Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 10:42:51 -0500 From: Chuck0 <chuck-AT-tao.ca> Subject: Jason McQuinn scolds Ed Stamm I'll send the other messages in this debate tonight. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: New to the list Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 01:32:56 -0600 From: "Jason McQuinn" <jmcquinn-AT-mail.coin.missouri.edu> Reply-To: kc-AT-lists.tao.ca To: <kc-AT-lists.tao.ca> Ed, I hesitate to draw this out any longer. But please look at what you have said and then admit that it is you who are "mixing apples and oranges." I don't have a clue why, but you have begun to insist over and over on bringing the Unabomber into this discussion of the Seattle anti-WTO protests. I have to suspect that it is because you're too afraid that dealing with the actual point at issue shows the poverty of your case too easily, so you have to bring in absolutely irrelevant people and events in order to completely confuse things. If you want to talk about the Unabomber we can do so, but please admit it HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SEATTLE!!! (Really, Kaczynski wasn't there!) All of the insurrections and revolutions and violent actions I mentioned were only to illustrate that almost every historically significant anarchist has participated in such things (often in many, many disparate actions over a lifetime) much to the contrary of your unconsidered statement. The individual activities in which these anarchists participated could be classified according to the criminal categories of the corporate capitalist state and its media lackeys as you seem to want to do, though I don't understand to what purpose. If people engaged in property destruction of multinational corporate storefronts and in blocking the assemblage of corporate tyrants in Seattle it doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that they were engaging in quite similar activities to those of the earlier anarchists I mentioned. If you want, one could say, for example, that Malatesta engaged in "petty vandalism" when he helped burn public documents in Italian towns. But to apply such a term to the anarchist protesters in Seattle (or to Malatesta's activities a hundred years ago) will probably only seem bizarre to most contemporary anarchists, even on the KC anarchist list, I suspect! Obviously (for those who weren't there), if you read the accounts of people who were, many of the streets of Seattle WERE liberated for a time by the protesters--and they celebrated this fact in many ways. There's no need to win over some abstract concept of "the masses" before we can act (according to your standards), when there are genuine, non-abstract masses of protesters in a place like Seattle successfully shutting down something as odious as the WTO. And finally, if you want to operate under Magon's name while reviling his actual beliefs and activities (as well as those that he would probably enthusiastically support were he a contemporary), that's your choice, though it might also seem strange to anyone else. It certainly does to me. Take care, Jason McQuinn C.A.L. Press/Paleo Editions POB 1446 Columbia, MO 65205-1446 USA Alternative Press Review site: http://flag.blackened.net/apr -----Original Message----- From: ed.stamm-AT-excite.com <ed.stamm-AT-excite.com> To: kc-AT-lists.tao.ca <kc-AT-lists.tao.ca> Date: Friday, January 21, 2000 8:39 PM Subject: Re: New to the list (full e-mail) >Hi Jason, >You're mixing apples and oranges. You're talking about insurrections >and revolutions, not petty vandalism and mail bombs. What tyrant did >the Unabomber mail his bombs to? Some kid in a college computer lab >deserved to have his hands blown off? Was Seattle "liberated", or were >shops just smashed up and the public obstructed by the protesters? > >The revolutionaries and insurrectionists, in most cases, made the >mistake of acting on behalf of the masses, without bothering to first >win the people over to their side, so they lost, time after time after >time. But that's another discussion. The point I was making is that >most "real" anarchists didn't go around doing juvenile stuff like >"fucking shit up" or mailing bombs to people they didn't like. If they >did use violence, it was generally aimed at a tyrant, and was often >in revenge for the killing of workers or other anarchists. McKinley's >assassin, Czolgosz, was acting to avenge strikers killed by troops I >think. So was Berkman when he tried to kill Frick. Although I think >their acts were tactically unwise, I can see how someone could be moved >to emotionally commit an act of violence in response to violence. >McKinley's assassination and the other violent acts committed during this >period resulted in the U.S. anarchist movement drying up and blowing >away, partially as a result of govt. repression, and partly because >anarchism was becoming associated with bombs and assassinations, and >began losing what little popular support it had managed to attract. I >can understand people attempting an insurrection, although it's pretty >pointless if you don't have massive popular support. The residents >of one town that was "liberated" by the Magonistas, Viesca in northern >Coahuila, chased their liberators out of town for example. The other >areas anarchists have liberated were pretty quickly retaken, with the >exception of areas of Spain from 1936-39. The modern day Zapatista >revolution ground to a halt when the masses failed to rise up as >expected. > >Anyway, I decided to call our local group "the Ricardo Flores Magon >Club" because he died in this area, and is a local anarchist martyr, >not because I mindlessly endorse his every thought and deed. He argued >against waiting for popular support, because he believed the masses >would never be swayed to stick their necks out. I disagree. It's not >going to happen overnight, but it will happen eventually. Unless we >convince them we're a bunch of hooligans and terrorists, in which case >they'll become fascists instead. > >Ed Stamm >
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