Feb 4, 2010 Interview

Posted on February 4, 2010

An interview I just completed for a German Anarchist Zine:

What made you become an anarchist? Was there any special event or experience in your life?

I think most people are born anarchists and it’s up to state-sponsored schools and corporate media to drill it out of us. I just had the good luck to be a bit more stubborn then most and unwilling to accept stupid answers to obvious questions.

In your songs you rap about your view on social and political things as an anarchist. Do you think that works as some kind of education and propaganda for young people, listening to hip hop, who dont know anything of anarchism yet?

I hope so, but mostly it’s just me being me. Good hip hop is about real life and real situations. I’m a revolutionary so that’s what I make music about. I’ve gotten a lot of letters from people over the years saying that my music has helped them work through things and opened doors to ideas they wouldn’t have encountered otherwise and I’m always glad to get that kind of feedback but I’d keep doing what I do whether anyone listened to it or not. It’s cheaper then therapy and I need it to stay sane and work through the fear and uncertainty of living in a world on the brink of ecological and cultural annihilation.

Would you describe yourself as any specific kind of anarchist? Communist, socialist, pacifist, individualist? Or do you say fuck of, and pick the best out of all of those kinds of anarchism?

I started out calling myself an anarchosyndicalist and still identify strongly with parts of that school of thoght but in recent years I’ve gained an appreciation for mutualism and indigenism and feel that all three schools of thought have a lot to offer the world.

How do you get your writing and producing of music together with your everyday live, with wage-work an those things?

It’s not easy, Today was my first day off this week and I spent all morning doing volunteer work for one of the anarchist groups I support and all afternoon at my local community radio station doing a show. It’s 7pm now and I’m about to head off to band practice. You’ve got to be hungry for it to be a performer, you’ve got to need that moment on stage like a junkie needs drugs. Otherwise it’s way too easy to just let the tedium of wage slavery overwhelm everything else. Here’s part of a verse from a new song I wrote this week:

it’s cheaper then therapy, who needs a shrink
It’s like my fathers’ church or my granddad’s drink
and I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks
a titanic nation, I’m'a watch it sink
I flow like glaciers, rise like steam
doin’ everything I can to live this dream
the music moves me, flows into me
like the song is alive and it’s speaking through me
and in this moment, all is perfection
and the everyday world is a pale reflection
I can’t ever stop, ya’ll don’t understand
Till they pry this mic from my cold dead hands

I need this music like i need my eyes
like plants need sun to photosynthesize
like the sea needs the moon to shift the tides
like bread needs yeast and heat to rise…

You say, your a celt, you show that with your „celtic anarchist logo“, do some kind of celtic-hip hop with your band… What does that mean to you, being a celt, and why is that so important for you?

This is where Indegenism comes into my analysis. Identity is the story that people tell themselves about who they are , where they come from, and their place in the world and for me that story revolves around the struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed, colonized and colonizer. Understanding my place in the world as the descendant of refugees displaced by rampaging imperialism is part of how I frame my opposition to capitalism, the state, and statist nationalism.

At least in europe (especcially in Germany), identifying with those early ancestors like the celts is often used to create an absurd national identity. In Germany, the neo-national-socialist movement refers to Arminius and the germanic tribes as an „ancestor of the german people“ to create their ethnic community („Volksgemeinschaft“). Because oft that experiences I wondered, that there are also anarchists refering to those early ancestors. Have you made any experiences with those racial and nationalist kinds of misuse?

The world has no shortage of idiots and nationalists and neo-nazi’s have got to be some of the worst. Every story has two sides and while there are certainly people who would use german history to justify a continuation of its worst tendancy there is also a long history of resistance in germany – and everywhere else for that matter. The german side of my fathers family counts it as a point of pride that there is a statue in the town they originally came from to one of our relatives who was murdered by the Nazi’s for his part in the underground anti-fascist resistance. Hearing his story I learned certain things as a child – that opposition to tyranny is a duty, that those who fall in the fight against that tyranny deserve our respect, and that it is better to stand in front of the tank and refuse to move then it is to stay safe on the sidelines, even if doing so means ones own death.

That’s the power of history. It’s what Utah Phillips used to call the “Long Memory” and is one of the most powerful weapons of the working class. Which is, of course, why history classes in public schools around the world tend to be so terrible and so focused on the history of emperors and generals – they want to replace our history with theirs. If we let them do that and gain control of the story we tell ourselves about who we are we’ve already lost.

How would you describe the situation of the anarchist movement in the USA? Are there many struggles, in which anarchists take part, do anarchists still have a relevance in american public? (Everything I more or less often hear about anarchism in the USA is about CrimethInc, and maybe a few ELF things…)

The Anarchist movement in the US is a fringe of a fringe, a tiny minority. We’re not without influence though, After Howard Zinn – a self described anarchist – died there were obituaries to him on many national television and radio programs and more then a few news articles as well. Noam Chomsky has more people asking him to speak then he could ever hope to accommodate. The problem is that in order to make these men acceptable the corporate media has stripped away the core vision of their politics – the anarchist ideal of a world without oppression or hierarchy. I think if mainstream america ever got a clear idea of what anarchism actually entails we would have a nation full of anarchists but the mass media has done an amazing job of clouding up the debate with all kinds of nonsense. It’s an uphill battle but one we can’t afford to stop fighting.

PS.: Were there any death threats after your „God is a lie“ video on youtube? If not, a version with the band would be nice, what great and true lyrics! Really like it!

A few but I’m used to that. My bandmates aren’t as radical as me in some respects and didn’t want to do a band version of the song so it’ll end up on my next solo album, whenever that gets done.

Another thing: In the near future, I’d like to make a little sampler with some international anarchist hip hop. I would sell it and give the money to our local group of the german Anarchist Syndicalist Youth in Muenster. asjmuenster.blogsport.de Our group has no own money for propaganda stuff and things like that.Can i take songs of you and Beltaine’s Fire for a sampler?

Go for it.

You’re administrating rapanarchists.net, right? I can send you some informations about other german anarchist rappers, like Chaoze One, Lotta C, Kurzer Prozess, Albino and some more. If youre interested, i can look some things up and write a few short texts about each one.

Sounds good!