Anarchism : Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarianism

The Sash, Hector MacMillan, by Stuart Christie
In Glasgow’s Pavilion Theater you would not expect to see a play like THE SASH MY FATHER WORE by Hector MacMillan. Folks go there to see pantomime more than biting satires. And one has to admire the courage of the actors who can get up in Glasgow and tear into their lines that strip the Orange and Papist legends down to their pubic hair. It’s about a stalwart Orangeman who finds to his dismay his long haired son is falling away from the faith of his fathers and the bits of realization start coming out … only fourteen miles from Scotland to Ireland… “Christ it’s three times that f’Glasgow t’Edinburgh” and did you know “King William there ‘of blessed memory’ … that’s the man who wis responsible for the massacre of Glencoe … your folk, the Macdonalds! that lousy bastart signed the order they were aw t’be exterminated … it wis supposed to be a great Prodisant victory at the Battl... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Angry Brigade, Alan Burns, by Stuart Christie
It is becoming increasingly fashionable these days for academics and professional writers and historians to illustrate their theses with the assistance of the tape-recorded mumblings of the inarticulate to support their unsubstantiated class-prejudices. This book is described by its publishers as “a deft combination of serious in-depth research and imaginative reconstruction”, but not one word of fact emerges from it. (We subsequently learned that the “in-depth research” and information came from a fringe theater group). The author’s “imaginative reconstruction” consists of one specific reference to the blowing-up of the Post Office Tower which, incidentally, was omitted from the police charges which led up the trial of the “Stoke Newington Eight”. In another incident a character, who for some reason is “known to be involved with the Special Branch” and therefore presumably interested in maintaining his cover at tha... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Stuart Christie Interviewed for Black Flag in 2010, by Stuart Christie
Four decades on from its first issue, Black Flag is one of the few remaining publications from that time. So it is a great pleasure to be able to interview its founding editor, or at least the surviving half of that editorship, Albert Meltzer having died in 1996, as we enter the next ten years of struggle. When Black Flag was launched did you expect it to still be going 40 years later? Didn’t really think about it actually, our only concern was to get the next issue out and doing the other things we were doing. Would you care to talk a little about the founding of Black Flag? When I came out of prison in Spain one of my concerns was the lack of a pro-prisoners defense group, to which Albert suggested we relaunch the long-defunct Anarchist Black Cross, which we did. The result was Black Flag, which was subtitled “the organ of the Anarchist Black Cross.” We made an announcem... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Soldiers Of The Night: The Story of the French Resistance by David Schoenbrun [Review], by Stuart Christie
Written by an American intelligence agent (Psychological Warfare Branch), this is the first reasonably satisfying account to date, in English, of the French Resistance. David Schoenbrun has an obvious affinity for those whose activities he describes, and his profession as a spy proves both useful and illuminating as he guides us through the murky labyrinthine world of political and military intrigue in London, Washington and Casablanca as well as Occupied and Vichy France. But it was not the Generals who fled to London or North Africa, nor the adventurers of the OSS or the SE who constituted the French Resistance, as this book clearly shows. It was the ordinary men and women from all walks of life and varying political persuasions. They were soldiers without uniforms or proper arms who lived in the shadows as soldiers of the night and who courageously defied the might of the German military machine and their fascist Vichy collaborators. The Resistance was individua... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Remembering Miguel Garcia, by Stuart Christie
My first meeting with Miguel García García took place in the mid-1960s in la primera galleria of Madrid’s Carabanchel Prison. He was in transit to another penitentiary and was in what was known as ‘periodo’ – a fortnight of sanitary isolation, ostensibly to prevent or limit the spread of disease. I was the practice nurse (practicante) for the 7th Gallery, a position that gave me the run of most of the prison and allowed me to liaise with comrades in different wings, especially with isolated transit prisoners or prisoners in solitary confinement. Miguel passed through Carabanchel on a number of occasions over the years, going backwards and forwards between penitentiaries and Yeserias, Spain’s main prison hospital in Madrid. Miguel and I struck up a close relationship, one that was to endure for a decade and a half until his death in 1981. What particularly impressed me about him on our first meeting was his und... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The US government was defeated in Indochina, but only bruised at home. No outside power will compel us to face the record honestly or to offer reparations. On the contrary, efforts will be devoted to obscuring the history of the war and the domestic resistance to it. There are some simple facts that we should try to save as the custodians of history set to work. In its essence, the Indochina war was a war waged by the US and such local forces as it could organize against the rural population of South Vietnam. Regarding the Geneva Accords of 1954 as a “disaster,” Washington at once undertook a program of subversion throughout the region to undermine the political arrangements. A murderous repression in South Vietnam led to the renewal of resistance. Kennedy involved US forces in counterinsurgency, bombing, and “population control.” By 1964 it was obvious that there was no political base for US intervention. In January 1965, General Khanh was moving t... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The guerrilla struggle against Francoism actually arose in the days following the army revolt against the Spanish Republic on 18 July 1936. In areas which fell immediately to the mutinous army, a bloody repression was promptly set in motion and this obliged many anti-fascists to take to the hills to save their skins. This was repeated over nearly three years of civil war as areas were conquered, one after another, by the Francoist army and it extended to virtually the entirety of the Peninsula after the Republican troops surrendered in the Center-Levante zone on 31 March 1939. Very little has been written about the scale of the armed struggle against Franco following the civil war. It was and still is known to few. A thick blanket of silence has been drawn over the fighters, for a variety of reasons. According to Franco’s personal friend Civil Guard Lieutenant-General Camilo Alonso Vega — who was in charge of the anti-guerrilla campaign for twelve years —... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Foreword Max Cafard became legendary when “The Surre(gion)alist Manifesto” first appeared in Exquisite Corpse in 1990. The question “Who is Max Cafard?” is still being asked with some regularity at our offices. Max Cafard became one of the “surregions” of his own generative imagination when his insurgent writing gave our readers the sudden frisson that they were in the presence of something new. One never forgets that frisson when first encountering Nietzsche, Cioran, Derrida, or Deleuze. Imagine the lucky contemporaries of those thinkers who were first on the scene when that writing appeared! The frisson is renewed by each encounter, but the original feeling of the discovery is unequaled. This was precisely my epiphany on encountering Max Cafard’s manifesto: I am in a new place. What kind of place this is will be debated and delved into with all the voluptuousness attendant on every reader’s discovery. What I kno... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Friday June 12ths shock closure of the iconic Clery’s department store in Dublin shows how the law is set up to favor capital and screw workers. Workers are being told there may be no additional redundancy or owed holiday payments as the company is in debt. But this is only the case because right before the closure the largest asset, the building itself, was separated off from the accumulated debts. This was almost certainly legal under our system but of such obvious dubious morality that the workers could expect massive popular support if they occupied the building on a permanent ongoing basis. According to SIPTU unions organizers some of the workers are owed “four or five weeks’ wages” and the limited redundancy they will get will come not from the company but from the rest of us via the government’s insolvency and social insurance fund which pays out statutory redundancy when companies declare bankruptcy. In other words all those costs are... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Frightened, Le Drapeau Noir, No. 13, November 4 1883. I don’t know anyone more frightened than the capitalists. As soon as they hear the word anarchist they start trembling like wet hens. And why do they tremble? Because the goods they have are stolen goods and we say that whoever has gotten rich at the expense of the worker is going pay for it. They understand this to mean themselves and, in fact, if the shoe fits... And they’re scared. Yes, workers, we make them tremble. Our name inspires intense fear in these parasites, which proves that they’re guilty. A joker tosses a firecracker into a room and right away they accuse us. The next day the daily papers report the event and we see the bourgeoisie turn pale while reading the story of the firecracker. Frightened, then! Well, on the great day of the... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)