Starting point is 00:14:54 So what is propaganda of the deed and how does that tie into the FAA and insurrectionary anarchism more broadly? Sure. Propaganda of the deed is the idea that the revolution cannot be made by mere proselytizing. No amount of pamphlets and posters
Starting point is 00:15:12 and talks and meetings and panels and all these other nice things where we all get together and feel like we're really our anarchists are actually going to bring us any closer. Further, a lot of the historical people that back to Propaganda the Deed said, you know, we're not showing the oppressed that it's possible to actually fight power. You know, we have a million books and a million speeches about
Starting point is 00:15:32 how bad power is. And a lot of people agree that this fucking sucks. But no one is actually showing them that the powerful are just as human as you arrive. Um, one of the things that's really interesting was, you know, and especially if you look at it from a historical record, how much anarchism has changed. Okay. Um, from 18, 1878 to 1883, there were attempts on the lives of the German Kaiser, the king of Spain and Italy, the French prime minister, and the Russian emperor by anarchists. In fact, the Russian nihilists were successful in killing the Russian emperor, which actually created a crackdown where Lenin's brother, who was a nihilist, was executed. So it's sort of interesting that how Lenin has this intimate connection. to the nihilist movement in Russia and actually saw his brother pay with his life for it. Yeah, and it was one of the main things
Starting point is 00:16:29 that inspired Lenin to carry on that fight in whatever way he chose. Exactly. And so in that way, it's very interesting that, you know, propaganda of the deed absolutely sort of did work in that scenario. And later on
Starting point is 00:16:45 there's been later critiques of it. The main idea, a sort of secondary critique that's going in here with propaganda, of the deed is that it makes people choose right so let's say you assassinate a president it's an act that is people have to talk about they have to discuss it people have to choose whether they're going to be on the side of the oppressed or the oppressor and really it's a gamble and because you know what the majority of the people sometimes aren't as revolutionary as you think they are you know and again
Starting point is 00:17:17 we're getting into that individualist critique that you know hey maybe the working class is isn't this revolutionary vanguard that's just waiting for the right moment. Maybe they are conservative. Maybe they are quite happy to exist under the circumstances that they are. So we want, if that is the case, we want to attack as much as we can the structures of power, the structures of oppression, because in doing so, not only will we be seeking to liberate ourselves, but we will signal to those that are also interested in seeking themselves that it is possible. And again, when you go through, how does ties in the FAI is, especially if you read these FAI communicate as an American, I mean, it blows your mind because here we are in the United States arguing over what's possible. You know, what can we get away with? It, in the United States, it is unthinkable to hit a cop and get away with it. You know, like you could be very well killed for that. You can be killed for looking at a cop the wrong way.
Starting point is 00:18:18 No one in the right mind would try to burn down a police station. For your average American, that exists in total fantasy land. No one would think that is possible. And yet, the FIAI is doing that. In fact, in Belgium, they burned a police state. Just recently, there was an arson attack in France, in revenge for a couple of comrades that were going to trial. So these people, they've built up a series of attacks,
Starting point is 00:18:45 and they've taught themselves that it is possible. And the funny thing is with FAA, a lot of FAA cells started out very small. You know, they're reading these communicates, they're reading the theories, the Nihilist positions, and they start out with something like a banner drop or maybe, you know, a small bit of sabotage. And they claim it as a cell under the FAA, and they post it to these new sites where the FAA communicate amongst themselves. And slowly they get a little bit more confident, they get a little bit more skill. and with each attack they actually become a more and more skilled revolutionary. So these attacks are sort of signals, they're gambles, they're big notes to the world
Starting point is 00:19:27 for the souls that are truly seeking liberation immediately saying, hey, you have comrades out here, we are fighting. There is a war on, and we know how to fight it. And the FAA has done more than just say what they've done. I mean, in doing some research, for this and naturally I'm not going to say where I found these but in FAI texts I mean full explanations on
Starting point is 00:19:55 how to make letter bombs how to make Molotov cocktails how to light luxury cars on fire so they're giving people the tools as well to begin their war yeah earlier you said something about the notion of making people choose you know propaganda of the deed is a way of making people pick sides
Starting point is 00:20:11 and this is not a perfect you know correlation but I think there are some some similarities with Antifa recently, who do take on this more militant approach, who do initiate or engage in violent self-defense. And there has been this big discussion about it. It's become a movement that literally nobody in the mainstream media even knew how to pronounce to something that's being talked about on the nightly news day in and day out.
Starting point is 00:20:37 And a lot of people have had to choose. And I would argue that overall it's been more or less successful. So that's really interesting. there. Absolutely. I mean, when Richard Spencer got punched, right? And again, this would, the FAAI cells would understand that instantly because they're not, first off, they're not existing in a world of good, bad, evil, right, wrong. That doesn't, that they don't exist in that world. They are beyond morality. And they understand that when you want to destroy something that is potentially harmful or is already harming you, you destroy it. So Richard Spencer
Starting point is 00:21:09 getting, it is propaganda of the deed because when that punch hit, it, it, First off, kicked off a huge conversation. It empowered people. It made them feel strong and it disempowered the enemy. Now, the FAA would probably have preferred if maybe Richard Spencer's kneecaps had been shot out or his house had been burned down because they're a little bit more extreme.
Starting point is 00:21:32 And again, all of a sudden you have to ask, okay, a group of Nazis, their house got burned down. How do I feel? Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing? Is this something I support? Is this something I'm interested? that in doing. And that's the value of
Starting point is 00:21:46 propaganda of the deed. Yeah, I'd throw a fucking celebration personally. Absolutely, right? And I, you know, fuck Nazis. And I draw anybody's attention to the most recent Nazi punching in Seattle where this guy had the Nazi arm patch. He was writing a public bus. Word went
Starting point is 00:22:02 out. You know, somebody saw him, took a picture of him, posted it on Twitter and Facebook. And within 30 minutes, this seemingly random, dude, it wasn't Antifa. It wasn't anybody dressed in all black or anything. It was just this, this black dude in Seattle, uh, knocked this Nazi the fuck out. And there's a bunch of memes that came out about it. He's sleeping on the fucking ground. But it can be traced back to that first punch of
Starting point is 00:22:22 Richard Spencer, which was done by Antifa, but now punching Nazis is like a mainstream thing. And now regular citizens who might not even know or operate in the Antifa circles are doing it as an act of rebellion. And so it's kind of interesting. Absolutely. Propaganda the deed. So the FAA on both its Wikipedia page and on its little summary on the terrorist watch list is listed as a nihilist organization. For those that don't know, can you explain what nihilism is and what role it plays in this wing of
Starting point is 00:22:52 insurrectionary anarchism? Sure. There is an excellent excellent, excellent, excellent sweet God Jesus. If you have $8 in your pocket, go buy this motherfucking book called Blessed is the Flame. It's an introduction to concentration
Starting point is 00:23:08 camp resistance and also a primer on anarcho nihilism. Not only is it an incredible historical document talking about what life was like in the concentration camps, a truly hopeless situation. What were the forms of resistance? How did people rebel? And it's by what I assume to be a pseudonym by a guy named Sarah Finsky. And he has a great definition of anarcho-nihialism here. The anarcho-nihialist position is that we are currently fucked, that the current manifestation of human society is beyond salvation. And so our response to
Starting point is 00:23:43 it should be one of unmitigated hostility. There are no demands to make, no utopic visions to be upheld, no political programs to follow. The path of resistance is one of pure negation. How this relates to the FAA and insurrection is sort of current is absolutely founded on sort of Sterner's idea how insurrection was a setting of me above the established versus revolution, which was a creation of a new sort of norm, a new set of establish. rules. So the idea, especially in anarcho nihilism, is that there is no future. That it takes many different forms. Some people are very doom and gloom about it and say, look, we've used X amount
Starting point is 00:24:27 of resources on the earth. This planet's fucked. It's fucked. We're fucked. The whole thing's going down. There's no point in saving anything. So why not destroy that which you absolutely find disgusting. There's another sort of avenue of it, which simply says, look, the majority of leftist positions, and again, Sterner had this critique, are very religious in nature. You know, the revolution, it's like a red heaven. You know, it's always right around the corner. And we find ourselves not doing a lot of things just because we don't want to risk not having access to this future time. So one of the nihilist critiques is that we focus on a future reality
Starting point is 00:25:12 that doesn't exist and may not exist and we're bargaining with ourselves here and now in a world that you and I live in with flesh and blood for a future potential world that may not happen. In the book, one of the great examples of this is in the concentration camps,
Starting point is 00:25:28 when you're going into the camp, the phrase that the Nazis had up there, work will set you free. No one was being set free. Everyone was going to fucking die. They were either going to be work to death or they were going to be thrown in a fucking gas chamber. There was no saving free.
Starting point is 00:25:43 But with that little bit of hope, with that little bit of potential future that said, if you just hang on, if you just accept the conditions that are around you, you will eventually be free. And so a lot of people, they didn't repel.
Starting point is 00:25:58 They didn't resist. And they just kind of got into it. And so there's this huge ongoing dialogue with some people in the camps that some people don't believe, that they hold out for this vague hope that they're going to be free. a lot of resistance groups in the camps
Starting point is 00:26:11 held out for the idea that the military was going to come in and there was going to be a coordinated strike within the camps and outside the camps and never really materialized. And so there's actually quite a bit of criticism by other prisoners that like, hey, you had a moment here to like kill the guards or you had a moment to like spark something but you didn't engage in and, oh well, we don't want to, you know, blow our chance
Starting point is 00:26:34 when really there was no chance for thousands of people. And so anarcho nihilists are looking at the war, world around them, this constant death machine of capitalism where you and I are going to live our lives at a bullshit job, probably get cancer at age fucking 50, and as we're leaking and pissing shit in a hospital bed, dreaming of the times that we could have had. A lot of times, I don't know, I'm sure Brett, you've seen like, have you ever seen those like really older leftists who you, like, you could tell in their youth they really fucking thought that, you know, 1917 was around the corner. Shit was, it was really going to happen.
Starting point is 00:27:09 Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and then nothing happened. And there's this weird sickness that gets in their soul. And, like, there's this bitterness and this sadness. And they put, basically, their whole life begins to, like, become a shell. And they're just living for this future time. They're doing everything for these future generations. And anarcho-nihilists and insurrectionists are saying, well, I'm not here to fight for future generations.
Starting point is 00:27:28 I'm here to fight for me. I know I live here now. I have to fight for me. I have to live now. I have my life to live. And so it, nihilism in this context, is no hope, no future, no idea that, like, it's not necessarily, again, all doom and gloom. And some people that are in the anarcho-nihialist scene, they're also very practical.
Starting point is 00:27:51 In fact, this was, like, in the old 1900s anarchism, a sort of position, like, look, you and I can discuss what our anarchist world is going to be like night and day. We could sit here, and we could try to figure out what the schools are going to be like in Omaha, or how the wastewater is going to be processed in an anarchist society in Florida. And that's really good. And it's really nice and it makes you feel good. And you know what else really makes you feel good? Masturbation.
Starting point is 00:28:20 But it doesn't really accomplish much. And so their ideas, look, this is all good and well, but we actually have to do something today. And until we have the opportunity to live our anarchist lives and live in our utopia, our first focus should be on attack, on destroying the system's arrangements. around us. Yeah, there's something extremely appealing about that, and I'm not a nihilist, but, you know, I'm a philosophy guy. I like Schopenhauer a lot. So the sort of nihilist critique of values and the nihilist critique of the world is something that even if people don't embrace it fully, or at least a lot of people nowadays are influenced by it, there's a certain sort of
Starting point is 00:28:59 nihilism in modern day neoliberalism, this sort of, you know, empty, vacuous consumerism and the sort of death machine, as you put it, and as I've put it other places, the sort of machinations of this death machine that are taking place. I have children. I do think about future generations because of that, and I wonder if that comes into play at all
Starting point is 00:29:20 with the sort of nihilism that some people can pick up. I'm not judging, I'm just kind of thinking of different ways people can approach this problem. That's all very interesting, and the notion of, you know, me and you in fucking 30, 40, 50 years shitting and pissing our brains out on our deathbeds, you know?
Starting point is 00:29:37 If that's the case, you know, I'll be thinking of you, you know? I'll be here like, God damn you, Dr. Bones, you son of a bitch. I hope you're somewhere else in a bed fucking leaking like me. My skull's bleaching out on some swamp land being chewed on by a gator. Oh, yeah, absolutely. My body sprawled out in the Great Plains somewhere. Yeah, exactly. The wind blows across.
Starting point is 00:29:57 Oh, yeah. Beautiful scene. Okay, but anyway, to get a little less morbid, let's go ahead and keep ongoing. So what? I'm pretty more. all the time. What are some of the actions that the FAA, and you've touched on this before, but some of the actions that the FAA engages in around the world, and how do these things connect up with
Starting point is 00:30:16 their nihilism and their commitment to insurrectionary anarchism? All right. So, in preparation for this, I was going through some of the recent communicates and everything like that, and this is a small selection, and I just want to make very clear to listeners. This is such a cut-down list because I didn't want to repeat myself. endlessly. I wanted to sort of give you a taste of the different locations and the different types of action, but as I was going
Starting point is 00:30:41 through, there was almost in the month of September had almost an attack every day. You know, August had almost an attack every day. I mean, he's extremely active. I mean, there is a war going on that you haven't even heard of. But all right, so we'll give a quick little rundown. Canada,
Starting point is 00:30:59 September 13th, two luxury cars were torched. August 23rd, Sacramento. Now, this is very interesting. I want to have a little aside here. I've been watching and studying the FAA for a while. And when I first started reading about it and studying it, there was nothing in the United States or Canada.
Starting point is 00:31:18 Nothing. Like the FAA had this huge map of all their like cells and everything. And I mean, it was global. And there's this big, empty, nasty hole right in North America. That is changing. I have seen activities reported. Now, these people aren't necessarily. I haven't seen yet, people explicitly say they are now signing up with the FAAI.
Starting point is 00:31:43 But I have noticed American attacks being posted to these sites in Philadelphia was one. And in this, August 23rd in Sacramento, there was a truck belonging to a white supremacist that was destroyed. In Mexico, there was an explosive attack against Exxon on April 25th. In Chile, August 1st, there was an explosive attack. against the National Confederation of truck owners in response to their logging in native territory. April 24th, Mexico, a bomb attack against a bank. April 21st, Belgium, the burning of a police station.
Starting point is 00:32:19 April 6th, Hamburg, an arson attack against private security vehicles. March 27th, Belarus arson attacks against the Ministry of Taxation. March 19th, a letter bombs to multiple IMF offices. March 6th, the German final. minister received a mail bomb. Now, what's interesting about these things is, number one, the FAI is not fucking around.
Starting point is 00:32:46 I mean, this is like, they, when they are, so when they say they are anarchists, when they say they are anti-state, there is no, like, theoretical quandary, I don't know how I feel about, they are 100% committed to this. they are living in direct and total opposition to the state. And again, I'm seeing these sort of reflections of maroon communities, you know, in Jamaican stuff like that, these people that, you know, fled the oppressive systems of slavery, and it wasn't just enough to flee slavery, but you wanted to attack it and destroy it. Like the Seminoles were in the First and Second Seminole Wars.
Starting point is 00:33:28 Not a lot of people know this, but there was a lot of black folks that joined with the Seminoles. In fact, whole towns in Florida were just runaway slaves that signed up with the Semmelos. And now in Florida, you know, primarily they just wanted to stay away from the United States. But when the time came, these people were actively fighting the United States for their livelihood. That sort of nihilism, that there is no future in the sense that the world is going to continue on. And again, as I said before, this is sort of a big, you know, philosophical thing because it's not just the idea like, hey, you're going to die or, hey, the planet's going to explode. but also the idea that, you know, these fantasies are slowing you down, that you need to start the revolution now, that there can be no more waiting. The FAA is 100% committed to that, but also something that I want to bring up, you know, a lot of people when they hear about FAI and they, oh, Greece, oh man, a whole bunch of Europeans, this is not a European phenomenon only.
Starting point is 00:34:22 One of the interesting things is the sheer diversity in the targets, specifically multiple cells in Russia seem to have a very, very big fixation on animal testing. on genetic testing. And they'll attack animal labs and all sorts of stuff like that. I've seen some reports now in southern France. There seems to be a distinct sort of anti-technological element. But they're fighting logging companies with bombs and fire that are destroying
Starting point is 00:34:49 the earth and native territories. They're attacking ministries of taxation. They're attacking police vehicles, private vehicles, government offices. They're doing all these things. So their nihilism is actually because it negates everything, because it says all of this is garbage and it has to go. And until it goes, I'm not going to bother with creating this world. By doing that, they sort of open this empty box that allows them to paint and to be free to do whatever they like.
Starting point is 00:35:20 So you can have a comrade that's maybe more to anti-capitalism fighting right alongside a hardcore vegan that wants to burn down. every, you know, sort of industrial testing facility that's torturing animals, and they can communicate. And what's more important is they can communicate and work together in extremely militant actions. Yeah, you mentioned the right there, the basically I think you're referring to the ALF, the animal liberation front. That's some, that's a topic that I've wanted to do a show on. So if any listeners think of a good guess that would want to come on and talk about the ALF because I think that fits into some of the topics that we're touching on here. I'd be really interested in having that conversation.
Starting point is 00:36:03 So reach out to us on Twitter or Facebook if you have an idea for a guest for that show. But it also brings up this question that we've touched on a little bit of terrorism. Now, terrorism is a relative term. It's a term that the powerful use to, you know, disqualify or denigrate the less powerful in a sort of asymmetrical war. So, you know, who the U.S. calls terrorists is often, you know, it's often bullshit. It's often just a sort of relationship of power. But, you know, terrorism is used to describe the FAA.
Starting point is 00:36:36 So do you think the term terrorism is appropriate? Do you accept that term that the FAA is a terrorist organization? I don't know. That's a difficult question. Do I accept if the FAA is a terrorist organization? If the FAA is a terrorist organization, then every single organization that uses violence and coercion to affect political means is a terrorist organization. So the United States government? Absolutely. But even in your everyday life, your employer that threatens you with starvation if you don't follow his commands and live your life on his time.
Starting point is 00:37:12 Isn't that terrorism? Isn't terrorism the gigantic advertising community that forces images in front of people and children telling them that they're never going to be good in. unless they buy this product that destroys people's self-esteem that obliterates human souls on a daily basis for money isn't that terrorism isn't a police state that's killing and maiming people in front of our eyes every day is that not terrorism we live in a world of terrorism we live in a world of violence where there is no justice minus the justice you yourself are willing to make is the fai terrorists if they are the entire world is preach love it that was an impromptu question and you handle that fucking beautifully all right given that the fai is is decentralized and leaderless how does the organization operate and maybe you can go into cell structure
Starting point is 00:38:06 because i think that that plays an important role sure um and again i one of the big things i find so interesting about the fai versus some other anarchist organizations or even other organizations is the FAA is actually a threat. We can all talk about, like, you know, how the workers are going to seize the means of production and, like, we can have a march, and, man, like, if we're Democratic socialists, we can, like, vote for a whole bunch of stuff. It's going to be fantastic. And Uncle Sam probably doesn't give a shit. He's not really all that worried, you know, he's not worried about a bunch of college students marching up and down, holding a bunch of signs. That happened at the 60s, and guess the government just kept on rolling on. And this, this is,
Starting point is 00:38:47 They've just been doing whatever because none of that fucking matters to them. However, the FAA actually is a threat. Enough of a threat for the U.S. government to actually start worrying about them, start working with European agencies to try to track these people down and give them harsh, harsh sentences. Some of these people are getting 40, 60 years. There are some FAA members in prison for life. So the way, what's very, very interesting about their organization is its cellular structure. I've read multiple military journals.
Starting point is 00:39:21 It's actually mentioned quite heavily in my book about how the cellular network is the organization that strikes the biggest amount of fear into the state. Why? The state loves hierarchy. Loves it. Nothing turns the government on like a good old-fashioned hierarchy. Why?
Starting point is 00:39:41 Because it's so easy to dismantle, right? It's extremely hard to kill 10,000 people. It's messy. It's bloody. You know, the news is going to be there. Your shoes might get a little messed up. It's going to be a bad time for everybody. It's very easy to kill one person. And if that one person is the one calling all the shots, oh, man, you've got it made. Look at the history of co-intel pro in this country. You had the Black Panther movement. I mean, it was, we were on the cusp of a true revolutionary moment for all the oppressed black folks in the United States. And the United States rolled out the Cointel Pro and millions of dollars and hundreds of federal agents went out and destroyed everything they paid off informers they killed people they beat them up they broke the back of the black panther movement they did the same thing in the early 1900s with the iww you have this huge crest this huge gigantic wave of hope and everything's going good and then the united states government as if flipping a switch brought it all down why because they could pinpoint areas of weakness. They could break the back of the organization. Ladies and gentlemen,
Starting point is 00:40:53 that is impossible to do with the FAA. Number one, the cellular network is made up of individuals that are interested in this exact activity. Now, the original members of the CCF, they were all members of the sort of anarchist community in Greece. They went to the assemblies. They went to meetings. So it's not like they were like some crazed anarchists living, like, away from the other anarchist community. These are people in the community. And one of the interesting things about the FAA is, because one of the things that sort of prompted my first article about the FAA was, well, how the fuck do people join this thing? You don't join it. It's not something that you like join.
Starting point is 00:41:35 It's not something you sign up for. There's not like a contact. You're going to dial up on like a shoe phone or like meat under a. tree and there's like a squirrel that passes you a piece of paper with like a code word on it and you like, you know, that doesn't exist. So the way you do, you join the FAA is you simply do stuff. And that's the FAA. In fact, in one other documents, the FAA talks about how the FAA only exists when you are acting. So when you're living your regular life, when you're in your regular anarchist community, you are not in the FAA. The FAA doesn't exist. When you are out on the street bombing a place,
Starting point is 00:42:11 when you're building a bomb, when you're like, you know, burning a cop car, you're in the FAI. That is an official FAA action. So there's no, there's no sort of like, what's interesting here is there's no sort of office to maintain. There's no monthly meeting. It's sort of a very informal organization between individuals or other very, very close comrades that you know operate. And this cellular network is, it has, each cell has no connection to the other. There's nothing. The, if you were to, you know, grab one of these people, they couldn't give you information.
Starting point is 00:42:46 And I wanted to do this. Like, Brett, let me do a little experiment with you here. Okay. And if you're listening in, I want you to do it too, okay? I want you to sort of close your eyes. I want you to calm down. And I want you to focus on the scene. I'm going to paint it for you.
Starting point is 00:43:00 And I want you to think about it and visualize it with every sense you can. Think about how it smells. Think about how it feels. Think about how your skin feels. What's the temperature in the room? Okay, you're in a room. It's cold steel. all around you. And as you're waking up sort of groggy or strapped to a chair, and there's a
Starting point is 00:43:15 gentleman smoking a cigarette in front of you. And he says, oh, you're finally awake. Well, now that you're awake, I'm sure you know why you're here. A couple of your friends have gotten you in trouble, and we need to know who these people are. Now, I know they're comrades of yours. I understand that you're very close to them. Do you see these things on this table? Do you see that first section there? When I use these things on you, this first section, I'm not going to believe anything you say. I like the real pointy one there This second group, the one that's a little bit more brown When I use these on you
Starting point is 00:43:48 Well, I might believe some of what you say And this third batch right here My favorite This one right here I learned this in the CIA You see you can actually detach the human eyeball But still leave the optic nerve So it's going to dangle down your cheek
Starting point is 00:44:04 And stare at your genitals as I cut into them with this knife When I do that to you you're going to tell me everything you know now in that moment I don't care what kind of comrade you are or what kind of organization you're going to tell that motherfucker everything you know it's just human nature
Starting point is 00:44:21 I don't blame you for it I don't blame anybody for it and if that person especially Brett you're a dad if that person said by the way I've also got your kids you are going to sing like a motherfucking canary because that's just human nature the human body can only take so much pain the human heart can only take so much torture In fact, remember, we're dealing with a power structure.
Starting point is 00:44:42 The American troops were caught, and this was in a Pentagon memo, that they heavily suppressed because they were worried about it getting out, that was basically allowing Iraqi prison guards to rape children in front of their mothers as a sort of interrogation technique. Yeah, you're going to say anything. You're going to do anything. You'll do it for free. If they tell you you're going to go back into your commune and you're going to get everybody's names and everybody's addresses, you're going to do it as fast as you can. cellular network, that's impossible because you don't have any names. You can't turn anyone in.
Starting point is 00:45:12 Just because you're an FAI member in Sacramento, California, you don't know who anybody is. So if there's another attack in New Jersey and you're communicating online through these attacks, and remember, there's no sort of like secret, you know, instant messaging, deep web sort of thing. It's literally you make an attack, you announce your attack, tell what happened. And during that announcement you sort of hash out like oh we agree with the comrades in chile that said this that and the other so it's almost like this global message board filled with fire and explosions and that's the way they communicate but if you were to let's say all of chile got wiped out they couldn't say anything about the comrades in russia they couldn't say anything about the comrades in Italy because there's
Starting point is 00:45:55 nothing to turn in one cell doesn't know the other so they're all operating independently and just totally focused on what they believe in and what they can get away with and they're attacking the areas they can around them so it's a very sort of an uh in department of homeland security documents they talk about how this was a nightmare uh when they were uh sort of combating the uh the elf and the alf um because there was no hierarchy you know the powers that be they're used to like mobs gangs you know you take out the leader or you turn an informant that you know gets everyone with this they didn't really know what to do so all they could do is like just en masse start scaring people a whole bunch of the green anarchist scene got chased out when like federal
Starting point is 00:46:41 agents basically started questioning them people got scared they fled and shit like that you could find an f a i cell you could cut their fingers off and just mutilate them and they couldn't give you any information the f a i would continue on just like you have members of the fai that are in heavily heavily segregated and controlled prison conditions and the fight goes on and even these people's birthdays are remembered with fire and bombings. And I think that's one of the really oppressive things, especially as anarchists. You know, we long for community. You know, we want that sort of camaraderly care and affection. Just because these people are nihilists doesn't mean that they don't care. In fact, reading some of these documents and these things these people do,
Starting point is 00:47:25 I mean, there is a love shared there between two people who are both committed in a war against all they find disgusting. And it's really amazing how the death of one comrade can spark 12 attacks across a globe, or a court case can inspire the burning of a police station in retribution. You know, if you or I were to get picked off, Brett, what exactly would our comrades do? Is anybody you know going to burn down a police station if you get whacked by a cop? Yeah, probably not. Yeah, probably not. But these people are so committed to both the people that are in the FAA and the cells and also to the ideals espoused by them
Starting point is 00:48:05 that they are willing to go that extra mile. So again, total anonymous cellular structure of either individuals or only individuals sort of informally together, i.e. no party, no offices, just people that you know, that you trust. So your average cell, I think they said they don't want that the max size is like five or eight people, you know,
Starting point is 00:48:28 and that's even for the for eight people we're talking bank robberies they're pulling off here so it's really amazing that in honest to god aggressive anarchist war is going on with such a structure that a lot of sort of maybe larger marxist organizations or stuff like that said shouldn't be possible and yet here we are the fbi still doing attacks to this day yeah and if i ever do get picked off and people don't necessarily want to go in and blow up a police station at least make good ass memes about me. I mean, that's the least I can ask. If I die, please riot for me. I'm going to say that right now. Please riot.
Starting point is 00:49:05 I will. I will. So, like, the old school image, which a lot of this is, like, conjuring up for me, no pun intended, is this notion of anarchists as bomb throwers. And that used to be, like, the old school way that anarchism was painted, and, like, bomb throwers were almost synonymous with anarchists. So how was the FAA a continuation of that old school anarchism that we saw in the 1800s and 1900s. Can you maybe flesh that history out for us a bit? Sure. There's a great document put out by the FAA that's actually on the anarchist library called Lone Wolves or Not Alone. And in it, they actually mention how they feel
Starting point is 00:49:43 like their comrades, like their descendants of the unique ones that, you know, rebelled against the state and society, even if the rest of the world didn't want to keep up. And what's interesting is this section of history. Now, around the 1880s, 1890s you know this sort of very direct action propaganda of the deed anarchism was coming into vogue and it really was scaring the ever-living shit out of europe i mean the i you know you you got to remember during this time period there were a lot of sort of moral codes and stuff like that so that these actions were unthinkable like when an anarchist stabbed a police officer in france i mean it it was like a uh a consciousness shift like no one thought you could do that it was just uh
Starting point is 00:50:28 Unbelievable. And, you know, the anarchist very, you know, very smartly said during his court case, you know, the policeman struck me in the name of the law. I struck the policeman in the name of liberty. And, you know, they love that. They ate their shit up. So in this sort of individualist scene and it's sort of intensified and everything like that, there was a definite central point with the sort of bonnet gang, which was a group of illegalists, which was a group of criminals, not very good criminals, let me say. But the idea was that they, there was this idea that like, you know what, the revolution. begins today. I'm not waiting on anybody else. We're going into the homes of the wealthy. We're taking what we need to survive because that's what we're going to do and all this sort of awesome stuff. So the Bonnet gang rolls across France and I mean scares they're ever living piss out of the bourgeoisie. I mean, these people think about they're stealing like the equivalent of a Rolls Royce and like robbing banks with it, like in top hats and shit. Like it was unthinkable. So you basically had these dirty proles rolling up in a limo with And remember, the cops at the time, if they had a gun, they had a service revolver.
Starting point is 00:51:30 These people were packing Browning 9mm. So it was a fully automatic pistol with seven rounds in a clip. So they were basically like super well armed, you know, were robbing and everything like that and taking whatever they required. So the Bonnick gang got really, really famous. It ended badly. The Bonnick gang was captured. They died very, very heroically.
Starting point is 00:51:52 And so basically, the anarchist. wider community in France specifically had to backpedal because you know in retribution France started raiding a whole bunch of anarchist offices and so a lot of anarchists were saying oh well you know we don't necessarily agree with all this business of bombing and killing and robbing you know that's not our anarchism we're we're about federating unions of employers and and you know uh getting the workers together and this that and the individuals were like well actually like five minutes ago you were like totally cool with this so what the fuck like you were hiding these people like there was you know general maloo here like you were sort of generally supporting us what the fuck and then
Starting point is 00:52:32 what happened was world war one came along okay and i think especially in the history of anarchism and i think even humanity i don't think human beings have fully come to terms with what world war one did to the general human psyche and that's a huge conversation for another time um everyone talks about World War II, but World War I, I think, really define the modern era. But anyway, so World War I rolls around. And a lot of anarchists, if you can believe it, and socialists and everything like that, we're totally down. You know, they even said in these anarchist journals, like, guys, we've got to tone back our language, a war's on. Come on now.
Starting point is 00:53:08 Our boys are in those trenches, beating those damn Germans. Let's hold off on the class war shit for a little while, okay? It's about our country here. And so you had this huge sort of turning down of the anarchist movement, a turning down. down of the violent rhetoric and um those people were slaughtered like animals i mean they died en masse in trenches uh they rotted away they were gassed millions and millions of people just snuffed out like a candle dreams hopes desires families theories writers artists bards i mean they were all dead whole towns were just emptied of all their young people and a lot of individualists a lot of
Starting point is 00:53:48 unionists, a lot of anarchists perished. They were just gone, gone forever. And especially after the Bonnet gang and after World War I, the only thing that sort of survived was the inspiration of Russia. And Russia was sort of organized on this collective idea of, you know, the proletariat and everything like that. And anarchists decimated as they were, took that and ran with it. And if you like, look at the anarchist history, right after World War I, there's almost like a huge just negation of anything individualistic, any sort of insurrectionary ideas, certainly not as invoked as it was. You had the 30s, anarchist Spain. Holy shit. Now, look at it. We got an anarchist revolution. This is how it happens. That was crushed. That was defeated. And yet, interestingly
Starting point is 00:54:32 enough, there was a illegalist by the name of El Sabate, who survived in Franco, Spain. He was an individualist. He was an insurrectionist. He was a illegalist. He was robbing banks. and giving it to the poor he was assassinating priests he was assassinating landowners and then in retribution for the Stalinist sort of doing whatever to the anarchists there he would often like blow the kneecaps
Starting point is 00:54:59 out of whatever communist he came across and so you have this very interesting sort of individualist current carrying on and things sort of carried on like that and individualism insurrectionism sort of disappeared because of the actions of the Bonnet gang and the sort of cowardice of the anarchists turning against their own
Starting point is 00:55:17 just to save their own skin and the sort of death march that was World War I and just now now the conditions are beginning to get dark enough and also interestingly as a cultist
Starting point is 00:55:26 weird here we are it's like 2017 you know the sort of mirror image of the early 1900s and hey look what's in vogue again so the history is these ideas do not stand alone the FAA is not some sort of alien being
Starting point is 00:55:40 that has descended from Mars and is like wow where did this come from this is a continuation of mine mind of an anarchist position that was at one time the leading anarchist position and may I add the most frightening and most fearful to the halls of power yeah when when I was researching the f a I um the history and all of that I did come across um connections over and over and over again to the red brigades you know I have Marxist leanings I identify not as a Leninist but as a Marxist I draw heavily from both anarchism and Leninism and aspects of Maoism.
Starting point is 00:56:17 But it was interesting to see the Red Brigades being brought up as almost a Marxist counterpart or like a Marxist version of the FAI. So who are the Red Brigades and what is their relationship to the FAI? All right. The Red Brigades are an organization that would probably make your average American communist piss and shit himself in like both fear and sexual excitement. The Red Brigades were an unbelievably violent group of Marxists that started in Italy. A couple of college kids decided, you know, hey, maybe like this class war shit is like some pretty,
Starting point is 00:57:02 you know, maybe it's more than a T-shirt. What do you guys say? Oh yeah, that's a pretty good idea. So the Red Brigade started and it had a sort of, it was very interesting because it was like a hybrid organization. It had a cellular structure for sort of new members, but, and this proved to be their downfall, the quote-unquote committed and seasoned members had a sort of hierarchy, this sort of overarching hierarchy. And so the Red Brigades, Marxist-Leninist, absolutely. This was not an anarchist organization. They wanted the dictatorship of the proletariat. They were a
Starting point is 00:57:33 leninist organization. They wanted a worker state. The idea was to begin a sort of war against the current state and inspire the proletariat towards greater and greater rebellion. Now, what I love about the Red Brigades is, you know, a lot of times, especially with the FAA or other anarchist techniques, you'll have traditional Marxists or other sort of socialists be like, well, that's just immature and foolish. I mean, terrorism, that would never work. What's funny is, if you were in the 1980s, actually, that's 100% what you were advocating, because the Red Brigades operated with official Communist Party sponsorship, not in Italy,
Starting point is 00:58:11 but the Czechoslovakian Communist Party gave them guns, gave them ammunition, gave them uniforms, gave them explosives, gave them safe houses. The Italian Communist Party was so afraid of this. They actually talked to Moscow and were like, look, you got to tell Czechoslovakian, like, cool, shit, man, because we can't operate like this. We're trying to, like, win offices and maybe gain a presidency. We can't have this class war shit going on, and Moscow basically kind of ignored them. So no one can really say if Moscow was like, fuck you, or maybe not.
Starting point is 00:58:43 But this actually caused a huge rift between the Italian Communist Party and the Russian Communist Party. So the Red Brigades were operating throughout Italy in what is commonly referred to as the years of lead. So you have bank robberies, arsons, assassinations, all sorts of crazy class war shit going on. And in the 10-year history of the Red Brigades, they were responsible for, check this out 14,000 acts of violence enough to warrant a police report. So again, I mean, this is why
Starting point is 00:59:14 these people were running wild and just doing whatever they could to kick off the revolution or to basically fight it here and now. So we like to, we again, as you were saying before that the sort of definition of terrorism is really chosen by the winners. I would argue that the Red Brigades in Italy,
Starting point is 00:59:30 you know, we like to look at them now as like, some crazy terrorist time. No. what was happening in Italy was basically an almost revolution that was being fought in the streets of Italy. And just because the fucking capitalists in NATO won, we get to call it a bunch of terrorist acts. Now, again, what was the downfall of repurgates? God damn fucking hierarchy. Okay. So the Italians work, they've been doing this for a long time, right? The nation of Italy has been dealing with the mafia for a long time. They know how these things work. So what they did, beautifully, they sort of rolled out this thing like, look, If you come out publicly and say you denounce all this red stuff and you give us the name of your comrades, we promise you will be immune from any kind of prosecution.
Starting point is 01:00:18 And then they started turning the heat up a little bit. They started raiding some offices. They started raiding some bookstores, all that stuff. People started getting scared. They started getting worried. People started thinking about what it might be like to spend 40 years in a cell asking some guy if you can take a piss or not. And then they started flipping. They started flipping like mad. and they started making these public denunciations and they started doing all this and the Red Brigades basically fell they ate themselves to pieces and I mean this wasn't just an Italian phenomenon you had the Red Army faction in Germany now one of the interesting things
Starting point is 01:00:48 is the Red Brigade's kind of fucked up along the path because they kidnapped some people they killed some people most of their targets no one gave you know I mean class world that good stuff but like one time they captured like a Christian Democrat Party leader and even members of the Red Brigade was like why did we do this exactly
Starting point is 01:01:02 and they killed her. And that did not look good. But like if you go to Germany, you had the Red Army faction. And interestingly, during its history, the Red Army faction had a sort of like, I think like a 40% approval rating with the German public. Like there was a sort of almost romantic image of them as like people that were fighting for the right. And the whole point of the Red Army faction was you had a whole bunch of young kids that were looking out at the modern German state and seeing Nazi here, Nazi there, like the Nazi party was still in control of like everything. And they said, well, this is bullshit. The war is not over. We need to. to fight for the liberation of the people were starting our guerrilla movement now so they did a
Starting point is 01:01:36 whole bunch of bank robberies assassinations bombing everything like that they had the general support of the people for a little while they got captured and they were actually executed by the german state now the german official history says that it just so happened that the red army faction somehow you know in a prison that was specifically designed for them ended up communicating and picking a suicide date even though the ballistics don't match up and oh yeah uh what female member stabbed herself to death three times with a kitchen knife. I don't know a lot of prisons that you're allowed to have a kitchen knife or why you would stab yourself three times, but, you know, hey, who am I to judge? So again, there's this very large Marxist history where, yeah,
Starting point is 01:02:15 Marxists and socialists and, you know, sort of Soviet-leaning folks were saying, yes, this is the way to the future. People's war right here, right now, urban guerrillas, no time for waiting. We're not going to get a whole bunch of offices and talk about how we're going to design these sewer systems. we have to seize power now through violence because that is the way it was stolen from us. And it was only after the fall of the Soviet Union that these Marxist organizations that were committed to these terrorist acts fell apart. It was only after they, you know, lost the funding, only after they lost the guns and the ammo and all that that they kind of gave up on their war.
Starting point is 01:02:55 And the FAA alone remains. So, yeah, I think it's fascinating to think of the sort of benefits of a cell structure versus the benefits of a sort of rigid hierarchy. As you said many times throughout this discussion, rigid hierarchies or well-known hierarchies lend themselves to being dismantled precisely because the government or whoever the opposition is can systematically target the leaders and, you know, all of that. And so the cell structure, whether you're anarchist, Marxist, whatever your ideology, a cell structure seems to be the superior way to organize.
Starting point is 01:03:34 But I also like what you said about, we're operating through violence because it was violence that took everything from us. And violence is precisely the mechanism by which the global status quo is implemented and maintained. I mean, you know, I never tire of saying that the entire United States society, the United States government, and global capitalism was founded on genocide, on slave, on the dropping of nuclear bombs on men, women, and children. I mean, so the sort of disparity in what we call violence and what we don't call violence is fucking disgusting. And organizations or pseudo-organizations like the FAA kind of make us think about violence. You know, even Antifa does that.
Starting point is 01:04:19 It makes us think about the power dynamics involved in what is and isn't violence. So all that's extremely interesting in anybody, no matter what you're, your tendency is can learn from cell structures and can learn and think about how violence and power operate. But we are well over 60 minutes, so I'm going to end with this one last question. You know, one may not agree with various forms of Marxism or anarcho-communism or with democratic socialism, but each of these ideologies do offer, at least in theory, a view of the future of humanity, which is positive. All of their goals are aimed at like creating a better world. so what kind of positive worldview or picture of a possible future of humankind does this sort of anarchism offer or does this nihilism commit it to like a dismissal of any positive conception of a future well i would say ultimately as the f a i is it's an individual choice uh where that sort of nihilism takes them because again if you were a slave in the united states in the american south in oh i don't know 1790 and you could
Starting point is 01:05:26 traveler from the future said yeah it's not going to get any better like it's the only way the slaves are going to be freed actually like there's a civil war they come down they destroy the south you're freed but hey by the way it does not end the mass slaughter does not end your family your kids yeah they'll probably just be like lynched um you'll own almost no property and you'll continue to be a second class citizen forever uh at least where i'm from people like you still get killed all the time for nothing see you later bye You know, what do you do with that knowledge? What do you do with the idea that maybe things aren't going to change?
Starting point is 01:06:03 You know, the Nileist position, and one that's very interesting, is a lot of the time, these are stories we tell ourselves to feel better. You know, if you were an anarchist in 1950, do you have 50 years to wait, what, to bring you up to our time we feel is revolutionary? I understand that. I know we live in an exciting time. It is an interesting time. And I've said before on this show that this is a quite possibly revolutionary moment.
Starting point is 01:06:31 But we've seen this before in the 1960s. And where did that go? Absolutely fucking nowhere. All those people that were about peace and love and everything like that, they're your fucking manager now at Target. That's your fucking manager. And he is damn making sure that you get there on time. And no, he's not giving you your birthday off.
Starting point is 01:06:48 Maybe you should have asked for it earlier. That's your guy. The nihilist position asks, is it better to gamble our entire lives on a future that we may never see, we may never experience, and may never happen, or is it better to focus on what is in front of us? It's also a very sort of Taoist idea that, you know, hey, don't get hung up on these potentials, these, you know, possible realities. Maybe I'll do this. Maybe I'll do that. Oh, I don't, you know, it's like those kids in high school that are like, well, you know, I don't want to do these drugs because, you know, my dad says I might be a famous football player. And, you know, he's working at fucking the dollar store. You know, like, boy, howdy. I bet he wish he took that acid now. So I think there is a potential for a positive world. But it's not necessarily a world of guarantees. It's a world of looking at the oppression that surrounds you and saying that it can be transformed. But the first thing that's going to have to happen is that that has to be destroyed. And again, reading through some of these documents with the FBI, these people are living. I think I find it very interesting that here in the United States, you know, we can look at these
Starting point is 01:07:54 people that are living wild and free and that are actively doing things that every one of us wishes they could do, things that we wish we could get away with, their doubt they're doing it. There is a global war going on against the powers of oppression with bombs, fire, and guns. It's been going on for a while. And these people are living it. They're living free. They're living lives of combat against a powerful, oppressive force. You know, if you were to ask a Russian soldier in the middle of World War II, would his position exactly be a nihilist position?
Starting point is 01:08:31 If his idea was number one, I must defeat the Nazis. I must destroy the Nazis because if I do not, they will go beyond me, they will kill me, and they will kill everyone I love. Is that a nihilist position? Because he wasn't dreaming about what potential future socialist Germany might have? Is that a nihilist position? Is it a nihilist position for Americans to begin protecting themselves against police rather than trying to imagine what a socialist cop might look like? The question that nihilists bring to us, at least in my mind, then again, this is my own opinion, not a member of the FAAI. not their opinion, is what do you really want out of anarchism?
Starting point is 01:09:10 Do you want to feel better about yourself? Do you want to create these beautiful structures that if they only had the chance would just be so fantastic? Do you want to sit and plan what a collective farm might look like? Maybe what a global free education system and health care system might look like if only we had the chance. or do you go every day to work and hate your life? Do you look out upon the millions of people watching the NFL and screaming at the top of their lungs at football players taking a need to stand against police violence? Do you watch the people eat and smack their mouths up and down, up and down without thinking spitting out whatever nationalist, racist, ignorant garbage has been programmed into them since they were children? Do you watch those people and look them in the eye and think,
Starting point is 01:10:02 ah, there goes a fine proletarian or revolutionary subject? Will you wait for him or will you start fighting for yourself and the ones you love here and now? That is the nihist position. All right, Dr. Bones, whether you fucking hate him or you love him, he is energetic, he makes you think, he draws emotions out of you, he makes people fucking deal with these issues. You are a comrade of mine.
Starting point is 01:10:26 We do not agree. We do not share the same tendency. We have lots of differences of opinions, but you are a friend and a comrade, and the more times you come on, you're getting closer and closer to being a fucking cousin of mine. So, thank you again for coming on. Always a fucking pleasure to have you on the show. Always a blast. You know, it's always entertaining and it's always interesting.
Starting point is 01:10:47 So thank you for coming on. But before we let you go, can you please let listeners know where they can find your work and then maybe make a recommendation or two outside of your own work where listeners can learn more about the FAI and anything else. we've discussed today. Okay, sure. I'm going to start with what we talked about. Number one, this is a very, very tiny, tiny brief introduction to anarcho nihilism. That was just me. If you really want to get a really, really fascinating and historical bead on anarcho nihilism, Blessed is the Flame by Serafinski, grab it. If you want to see the FAA, if anything has interested
Starting point is 01:11:26 you for a purely scholarly standpoint, or if you want to really, see what the fuck I'm talking about. There are a couple websites. I'll just mention to 325. no state.net and insurrection news, I think worldwide. I'm sorry, insurrection news
Starting point is 01:11:44 worldwide.com. These are two websites that often publish FAI communicates. They have books there explaining the FAAI position written by members. It's fascinating stuff to read. and honestly some very, very unbelievable poetry in some of these
Starting point is 01:12:04 communicates about attacks and stuff like that. As for me, I write over at gods and radicals. That's gods and radicals. That's gods andradicals.com. And, yeah, hit me up on Twitter or Facebook or whatever. Just start looking around for Dr. Bones. You'll probably be sure to find me. All right, brother.
Starting point is 01:12:22 Thank you so much for coming on and stay safe down there in the swamp land. Oh, absolutely. I got a new revolver, so I'll be just fine. All right, perfect. Have a good one, man. Get you. Drink it beers on the street for revolution. Just throw your bottle at the Nazi.
Starting point is 01:12:38 It's not fusion. Direct action is the only real solution. So get the fuck up off your counter. Go and do it. This is a call to us for a sea spread and black. Come and take the streets back. This is a call to one. Love for seeing red and black can come and take the streets back
Starting point is 01:13:04 This fucking fascist need to lay down in a casket and die I want to hear you screaming You're a night white bride No masters. All fucking cops are bastards. They don't deserve the right to breathe. They just protect the wealth is greed. Six feet of dirt is what I need to separate them all from me.
Starting point is 01:13:44 This is a call to horns for a sea of red and black. Come and take the streets back. This is the call to homes for a sea of red and black. Come and take the street back. Take the street back These southern Nazis with Confederate flags hung high I wanna see you screaming Goodnight White Pride
Starting point is 01:14:28 slaves Nothing left to loose now but our chains It's time to put them all into grave Let the streets run red with the blood from their fate This is a call to the whys for a sea of red and black to come and take the streets back. These fucking fascists need to lay down in a casket and die. I want to hear you screaming. Good night white pride!

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