The Way of Headless Wandering

I started reading The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic about a year ago. At some point I put it down to read another book, and then another, you know how it goes. For whatever reason, I decided to pick it up again the other day. I just finished a chapter on the impact of piracy in Africa on the slave trade there. My mind drew some parallels to the slave-trading forts on the Western coast of Africa and on the steadily growing belt of concentration camps in the US for migrants from South of the border.

What can we do to not just resist but sabotage the machinery of deportation/migrant-processing centers? I think a lesson can be drawn from the history of piracy in the Atlantic.

Firstly, pirates were not some morally pure class of revolutionaries purely concerned with fighting the newly emerging capitalist system and empire. Their first priority was their own freedom and pleasure. They were comprised mainly of pressed men, runaway or liberated slaves, free blacks, Indigenous people of Turtle Island and especially of the Caribbean, and many others, including the odd woman or two who wanted to escape the strict gender roles of her day. Freedom was the first priority for a pirate because many of them lived with brutal conditions and cruel poverty. Pressed men were mostly commoners from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England who were captured by armed gangs and forced to serve as sailors for the rapidly growing aquatic English empire. Only one in four pressed men would survive even a year aboard their ship. Those who did survive were rarely paid, their employers with-holding their pay until their service was completed. And those who survived were often left maimed and disabled, the classic image of the pirate with missing limbs or eyes is no exaggeration. Food was often rotten and strong drink rare or absent aboard ships. It goes without saying that those who survived slavery or a genocidal invasion of their land also lived poorly. Enter the pirate ship.

The pirate ship was “a world turned upside down,” when compared to the typical merchant or navy ship. The captain was chosen democratically and could be removed or punished, even executed, if he became too tyrannical towards his crew. A captain had total control over his crew only while attacking or fleeing a ship (those who have read their Clastres are probably seeing some similarities here with the chiefs of Amazonian tribes). Food and drink were infinitely better, the literature on pirates from that era often focused on how festive their meals were, musicians were especially prized and loved members of the crew. The brutal work machine that was a merchant or naval ship was replaced with a much more relaxed system of labor aboard the pirate ship. Often pirate ships had crews much larger than their mercantile or naval counterparts of the same ship size. This was chiefly so that each crew member could do less work, not to mention have more warriors for boarding, more musicians and cooks for making merry, and more skilled artisans to outfit the ship. Here we see, in contrast to the life of a slave or pressed sailor, a life of freedom and pleasure. This merry life was one that made “going on the account” very appealing. And once onboard and fully accustomed to the life of freedom and joy, a pirate fiercely defending that life, their ship, and their comrades.

I begin with this brief outline of what the authors of Many-Headed Hydra call “hydrarchy from below” because today we have no pirate ship to flee to from our modern day slave galley or merchant ship. Empire, Civilization, Capital, or whatever you want to call the beast, has grown greatly in its dominion over space, time, and even the bodies and minds of zeks it holds within its belly. Here is where I muse on the return of the pyrat; here be dragons.

We have no equivalent to the pirate ship. There are no “crews” of anarchists who live so well and love one another so dearly that they go on raids together. We are fragmented from one another and spend most of our time trying to pay rent or bills. What “crews” we have that exist are almost always solely digital. Very few of us even rendezvous to make merry or mischief. Leviathan has got us all on our spinning-wheels and gives us only enough rest to poorly reproduce ourselves and often that involves commodified activities. If we want to build our pirate ship, a metaphor for a gathering of friends and lovers willing to fight for one another, not just those who share an affinity for anarchy, there must be a deeper bond forged through lives intertwined together over time and space.But how can we forge those bonds if, like me, most of us are treading shark-infested water? I honestly don’t have an answer, but I have some theories.

Dropping out seems the easiest solution. Have a shit job and shittier social life? Walk away from it. Keep walking until you find some place pleasant. Sit down there for a spell. If more and more of your digital “friends” decide to do the same, or if you are already so lucky to have real friends and lovers, not just those who hang out with you because they don’t want to be alone, plan a rendezvous somewhere. You’re probably hungry by now, what cash you had has gone towards good walking shoes, bus or train tickets, and probably a lot of booze to making sleeping hard easier. Maybe you’re in some suburb that has a lot of woods or other land that is sparsely populated and, more-importantly, poorly policed. Let’s put some food in that belly, some fire in your soul, and forge those newly formed bonds of love with your companions a bit stronger!

Rob a grocery store, doesn’t have to be a big sexy raid with guns and ski-masks. If you’ve done your homework you hopefully have learned the fine skill of shop-lifting. It’s far easier to do it at a grocery store. If you’re a bit more cautious stick to dumpster diving or robbing farms or even community gardens. Now head back to your hide-out and have a feast, make love, dance beneath the moon, howl together. You’re a crew and you’ve successfully carried out your first raid. Now gather some XP and keep grinding with these raids until you feel ready to take on more risks with your crew.

The pirate ship rarely attacked an armed enemy. The plot of the TV series “Black Sails” had a pirate captain scheme to capture a Spanish man-o-war so that they can defend their anarchic pirate utopia from the navies of Spain and England. Unless you and your crew have liberated a tank from the local army base, please don’t try any attacks on armed enemies. You or your companions will die or worse, end up in prison for a long time. When pirates disrupted the slave-trade along the coast of Africa they didn’t have battles with naval vessels. They attacked traders, merchants, and empty slave ships headed towards Africa. Trader and merchants have a lot of goods that can be sold on the black market and very rarely did they have much of an armed force to protect them. Slaver ships without slaves meant that you could capture a ship loaded with food for a long journey. After a slave ship was captured off the coast of Africa, pirates burned or sunk them. It took a major war effort by England to end the menace of piracy to the slave trade. After piracy was wiped out in Africa the impact could be well seen, slavery increased by 27 percent without the menace of pirates.

Right now, we have no pirates menacing capitalism and the processing of captured humans. I am not advocating you and your crew go make a liberating raid on a migrant detention center. You probably won’t do much against the well-armed forces posted there. Instead, attack the merchants and the empty slave ships headed to load on human cargo. These are much easier ways to sabotage than some doomed vainglorious street battles with riot police outside a migrant concentration camp.

Today there is a planned walkout of 500, and growing, employees of Wayfair in Boston and Maine, a company that supplies beds and other furniture to the concentration camps. What if even one of those employees, who mainly work as programmers at the Boston office, were to sabotage the computer infrastructure of their corporation? What if they leaked some confidential documents to the press? Listed the address of the CEO who has refused their petition to end business with the concentration camp administrators?

I’ve typed a lot here and I am sure it sounds like rantings of a mad man. That’s because they are. You have to be mad just to live in this world without blowing your brains out. I will end with a vision.

I prefer the pre-standardized spelling “pyrat.” It gives me a vision of rats sneaking into and out of buildings without being noticed. Shitting in the gears of machines, pissing on computer circuits, gnawing at power-cords, multiplying, carrying plague to civilization. “Pyrat” also conjures up images of pyros setting fires for pleasure and revenge. Wild-eyed demons sulking in the darkness, waiting to move. Shadows moving and then bright red flames birthed from nothing. Soon a whole yard of vans and other vehicles are ablaze. The ICE logos slowly melting and peeling off in the inferno. The next day I awake to reports of similar fires and countless tire-slashings of vehicles connected to concentration camps and prisons across the continent. There are even reports of armed battles carried out at the southern border of Mexico… An age of howls and fire to melt the ice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZUN6-JwwMA

[Dear fellow heretical spirits, below are a few pages I came into possession a few nights ago. I was in the forest sauntering on a cold, yet not too frigid Winter’s night. The Moon, that lovely witch, was riding high and, as is my wont when I’ve over-imbibed those heady hopped ciders of Salem, I was staring up at it while stumbling along the path. Have you noticed that when you stare at the Moon you can feel something pulling you, your eyes widening to take in its silver waves?

Well, anyways, my heart seized in my chest when I heard crack of twig. I turned around and a human cloaked like a ninja stood there. I paused thinking maybe I had accidentally inhaled some entheogenic spore dislodged from rotting leaves by my drunken stumbling. Yet the ninja spoke in rapid-fire like a sergeant giving orders to a soldier. He brandished brass knuckles and demanded me to open my backpack.

I was being mugged, but what kind of highwayman would choose the woods on a winter’s night when there are far more marks to be had in the darkened alleys of downtown? Since I am but a poor zek I did not have much on me. My backpack mostly containing a trove of pens stolen from various stores, I have a lust for fine-tipped writing implements. I was also carrying a book or two, as I always do, you never know when you will get bored of one and need to switch to the other. He pulled out my book and quickly flipped through it’s pages.

“What is this?” He barked at me.

It was small text, an overview of Georges Bataille’s ideas. “It’s a book about a philosopher who explores the sacred…well he’s more an anti-philosopher I guess, but…

“Silence!” He interrupted. “That’s all the evidence I need to make my judgement. For mentally platforming such horrible post-modern filth, such as is harmful to the Cause, I brand you a counter-revolutionary. By the powers given to me by the Peoples’ Protection Unit, I shall escort you to our station whereupon you will be examined further.”

He reached into his bag and took out a dark folder. In it were hundreds of pages of documents, perhaps he needed a refresher on the procedure for arresting me, I joked. He did not like that.

“OK, come with me!” I resisted. He really didn’t like that. I snatched at his folder, eager to discover what nonsense was therein. I grabbed a few pages while he swung his weighted fist at me. He clipped me in the back of the neck and so decided to dash for the bushes before he could throw another at me. He did not pursue and so I loped through the underbrush as silently as I could and retreated to my room. Safely home I read the pages and discovered part of a horrible document, printed here below. I have come to the conclusion that it must have been some prank from cruel friends, or enemies even, meant to rile me up. I hope I am right, for it would be a dark portent of witch-finders returning once more to my region.]

Gangraena : A catalogue and discovery of many of the errors, heresies, blasphemies and pernicious practices of the anarchists of this time

To the reader: That thou mayest discern the mischief of heretical anarchy, the monstrousness of its toleration, and be warned to be wife to sobriety, and fear and suspect the pretended New Lights, I approve that this treatise, discovering the gangrene of so many strange opinions, should be imprinted.
-Andreas Inundatio

Serpents in the Garden:

The torch of anarchism has long burned, even in the darkest night, hounded constantly by tempestuous winds ever-threatening to snuff it out. I have guarded the torch with my body and my mind for many years against those who would extinguish that luminous black flame. But I believe I have been in error simply sitting in my library and studying my dusty tomes of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and the late and dearly mourned Bookchin. For while I poured over their gospels, many serpents have stolen into the Garden of Anarchism. These serpents have swayed many Good Anarchists with their sibilant tongues. Their sweet venom has turned righteous hearts towards heresies manifold and lead them down the path of Hell. I must now don my shield and sword and silence the serpents so that darkness is lifted from Anarchism once more.

The late Father Bookchin did our Faith a great justice when he penned his work
“Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm,” in 1995. Father Flood took the cause even further with his “Civilisation, Primitivism, and Anarchism” in 2005. More recently, our Crusade against the vipers has been most wonderfully carried out by the Edelweis Pirates in 2017 with their “Of Indiscriminate Attacks & Wild Reactions: An Anti-civ Anarchist Engages with ITS and Atassa, Their Defenders and Their False Critics.” Also in 2017, that cancerous growth on the body of anarchism known as the post-left has even suffered substantial blows from our courageous warriors of light, such as Alexander Reid Ross in his “The Left Overs: How Fascists Court the Post-Left.” Even those who we see as erring, yet redeemable due to their Good spirits, have come to the aid of the Church of Anarchism, of note are Glitchy, Sir William of Gillis, and the lately fallen Dr. Bones. So, take heart, Good anarchist, for there are many aligned with you in your war with the serpents and the wolves and screaming hellcats who infest our beautiful World and sully the pure light of our Idea.

And yet despite these valiant and righteous attempts to drive out the many heretics from our fold, the heads of the Hydra multiply! I will attempt here to create a catalogue of some of the main heresies that spread like rot through our flock. I create this list so that the Good anarchist may be armed in mind against those many fell beasts who would lead them off the path of Revolution and into the reeking swamps of nihil.

Anti-humanism, inhumanism, or any framework that doth seek to de-center the human:
These heresies have spread their roots deeply, not surprisingly given the fears around climate change. Any anarchist who does not have the liberation of the human race at its core is suspect of this heresy. Those professing that humans are inherently bad or even that humanity rather than capitalism, state, hierarchy, etc. are to blame do spit upon Father Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, in which he deftly showed that humans are good and tend towards solidarity and mutual aid when not set upon by capitalism or the state.

Yes, the environment, Earth, nature, and the survival of species other than man are all important. But if we center the liberation of the human race, would not all the others also be protected and uplifted? If we strive for fully automated luxury communism than surely the environment would no longer suffer. It is capitalism and its handmaiden the state that have wrecked nature.

Aversion to mass society or any desire to live in a “tribal” band type grouping of persons, or worse, as a hermit:

This heresy is inherently racist in more than one way. Firstly, the aversion to mass society is racist because it sees “over-population” as a problem. The problem isn’t over-population, there is no over-population problem. Such a framework is a fascist talking point meant to justify the mass extermination of millions, especially of those who are not white, cis, men, straight, able-minded/bodied, or wealthy. This is a prime example of how fascists court those among the post-left.

Secondly, it is racist because it posits that those in mass society are denied their humanity by living in such a state, that they are reduced to lesser animals, cogs in a mechanick body even. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The opposite of the truth even! These heretics thrive on inversion. Even Bakunin noted that mass society was a prerequisite for the full development of human potential:

“We are convinced that all the wealth of man’s intellectual, moral, and material development, as well as his apparent independence, is the product of his life in society. Outside society, not only would he not be a free man, he would not even become genuinely human, a being conscious of himself, the only being who thinks and speaks. Only the combination of intelligence and collective labor was able to force man out of that savage and brutish state which constituted his original nature, or rather the starting point for his further development. We are profoundly convinced that the entire life of men – their interests, tendencies, needs, illusions, even stupidities, as well as every bit of violence, injustice, and seemingly voluntary activity – merely represent the result of inevitable societal forces. People cannot reject the idea of mutual independence, nor can they deny the reciprocal influence and uniformity exhibiting the manifestations of external nature.”

Thirdly, the aversion of mass society and the desire to live in a tribal band is racist to the very core because it rests on a racist caricature of Indigenous Turtle Islanders. Do they really buy the colonialist propaganda that Indigenous people lived in small bands? This myth was invented by colonizers to entice proles from Europe to move to so-called North America. Those proles wouldn’t have migrated if they had known that the lands they would move to were once thickly-settled with sprawling towns, farms, and cities. We now know that a great many millions of Indigenous people were killed in a biological war carried out by the ruling class when it first “discovered” Turtle Island. We can never know truly how vast and populated this continent was. How advanced its civilization was. What the his-storians put down on paper was all lies meant to erase the vast advanced civilizations that once existed here. Those Indigenous peoples who did live nomadically and relied on hunting and gathering were refugees of the Great Killing, there once shining cites burned and looted by settlers. So, to want to live in a band society is to continue the myth of the colonizers that Indigenous people were uncivilized.

Those who critique technology and civilization:
Here we find the vipers nest of heresies. Those who critique technology or civilization range from straight up volkish fascists to the more harmless and generally redeemable anarcho-primitivists such as Kevin Tucker and John Zerzan (who also fight against our common enemies.)

True Anarchism believes that technology is a tool which can be wielded for good or for evil. In the hands of the capitalists and the state, it is used to profit, to kill, to surveil, to crush resistance, to sedate, to blind, etc. In the hands of anarchists it is used to liberated, to expand human ability, to make deserts bloom with crops, to enlighten, to send us to the Milky Way and beyond. If we wish to achieve a fully automated luxury society we need technology of the highest order, digital, even biological technology. Are not the secrets of life ours to explore? If we can end hunger by manipulating the genome of plants to make them produce more than that is good. If we can build wind farms and other green energy infrastructure than that will end climate change. If we can cure diseases than technology is wonderful! Do these heretics want sweet infants to die of curable diseases? Do they want to kill our kind grandmothers?

If such a thing as civilization can be opposed then we might as well return to the state of animals. Civilization has liberated us from ignorance and toil. Humans once lived miserably short lives without any glimmer of joy. Any “anarchist” would wish to sink back into the primordial state of an ape is beyond saving. What’s next, will they argue for letting lions, leopards, and wolves multiply again so that they can prey on us as they did when we had barely just descended from the trees? To oppose civilization is to oppose all that is Good in the World.

Those who critique agriculture and seek a return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle:

This heresy overlaps with the above two sections so I will be brief. Agricultural development is the pinnacle of human genius. It is not surprising that the World’s population grew so slowly, when it grew at all, which was often punctuated by sorrowful declines, until the advent of agriculture. Without the cunning mind and skillful labors of man, nature is cruel and fruitless. It took thousands of years for humanity to create such a bounty and with biological technology we are so close to extinguishing the ghoul of famine from humanity. And yet these heretics would argue that agriculture is harmful to man. Have they not read Father Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories, and Workshops? I will be brief and quote from Father Flood who so skillfully deflated the fantasy of returning to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle:

“A pine tree may be as good or better then a lettuce at capturing the solar energy that falls on it. But with the lettuce a huge percentage of the captured energy goes into food (around 75%). With a pine tree none of the energy produces food we can eat. Compare the amount of food to be found in a nearby woodland with the amount you can grow in a couple of square meters of garden cultivated in even an organic low energy fashion and you’ll see why agriculture is a must have for the population of the planet. An acre of organically grown potato can yield 15,000 lbs of food(5). A a square that is 70 yards wide and 70 yards long measures just over an acre.”

“[…] Another way of looking at the fact that [hunting and gathering] cannot support all of the people of the planet is more anecdotal and uses Ireland (where I live) as an example. Left to itself the Irish countryside would consist mostly of mature oak forest with some hazel scrub and bogs. Go into an oak forest and see how much food you can gather – if you know your stuff there is some. Acorns, fruit on brambles in clearings, some wild garlic, strawberries, edible fungi, wild honey, and the meat from animals like deer, squirrel, wild goat and pigeon that can be hunted. But this is much, much, much fewer calories then the same area cultivated as wheat or potatoes would yield. There is simply not enough land in Ireland to support 5 million, the current population of the island, as hunter gatherers.”

Down with bogs and forests, up with fields and vertical farming! Let technology unleash the true potential of the earth to feed humanity!

Those who argue that we are all doomed because of climate change:

Here is a most foul heresy. Spread by the vile nihilists to undercut our glorious movements for freedom. If the proles think that the world is dying why would they fight to create our future paradise? It is no surprise that these green nihilists are always citing reports on the climate as are found in mainstream media and institutional publications. Are they so stupid as to not see that they are repeating capitalist-funded propaganda meant to depress the spirit of the workers? Climate change is real, we will not deny that. But we must maintain hope! We can fight back against it! The human mind is amazing and can solve any problem if it is liberated from the shackles of Capital. We were put on this planet to protect it and enrich it for the benefit of the human race. The nihilists and the capitalists want us to turn a blind eye to this destiny. They spread their vile lies that we can’t end climate change and reverse it and whenever we propose new technology those Luddite scum call us techno-fascists! Is it fascist to use technology to shape the environment to the benefit of the free working peoples? How can they possibly […]

[Here is where the file abruptly ended, I wonder how many other heresies it contained? Yawn.]