...posted by Abiezer at 7:14 AM on January 14, 2010 [3 favorites]
It is often said that Anarchists live in a world of dreams to come, and do not see the things which happen today. We do see them only too well, and in their true colours, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet into the forest of prejudice that besets us.
Far from living in a world of visions and imagining men better than they are, we see them as they are; and that is why we affirm that the best of men is made essentially bad by the exercise of authority, and that the theory of the "balancing of powers" and "control of authorities" is a hypocritical formula, invented by those who have seized power, to make the "sovereign people," whom they despise, believe that the people themselves are governing. It is because we know men that we say to those who imagine that men would devour one another without those governors: "You reason like the king, who, being sent across the frontier, called out, 'What will become of my poor subjects without me?'"
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The third element alone remains-the institution itself, acting in such a way as to make social acts a state of habit and instinct. This element-history proves it-has never missed its aim, never has it acted as a double-bladed sword; and its influence has only been weakened when custom strove to become immovable, crystallized, to become in its turn a religion not to be questioned when it endeavored to absorb the individual, taking all freedom of action from him and compelling him to revolt against that which had become, through its crystallization, an enemy to progress.
In fact, all that was an element of progress in the past or an instrument of moral and intellectual improvement of the human race is due to the practice of mutual aid, to the customs that recognized the equality of men and brought them to ally, to unite, to associate for the purpose of producing and consuming, to unite for purpose of defence to federate and to recognize no other judges in fighting out their differences than the arbitrators they took from their own midst.
Each time these institutions, issued from popular genius, when it had reconquered its liberty for a moment,-each time these institutions developed in a new direction, the moral level of society, its material well-being, its liberty, its intellectual progress, and the affirmation of individual originality made a step in advance. And, on the contrary, each time that in the course of history, whether following upon a foreign conquest, or whether by developing authoritarian prejudices men become more and more divided into governors and governed, exploiters and exploited, the moral level fell, the well-being of the masses decreased in order to insure riches to a few, and the spirit of the age declined.
History teaches us this, and from this lesson we have learned to have confidence in free Communist institutions to raise the moral level of societies, debased by the practice of authority.
Had the workers known how to act as masters in antifascist Spain, the war would have been won, and the revolution would not have had to endure so many deviations right from the start. We could have had the victory. But what we managed to gain with four handguns, we lost when we had whole arsenals full of arms. For those culpable for the defeat, we have to look past Stalinism's hired assassins, past the thieves like Prieto, past scum like Negrin and past the usual reformists: we bore the guilt for not having it in us to do away with all this riffraff...Also, it's the splinter CGT that's the subject of this post. Not the largest group in Spain, certainly, but if the 100,000 members in the FPP is right, that's well over double the size of the BNP who excite plenty of agitation and hand-wringing when they get a mention.
Peter Lamborn Wilson (who writes at least as often as Hakim Bey and makes no secret of the pseudonym), uses anarchism in an ethically warped, opportunistic way by pretending that adult-child sex is a natural freedom. It isn't, and not only would almost any anarchist disagree with him, but they'd also dispute a child-rapist's right to a non-violent remedy in many cases. As a person who is and always is, in both public and private life, as an anarchist, I feel the responsibility to simply put my disagreement on record....
Many of Hakim Bey's best-known anarchist pitches first saw print as paedophile apologies. NAMBLA published his "Association for Ontological Anarchism, communiqué #2" in July-Aug 1986, and a journal called Gayme ran "A Temporary Autonomous Zone" and "Pirate Utopias" in issues of 1993-95, along with his more obscure "Contemplation of the Unbearded."
Bey's best-known book Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) describes spiritual zones in which anything goes, where the oppressive rules of the outside society need not interfere with what feels good to do. I realise that many honest people have read TAZ without taking any sleazy impression from it. I hope they'll forgive me for pointing out that paedophiles say these same things to children. In his essay "Obsessive Love" (Moorish Science Monitor, Vol. 7, #5, Summer 1995), in which he pretends to be quite the classical scholar, he talks about ancient religious views on romantic and obsessive love. "The Greco-Egypto-Islamic ferment adds a pederastic [i.e. paedophile] element... the ideal woman of romance is neither wife nor concubine but someone in the forbidden category..." He uses the term "spiritual alchemy" for witnessing the "Devine Beloved in certain beautiful boys," and remarks that, "since all homosexuality is forbidden in Islamic law, a boy-loving sufi has no 'safe' category for sensual realisation."
Hakim Bey is the pseudonym for 59-year old Peter Lamborn Wilson, who has been based in New York City for most of his life, but is now living upstate in New Paltz. The Brooklyn Rail's interviewer, has this mistakenly reversed, giving Bey as the original name, Wilson as the pseudonym. The guy was born a WASP, and perhaps became Sufi one day while prowling the mountains of Asia. He has no occupation, and in 1994 told an interviewer (Voice Literary Supplement, New York, Feb. 1994) that he "thanks God that a trickle of family money keeps him 'independently poor.'"[1] The name Lamborn is rare in New York, and it is where the Sugar industry magnate Ody Lamborn died in 1971. It's been my impression that Hakim Bey's trust fund was originally earned by tormented labourers on sugar plantations.posted by Pope Guilty at 2:06 PM on January 14, 2010 [4 favorites]
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posted by ZenMasterThis at 5:48 PM on January 13, 2010 [2 favorites]