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| title | author | type | date | url |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| <cite class="book">Blessed is the Flame: An introduction to concentration camp resistance and anarcho-nihilism</cite> | Ben | quotes | 2021-01-25T12:17:18+00:00 | /quotes/blessed-is-the-flame/ |
If this were Nazi Germany expanding out before me, how would I live my life?
What if I were in my grandmother’s position in 1943?
…that reflective spirit of resistance rooted in the basic existential understanding that recalcitrance is simply a more meaningful and joyous form of existence than docility.
For a variety of reasons history has exceptionalized this particular genocide, but I’ve come to understand it as part of an unbroken continuum of domination that neither began nor ended with Hitler.
Such positive aspirations offer nothing more than a dangling carrot for us to pursue in a situation in which the stick, string, and prize all need to be destroyed.
In the end, the resistance organizations spent years organizing for a general uprising that never happened. Instead, a group of desperate, informally-organized inmates staged what would be the only coordinated insurrection in the history of Auschwitz.
Many contemporary anarchists have sought to sever themselves completely from the model of formal organizations and to orient themselves towards more wild and joyous forms of coordinated action.
Rather than spend our lives preparing for a mass awakening that likely will not happen, better to attack now and see where it takes us.
That being said, while the informal organizational methods being experimented with by nihilists are exciting and have clearly facilitated a great deal of incendiary action, they also carry with them inevitable shortcomings and pitfalls, not least of which is the sort of solipsism that results in a Greenpeace office getting bombed.
Ultimately somebody along the line is going to have to make shady ethical choices, regardless of organizational model.
The lessons of the Holocaust were well learned. We will walk through the very last door as long as it is the easiest of a well managed set of choices.
Anarchism is fundamentally posed to challenge many cruel optimisms held by society, and anarchism is in turn having its own cruel optimisms challenged by nihilism. Nihilism is the incredulous voice whispering impossible questions.
Nothing is guaranteed to work, yet we attack regardless. We do so naked, having shed the rags of morality, ideology, and politics that had accumulated over time. We confront this world raw, in all its horrifying glory. We negate every truth and rule and we proceed with a spirit of incendiary experimentation. We dream big, expect little, and celebrate every moment of rupture. We take every opportunity to ensure that those in power lose sleep and that they functionaries have miserable jobs. We set our lives to ripping up the geraniums that line the extermination camp paths, pissing in the gears of society’s machinery, and when all else fails, we will fallow in the footsteps of those who spent their final minutes in the gas chambers singing and fucking.