Not So Much About Anarchy, but About Responsibility and Consequences

Not So Much About Anarchy, but About Responsibility and Consequences

By: Erreh Svaia

Caprine Dispersion

“What is it the Bible teaches us? — repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? — to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.”

Thomas Paine

Welcome to the age of home learning, it´s not always about school or books, although I adore books, I can’t let a good chance of learning pass even if it comes from the “idiot box”, at least is not what broadcasters feed me, but what I want to watch, when I want to watch it, somehow I have become a major fan of Netflix documentaries, I watched a lot of them as a kid, my kids do that to, and now I have occasionally the chance to learn a thing or two on Netflix, and when the story is precisely about a book a read a couple of years ago, things get more interesting, is not exactly a great book, but it has managed to become famous, sometimes the wrong books get too much hype, sometimes we get our head leaning toward the wrong things, that’s human nature, some ideas are dangerous (especially when they end up on the hands of troubled or incompetent people), sometimes danger becomes addictive, curiosity is also an addiction and we can end up with a big unbearable burden the rest of our lives for an idea we had as young men or women, if things got a little bit out of control in the past, like a snowball becoming a big one, imagine what will happen in our days thanks to the internet? Things got just more exponential nowadays.   

This weekend I watched on Netflix American Anarchist, a documentary on William Powell's infamous 1971 book The Anarchist Cookbook, since I saw the title American Anarchist I was hooked, “Great, I thought”, but in fact Charlie Siskel documentary is not exactly about anarchism, nothing about the great Russian anarchists Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin or Lev Tolstoy, not even about German thinker Max Stirner, or American anarchist Benjamin Tucker, the great Mexican anarchist and Revolution pioneer Ricardo Flores Magón, or modern anarchist like John Zeran or Bob Black, so there´s not too much anarchism here to talk about, the Anarchist Cookbook, a book written at the time Powell was just an 19 year old young man, would become the bible for subversive, countercultural and terrorists violent movements, I certainly disagree with the "anarchist" tag thrown at Powell, as the guy was just the misfit son of a UN official with privileged access to government confidential information like military manuals, an angry (and troubled ) young man (angry about the Vietnam War among other things, information and not an expert on warfare or sabotage, like it would look to some) who had the idea of making a manual on counterculture that ended up as nearly a text book for every other angry young man willing to become a terrorist, so American Anarchist instead on focusing on anarchism, it mainly focuses on Powell's personal life after the book, as Powell struggles thru the scenes, it seems more and more obvious his incapacity to understand the dimensions achieved by his infamous book, as he looks shocked by reports linking the book to several terrorists attacks, feeling sorry for it, he seemed to calm himself by repeating to himself that he had nothing to do with it, it's strange that as a young man, Powell gave the world a manual on subversion, and as an adult he chose a career as teacher for kids with special needs, apparently unaware of the profound impact of his book and the way it links to people like Timothy McVeigh or the Columbine Massacre, one can’t definitely deny the negative impact of Powell´s set of manuals unveiled to the world, one can’t deny the tremendous impact such an irresponsible act done by a teenager would have on the world and the ghost lurking behind Powell until the day of his death in July 11, 2016; 2 million copies sold (and perhaps millions Xerox copied or downloaded from the internet) are witness to Powell´s rebel and deadly legacy.

The final lesson obviously here has nothing to do with anarchism, but mostly about knowledge and responsibility, “not for children or morons” warned Powell about his book, but what Powell obviously ignored was the real danger lurking behind such the freed knowledge and the way it spread like a wildfire, perhaps Powell learned to use denial as a way to deal with such a big act of irresponsibility, but after all, this is a free world, information is now more accessible than ever, and we just can’t stop dangerous ideas to fell into the hands of “children or morons”, we must understand also the destructive power of freedom, and in order to counter it, we must also teach our children and or young angry men about critical thinking and responsibility, and how easy and act of freedom becomes an act of debauchery.