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!

Tea Parties

Posted on April 15, 2009

So it’s Tax Day, once again, the annual deadline for Americans to pay Uncle Sam his Protection Money to keep him from sending his goons to break our kneecaps or reposess our homes.  This year I’m glad to report that my official legal income was small enough that I had no tax liability, one of the few advantages of being a starving artist I suppose.

What makes this particular tax day interesting is that, thanks at least in part to the urging of Fox News and corporate-sponsored Astroturf (fake grassroots) organizing, there are “tea parties” happening in hundreds of cities all over America to protest Obama’s bailout and the absurd amounts of debt that the Dems are adding onto the already absurd deficits left by Bush.   Apparently it wasn’t enough for the ruling class to run up trillions of dollars in deficit spending to pay for 2 wars over the last 8 years, now that they’ve got a brand new puppet in place our corporate overlords have decided to keep right on spending our money to enrich themselves!  I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’d be lying.

And, when people get outraged – as they should – the corporations set up a fake movement.  Unlike in France and the UK where working class rage at being robbed by the government to finance corporate bailouts has erupted into serious militant and autonomous protests, all America can manage is a made-for-tv series of staged event sponsored by the same corporate elites that got us into this mess.  Just another in an endless string of puppet shows, to let everyone who’s pissed at how we’ve been robbed rant and rave as much as they like without actually changing or challenging anything.  And then, through the magic of Spin, the corporate media will portray that outrage as a Conservative backlash.  Ha!  As though conservatives were the only ones objecting.  Just about every genuine leftist I know (and no, democrats aren’t leftists) is pissed at the bailout.  Ya’ll may remember that I even wrote and recorded a song about it a few months back.  And I’m hardly the only one who’s been speaking out on this issue.

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Means and Ends

Posted on January 1, 2009

Got an email from somebody last night and wanted to share it, and my response, with ya’ll.

Greetings,

I have just discovered your music, and am liking it very much. I am not a great fan of typical hip-hop, but your music is something different. I also agree with the majority of your political views. However, I have a question, something that has been bothering me for a while:

You speak of abolishing governments and living as anarchists (an admirable ambition), but I wonder how you intend to accomplish this? Do you support a violent revolution? If so, how can you reconcile the inevitable killing of innocents that would occur with your anti-war lyrics? If you see another way, then I would like to hear it – the only thing that is stopping me from becoming directly involved in anarchist activism myself is my opposition to violence and my inability to see a feasible method by which the system could be implemented peacefully.

Best wishes for 2009 (a.k.a. 1984 ),
S

S,

Thanks for the email, I’m glad you enjoy the music.  as for the ‘how’ of revolution, well that’s the big unresolved question now isn’t it?  anarchism is a big tent and includes everyone from devout pacifists (the tolstoy / gandhi -inspired anarcho-pacifists who believe that if enough people absolutely refuse to participate in violence the state would crumble) to insurrectionists who’d like to light the world on fire and hope something better rises from the ashes (personally I don’t know that it’s even accurate to describe Insurectionists as Anarchists, they have much more in common ideologically with political Nihilism then with Anarchism.  It’s a fuzzy line but there is a line there).   Anarchosyndicalists believe that the switch can be best achieved by building autonomous working class organizations (primarily labor unions but other orgs as well) capable of fighting for workers rights and power in the short term and supplanting and abolishing capitalism in a massive general strike, followed by the takeover of  the means of production by the working class, as organized through anarchist labor unions.  sort of an economic coup.  mutualists think that the best way to make the change is to create directly democratic community owned credit unions and collective businesses that can work together to supplant capitalism by out-competing it in the arena of the marketplace.

honestly, I don’t know that any of those strategies can do it, but i’m inclined to think the transition will probably involve elements of all of them and more besides that no one has thought of yet.

that’s the thing about anarchism, there are no garauntees.  it’s not like marxism that claims our future has already been written and the transition to a post-capitalist society is an inevitable byproduct of development.  instead it offers a set of tools that people who want a better world can use to try to build that world.  mutual aid.  solidarity.  democracy.  consensus.   direct action.  local control.  personal freedom.  if the tools are useful then by all means use them, the labels are unimportant.  what really matters is the principles.    we make the path by walking it – the means are the ends.   So I can’t claim to know which path  is ultimately the best, that’s not my place.

So I guess the short version is that if violence apalls you and you want to build a peaceful world then don’t walk a path that entails violence.  there are many very strict pacifists who are anarchists – in fact I would argue that one cannot truly be a pacifist without being an anarchist because capitalism and the state both rely on violence and coercion in order to function.  rejecting violence – really rejecting violence – means rejecting the legitimacy of all organizations that employ violence.  Amon Hennessey used to make that argument and it’s one I’ve found very convincing over the years.

As for me, I’m not a pacifist any more because I believe there are times when violence in self defense is the only viable option.  I oppose capitalist wars because they are wars for the benefit of capitalists at the expense of everyone else.  But I don’t personally see anything inherently wrong with (for instance) putting the people responsible for the bloodbath in Iraq on trial for crimes against humanity and applying the death penalty when they’re found guilty.    other people may well disagree and I respect their right to walk their own paths.   In any case, I don’t see offensive warfare as a viable means of creating an anarchist society, I think we create that alternative society -and that can happen through any or all of the means described above – and then defend it against those who would drown it in blood.  but we don’t kill innocents.  If we did we would cease to be Anarchists.

I hope my response is helpful, best wishes for the new year.
lynx