Red Terror Anti-news hour script 2.

Christopher Smith was found guilty of some but not all of the charges in his trial. It was more of a split decision than Robert Thaxton's trial.

Last week, I put together a script at the very last minute. And even though the script seemed really short and scaled-back, I only barely went through it in the time alloted. So figuring out the time involved in reading out a single paragraph of text is hard. Figuring out how far, in feet, you are from a person standing near you is a also hard thing. All of the actual decisions made in real life are extremely uncertain. It's only an illusion of a rational chooser that makes people think they know exactly what is happening each moment.

How the powers-be-the use this is key question. How we can be aware of this is a key question

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Again, Little happened this week. I lost my culturcide tape so I decided to just talk more.

I'll probably be focusing on the theme's I've been going over a lot before. I'm quite conscious about pushing what I think are the key point of this period of history. Maybe once life itself starts to change, I'll push something new. Now, I believe that keeping on these key points is a key thing.

Justice,

Media,

The left,

And how that impacts our psychology, our lives and what we can do about this.

One thing that I learning on a deeper level is how the justice system, the media system and various political rituals share many characteristics.  I'll partially be raking various would radical schemes over the coals. But before I do that, I want to make it clear why that's important in the total scheme of things.

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The world is much less certain in the way that we wind-up dealing with it than we feel like it is. If you ever see yourself reproduced on the screen or on tape, you are in for shock. Not only will you come off pretty hap-hazard but your voice is then totally be separate from your will. Your is suddenly something out-there.

The experiance of talking is a unique sensation. It is the joy of the floor, of being able to speak is that you are in the drivers seat of ideas. For that moment, you are one with your ideas.

Consider one-to-one communication

There's a comfort there, when you have a direct connection with a person whatever you say at a single moment you can change after that, you can read the person to determine whether they understand you and you change the ideas, tone and language you're using to fit how that person is receiving the words. When you are communicating with group, this is there at well. This is especially true since people in a group tend to adjust their reactions to that of the reactions of the person next to them.

- All this is human's relating as thinking animals. Part idea, part touching, rubbing noses, belowing or whimpering.

- Modern technologies of communication have abstracted away from the relation of human relating as animals.

Consider just a person who records their words. Once you have spoken, your words go in directions you didn't think about when you said them. Your thought move in new directions but your words will comes back to haunt your thoughts.

The seduciton of the chance to speak is one of the most powerful aspect of media.

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Many people have a powerful reaction to criticism, to arguments and quote theory. Part of this is a reaction to the horrors of school and authoritative authorities.

But part of this being bought into the conditions of mass media. Essentially, mass media aims to reduce us to being emotional lightning rods to whatever comes down the path next. When the news say "Branch Davidians accused of child molesting" or "Saddam huessain may soon have an atomic bomb," it's not just a matter of being able to lie to people, it's matter of the enough people reacting so strongly to hot botton items that these people no longer care about anything else, even whether the ideas are true. 

One thing that often comes up in radical circles is equating language with the conditions of reality.

In a radical debate, often someone will say "why are you attacking each other when you should be attacking the real enemy." Now the big thing is usually we aren't physically attack each but instead arguing about the best way to do things. It is often felt that arguing with a person is attack the escence of that person.

Now as radicals, we really need to cultivate the opposite approach. We need to be able to step from our ideas, from our speech and be able consider a multitude of possibilities. There's a balance here. This doesn't mean we give up any viewpoint but knowing the logic of arguments between all this a key thing.

Also, we need to free our ability to think as well as to be able to feel. The tragedy of school is that it gives people the idea that concepts need a dour, solemn seriousness to be understood. It's just opposite. At the moment that anything, from calculus to woodworking to anarchism becomes something play with, then you can do in a powerful, elegant, interesting, brilliant way. That's not saying you should do nuclear physics just because it's interesting. There's balance, like I said.

Anyway, at any point that I'm criticizing ideas, I hope I can inspire this sense of playing with ideas, of simply batting them back and worth without being too concerned.

This isn't saying that we can physically become anything, this isn't saying that we can control our of reactions to life just by thinking. This isn't saying we are brains in vat.

We are animals. Look at a group of animals interacting. They sniff, prod, play and wrestle with each other. Looks similar to a group of children playing.

Playing with ideas is something done in that spirit.

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God, Interesting reading this guy's discussion of women "Safety" in Mayhem magazine.

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Last week, DJ Mr. Satan had discussion that apparently pissed a number of folks off. I didn't hear it myself but I felt jelous that I hadn't managed to be controversial enough to get similar powerful reaction. But I really suppress my urge to get any easy reaction by contradicting people's expectation.

But I figure, it would be good to look at the fetishes of speech that are in leftist milleau.

I got the magazine Mayhem a while back. The author personally gave it to me and he seemed like a nice guy. But let me launch into my thinking about the magazine itself.

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Essentially, the zine had a really PC liberal quality to it's language and possitions. I should make it clear that I'm utterly against the mainstream "political incorrect" ideology as well.

Many people are put off by "PC liberals" fetish for "non-oppressive speech." This includes many people who believe in creating a society fundamentally different from the present society. This is hightened by the track-record of those who make a strong fetish of such speech - many feminists who have pushed for the most stringent standard for respectful immediate inter-personal behavior have shown themselves as fawning pawns of the powers-that-be in many other ways. Andrea Dworkin is one glaring example and there are several more.

But

Still, whatever our intuitions, we can't argue against this language just through guilt by association. Even more, while we might find such a fetish unpleasant, it is necesarry to have some idea of what really goes on in different kinds of speech.

The article titled "Safety" in Mayhem magazine provides a good example for looking at the particular arguments and logic of feminist theory.

I have attempted an analysis that contrasts the use of language with a look at the concrete reality the author is attempting to describe.

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The article describes the need of men to walk the other way when they meet women in dark, deserted or dangerous areas.

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* Substitute "white person" for woman and "black person" for man in the article. It's not just that it sounds racist. It sounds plausible. Much of the same logic applies.

The thing is that a white's fear of blacks is well pegged as being racist whereas a woman's fear of men is considered an admirable or justified trait.

- In a sense, the question is whether we are talking about an admireable or a simply justified quality.

- I feel justified in judging that I want to be safe from a person based just on their appearance and thus surface social position. I have had experiances that certainly justify this. I feel justified in acting this way but this is not how I want to act in an ideal world.

- This is simply point to a contradiction in the moral order of liberals. The effects of interpersonal chauvinism between blacks and white is felt as a fear of black by white. The effects of interpersonal chauvinism between men and women is felt as a fear of men by women. Neither situation is good but the moral compass has trouble finding it's bearings.

* A white person, a woman, a middle class person, and an older person has a certain reasonable fear of being victimized by those who are not so. How rational that fear is, is just one question this raises.

Consider that most violence happens between people who know each other. Much of the other violence happens in fairly small "high crime" areas. The amount of violence that actually happens totally at random in a middle class neighborhood is relatively small (except perhaps for the crime of such a place existing). Certainly far more violence between people who know each happens in these situations.

It should be noted that the article justifies women's fear of men separate from that fear's basis in reality. "Women face violence everyday" justifies taking measures regardless of whether a particular situation is in fact dangerous.

"The reality is that any womon(sic) faces violence in this world. It can come from any male at any time."

* In any area, there is a definite social space. This is very much product of society and the qualities of human social intercourse. Occupying social space in such a way that you do not alarm someone else.

There are many methods of projecting numerous things. And certainly some people are better at projecting these qualities.

It is worth cultivating these qualities.

The article doesn't really discuss many ways to make women feel comfortable - ways to communicate your safety. Indeed, contains the assumption that women cannot and should not feel comfortable in such situations. 

It discusses avoiding women entirely in such situations.

* The language the author uses has the details removed to the point of a mythical abstraction. A statement like "any womon(sic) faces violence in this world" has a powerful gut reaction.

essentially is so abstracted from any particular social conditions that it is meaningless and ridiculous when looked at literally. "Women face violence?" The category "woman" embraces huge range of people - half the human race give you a lot of variation. "face" says simply that "violence" is a possibility while "violence" is quite a wide category of possibilities as well. The author mentions women facing everything from "sexual, sexist comment to rape" and thus further lumps together a wide range of things which a wide range of people may frequent or seldom experiance.

* This mythological statement is very much a part of feminism qualities of a progressive version of 19th feminity ideology. The women is characterized as a fragile, nurturing, sexless and passive while the man is characterized as strong, animalist, desiring and active.

Modern feminist ideology has evolved from the position of demanding a society where men and women have equal part to demanding that society recognize women as having these special qualities. And this is certainly reactionary.

The final sentence essentially lumps disagreement with the abstract specification of violence with "violence" itself. Such a position clearly presents a picture of an abstract woman so fragile that anyone who contradicts her world view could as well be physically attacking her.

* Women's liberation is important. And certainly, part of that is liberation from the roles of society, the conditions of society and the habitual behavior of society. Just all people's liberation goes, this involves some individual and some collective improvements.

- Escaping ideologies of feminity and of feminism is important, just as escaping every ideology is important for everyone. Certainly, the chauvinist comments, the inter-personal atomization and the chauvinistic violence are things to end.

On a personal level, a woman can take avoidence measures, learn the actual danger that different situations present and learn ways to defend herself. One cannot even give complete prescription.

Such personal changes are not liberation on the social level. Even women cops can and do take such measures.

Liberation on the social level involves creating interpersonal connections.

* Even the suggested fear-reducing behavior is very dubious. To interact with someone assuming they fear you is often to generate fear. To interact with someone assuming their fear is justified is hardly more positive.

- And moreover, whatever you do walking around and avoiding strangers on a street is such small part of social interactions that direct meaning of such actions is pretty certain to be negligable.

* The statement "Women will not trust men untill men show that they can be trusted" is just as must a deletion. The safety argument has been used to amalgumate men into a single. But while you can use fear to justify an irrational amalgumation in a person's mind, you can't make that amalgumation true. The social, ethnic and economic sector that men come from are going to remain the determiners of whether they, say, tell a dirty joke.

But just as much, "women" is an irrational amalgumation. There is no doubt a wide variety of feelings among women. Some quite likely feel safe based on their own power, some feel safe rationally, and some feel unsafe irrationally and certainly there are more feelings than this.

That said, fear is certainly common as a feeling. And should be considered that fear is the feeling that women are expected to have towards men.

* The idea that people can have power over their feelings is quite subversive. Any idea that people can begin to individually and collectively take control of their lives is missing from this whole analysis (though it's tacked-on as a hope at the very end).

But we can consider where such a perspective could take us. Among other things, it would involve gaining control over emotions - not in a repressive fashion but through having an appropriate response.

There is no doubt that mass serves to project fear of many things in much of the population. Fear of criminal, fear of men, fear of blacks, fear of Nazi, fear of disorder and so-forth.

Having collective power is one weapon against such fear-mongering. And there are those who have ways of avoiding unnecesarry fear. Woman walk fearlessly in places where they objectively have nothing to fear.

- We should add that the point of the article was essentially that no woman would be without simply through having the judegement to know she was safe.

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1. Driving someplace rather walking say, might well be justified for many women and men depending on the circumstance. It might well not be justified under other circumstances.

2. This justification cannot be confused with liberation. It merely involves avoiding unpleasantness without the slightest hope of greater, positive inter-personal contact (a pre-requesite of liberation).

3. While the conclusion discusses liberation, it does not really prescribe the slightest positive action. 

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Consider, "Help the police, beat yourself up" is gallows humor against police brutality. "Men protect women, beat yourself up" would only be only slight exageration to the tone of this article.

All of the practical measures discussed in the article add up to essentially nothing. Anyone looking at them objectively will see that doing all of this will have no effect on the conditions of the world(To a greater or lesser extent, I have been doing all of them for years and I have never noticed any effect).

The only real purpose of this article is essentially as a long justification of fear and the amalgumation of men and of women as categories rather than individuals. It is fairly typical of leftist discussion where such empty statements serve as the basis for different folks to get a leg-up in the discussions. And even here, the folks who get the leg-up aren't the people in the categories but the folks who can spout the rhetoric of categories most effectly.

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Role Playing

I ran into a well known activist who described "role playing" at a "non-violence training." This was a training where we put together a leaflet and handed it out in front of the

Anyway, a few evennings ago me and a went to another house where a certain was talking about "role playing." The whole thing just stank so badly. He had me pissed before he said anything the project by describing the hypothetically scenario "what if we got the cops out of the neighborhood? What then?"

Basically, the whole of American political dialogue, western rational thought and anarchist thought is well dominated by vacuum-packed hypothetical reasonings. Lets create an arbitrary hypothetical situation and see how it flies. This kind of ideology is a combination of organization and psychological theory. It totally ignores that fundamental question of the means of production.

In that sense, it also very bad psychology. There is no real, absolute, division between people's condition in the production process and their psychology.

Anyway, we then went to role playing, which was essentially a terrible construct. It involved different folks taking the roles of "Government, media, public, and activist." I'll have to admit that I regard anyone who takes any of these roles as being my enemy. Even the public. The advantage of the public is simply that it is easier to step out of the role of public than not.

The role of static activist is really terrible actually.

In the debate about how spread idea that followed, I wasn't able to put forward the position that really, there is a tremendous difference between an average situation and a situation where we have the upper hand.

I think the activists talking had a wrong idea about how willing the public was to listen to their ideas. Indeed, Annie even describing going to a mall, denouncing consumerism and getting a good response. Yet, the mass of the population is still regarded as a mass of folks set against the anarchists. To an extent, it seems like the public's unwillingness to wear black clothes might as much of a factor.

Anyway, the conditions of the average person is often that they are angry, that they hate many aspects of this society and that if things seem like they are happening, then they'll take action to take control of their lives.

It's like a former roomate of mine. In the same breath he described stopping shop-lifting in the store he works in and the need to destroy the cops. There are others who have opposite position, they hate their bosses but they love the cops. And so-forth.

It certainly is true that these people are the public. In a condition of normal life, they form a solid, pasive mass ready to call on the authorities to smooth the speed bumps of life. A few days ago I talked to working class dude who'd been in the radical scene for a long time and bragged about calling the cops on a middle class kid who was threatening him.

In the discussion about the training, Otter raised the point of the need to learn that there are people of different sorts and how this could teach us this. It seems like a pretty idiotically simple point to spend a couple learning. It reminds me of corporate train in the corporate world, where the most pathetically simple points have to be trained into people. Essentially, training that is conditioning.

Unfortunately, I suspect that there are a number of folks who would like to back-peddle the extremist reputation that Eugene anarchism has. I am not an anarchist, but I would actually suspect that having this big-bad-wolf reputation is about the best position to be in.

I don't actually think that attacking motorists is good idea. I don't think that projects that make highly unpleasant for people are the best way to go. The point of June 18th wasn't that it got exactly the correct line but that it set the ball motion.

A crucial point is that the division is not just between different people but between the same people at different times. The events of the Whittaker have served to make the authorities very leary of the place. This is fairly temporary situation.

The arguments between the Whittaker Community council and Jim Torrey have a real quality of a destraction. The same discussion described the Whittaker Community council as being "us," people who show up at Food Not Bombs.

The most awfull versus of "community counciousness" is the idea that we should accept capitalism if it comes from our friends. The point isn't what bad or good people these community council people are. The point is that as soon as the issue of "developing the Whittaker" or "what's good for the Whittaker" comes up, you're thinking like them. Vandalism is entirely useless as far as a "positive program" for a neighborhood goes.

The goal of this society is to everyone behind their natural leaders. The anarchists can line up behind the anarchist leaders, the blacks can line up behind the black leaders, the working clas can line up behind the working class leaders and so-forth. The most crucial quality of the

I'm not really a conspiracist. But I would suspect that the city government would like nothing more than to add to the credibility of the Whittaker Community council. I'm sure Jim Torrey knows that complimenting it wouldn't help, so attacking it seems the best way to add some credibility to this organization - which we should remember is a city organization. And remember that since it is a city organization, it is legally required to defend things like private property.