Most Recent Additions

In response to John Zerzan, “Language: Origin & Meaning” FE #315, Winter 1984.

If Shakespeare was right when he said “brevity is the soul of wit” then this piece from Zerzan must be its carcass. The fellow doth protest (language) too much. What?! Quote the Raven nevermore?

One gets the impression from Zerzan that not only is it by breaking from Capitalism and from Civilization will we only be ourselves—authentic and free—but when we once again attain the grandeur of precellular compounds. A timeless pool of protean soup freed from the constraints of definition.

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In response to John Zerzan, “Language: Origin & Meaning” FE #315, Winter 1984.

Despite his acute desire to break with all of the fictions of the modern world, John Zerzan makes the unfortunate mistake of taking its ideological justifications at their (false) face value; thus, the radical refusal which he posits tends to be an almost formalistic, inverted image of the society which he analyzes. There are no gray areas, no ambivalence in his critique, only absolutes. But these absolutes come ready-made, provided by modern civilization’s legitimation of its existence.

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A happy new year thank-you to all of you who responded so quickly to our request in the last issue to please renew your subscriptions promptly. Thank you also for all the very generous donations and requests for papers to distribute to friends—we love to see those piles of papers disappear. Remember that we always need people and places to distribute the FE; we’ll send you papers on a consignment basis and you pay only for those you sell and keep half of the proceeds for yourself. If you wish to give the papers away free, send us the postage and we’ll send you a corresponding amount of FE’s.

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When Winston Smith, in Orwell’s 1984, sits down to begin the diary which he has secretly acquired and which in and of itself is a criminal possession, he is mortified to discover that he has nothing—and everything—to say, that to begin means to start from scratch, to recreate language and meaning, to challenge everything, to make a statement large enough to identify the horror which pervades life and yet which can transcend that horror.

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While pacifists engage in symbolic acts of protest against militarism, the militarists engage in a bit of symbolism of their own. Top: moral witness at Williams International, where cruise missile engines are manufactured. Bottom: U.S. troops practice mass burial techniques during NATO maneuvers in West Germany last autumn. The articles appearing on this page were written by two people who took part in the Williams protests. The first article is signed by N. Bates, the pseudonym of a person who was arrested at Williams for civil disobedience, and who now faces multiple charges stemming from the action.

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The Vancouver Five are activists from British Columbia who are currently facing 17 counts of sabotage and conspiracy. Besides being charged with destroying an environmentally damaging hydroelectric generator and firebombing a porn shop, they also are accused of a massive bomb attack on a Toronto cruise missile plant.

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The following is in response to an item which appeared in the Fall 1983 Fifth Estate which listed the Columbia (Mo.) Anarchist League as one of the sponsors of a Yippie! coordinated demonstration to be held at the 1984 Republican convention.

Fifth Estate:

For the record, the Columbia Anarchist League has nothing to do with “Freeze Reagan/Bush.” I told the NYC Yippies that we did not want to endorse it because it was a move in a reformist direction away from the nobody for president idea. However, I told him it would be okay with us if they put the Columbia Nobody for President Committee as an endorsee (since we could make our point this way).

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FIFTH ESTATE #315, Winter 1984, Vol. 18 No. 4, page 2

The Fifth Estate is a cooperative project, published by a group of friends who are in general, but not necessarily complete agreement with the articles herein. Each segment of the paper represents the collective effort of writing, typesetting, lay-out and proofreading.

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What had been planned as a week-long series of demonstrations and civil disobedience at a suburban Detroit cruise missile engine plant has become the focus of the government’s attempt to crush the growing anti-nuclear movement. In 1983 over 5000 persons were jailed for protests against nuclear facilities and the week of November 27-December 3 saw 51 persons arrested at the Walled Lake, Michigan Williams International Corporation for blockading the entrance to the plant. Instead of expected contempt of court charges and misdemeanor trespassing prosecutions, those arrested are facing felony counts of “conspiring to commit a misdemeanor”—ludicrous sounding on the face of it, but potent enough to send violators to prison for two years.

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How could anyone fail to notice the sickening irony in the announcement from U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz that no reprisals would be taken against Nicaragua for shooting down an unmarked U.S. military helicopter and killing the pilot at the Honduras-Nicaragua border? Such a declaration is roughly equivalent to a bully saying he won’t retaliate for your biting his toe while he’s stomping your face in.

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Five-legged beast carved in basalt. Face of a Babylonian warlord and body of a desert flesh eater. His eyes saw for centuries into black sand and dust, into the thickened skin of the earth. Cities and cities, temples and temples, mountains of bone above him as a grave. He is a protective godling, seeing forward and seeing nothing.

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“Just say whatever comes to mind.” The voice, calm, quiet and paternal, rolled across the desk.

“Everything is bullshit,” A.J. said.

There was a quick, nervous giggle, then the voice found itself again.

“I’ll ask you to refrain from using that kind of language,” the voice said. “I’m a family man.”

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The following report on the arrest and deportation of Bommi Baumann comes to us from the Islington Gutter Press by way of Black Flag newspaper.

On the 14^th of February, Michael “Bommi” Baumann, for years on the list of West Germany’s 40 most wanted left-wing terrorists, was arrested by the British Special Branch at his home in London. 36 hours later he was on the plane to Frankfurt. Now in prison in Berlin, he awaits trial on a list of charges including membership in the outlawed 2^nd June Movement, taking part in three bank robberies, the attempted murder of a policeman and an explosion in which a worker was killed.

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On 19 May this year Brenda Earl Christie, a co-founder of the anarchist publishing house Cienfuegos Press, and her two-year-old daughter Branwen, were arrested at Hanover Airport in West Germany as they were boarding a Gatwick (England) bound flight following a three week holiday with her sister-in-law. Both Brenda and her daughter were held by GS-9 antiterrorist police when the Central Police Computer in Wiesbaden indicated that Brenda was wanted on a warrant issued against her eleven years ago in Frankfurt.

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The FE Bookstore is located in the same place as the Fifth Estate Newspaper, both of which are located at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, MI 48201—telephone (313) 831–6800. The hours we are open vary considerably, so it’s always best to give us a call before coming down.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:

1) List the title of the book, quantity wanted, and the price of each;

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The FE bookstore page is more than an advertisement—the actual bookselling part of the project takes time and makes little, if any, money. We like to pass on books that have interested us or that have been “self-published” by friends and comrades, even though we may not agree with everything in them. We also enjoy publishing notices of printing and publishing projects, periodicals and newsletters from around the country, so that our readers can contact each other and battle out their differences or discover their commonalities without having to go through us. Mention of a paper does not imply that we agree with it, just that we think people should check it out on their own. We are also interested in expanding our review section, and welcome contributions from our readers on books, pamphlets and publications that have come their way and had some significance, positive or negative.

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Primitive culture, Marshall Sahlins has argued, is not fetishized utility. “The practical function of (primitive) institutions,” he tells us, “is never adequate to explain their cultural structure....People employ customs and categories to organize their lives within local schemes of interpretation, thus giving uses to material circumstances which, cultural comparison will show, are never the only ones possible.” Consequently, diversity is the rule in the primitive world, as much because of the multifarious systems of meaning and interpretation peoples employ to constitute their worlds, as because of the varying climates and landscapes in which they are situated.

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Note to Web version: In the print edition this article is erroneously attributed to Coquilles St. Jacques.

The invasion by technological civilization of indigenous societies, be it through massive industrialization or through seemingly innocuous “microtechnologies” in the form of commodities, undoes a society overnight.

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indigenous, adj. 1. Occurring or living naturally in an area; not introduced; native. 2. Intrinsic; innate. [From Latin indigena, native. See indigene.

Indigenism, which begins as a defense of the Indian within western political and literary discourse, ends as a form of conquest, the final assault of civilization on prehistory.

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“Subjection of nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?”

—Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

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“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot’ stamping on the human face—forever.”

—O’Brien, in Orwell’s 1984

How do we begin to discuss something as immense as technology? To investigate it means to investigate the totality of this modern civilization, not only its massive industrial vistas which represent the structural apparatus, the stage scenery; not only the hierarchy of command and specialization which reveals the skeletal structure of this apparatus in human relations; not only “the humble objects,” which “in their aggregate ... have shaken our mode of living to its very roots,” as Siegfried Giedion has written; but also in that internalized country of our dreams and desires, in the way we unconsciously see ourselves and our world.

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a review of

Black and Green Review #4, Winter 2016 BlackAndGreenPress.org, 214 pp., $10

Kevin Tucker started the Black and Green Network in 2000 to create a centralized place where green anarchist and anarcho-primitivist projects, both nationally and internationally, could connect. After years of successful gatherings, Tucker launched Black and Green Review (BGAR) which he co-edits with five others.

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“When I pronounce the word civilization, I spit.”

—Gauguin

We are all trapped within the technological labyrinth, and at its center awaits our annihilation. We have already lost more than we can imagine to civilization’s insatiable hunger for power and uniformity. We live in the shadow of an enormous edifice, a monstrosity which teeters and threatens to collapse upon us in a moment. We sing, make love, struggle and despair amid its decomposing limbs. But the smell of decomposition is general. We are in eclipse; the human spirit is moribund.

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Dear Tomega Therion,

Your article on coffee (FE #305, March 18, 1981) confused the evils of capitalism and of working for someone else instead of for oneself with the “evils” of coffee. The latter is merely a tool which offers people the option of changing their energy rhythms. The purpose it is used for must determine its value in that instance. However, increasing the number of options is, in itself, a good thing whether we use every option or not.

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Tomega Therion

Ruby Lips

Bob Brubaker

T. Fulano

Primitivo Solis

Coquilles St. Jacques

Larry Talbert

David Watson

Don Kirkland

Angela Di Sante

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

John Zerzan

Buster Brown

George Bradford

The Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN 0015–0800) is published quarterly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 USA; phone (313) 831–6800. Office hours vary, so please call before visiting. Subscriptions are $4.00 for six issues; $6 for foreign including Canada. Second class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No paid ads accepted.

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Although many of the influential radical titles from Black & Red Books, printed at the Detroit-based Detroit Printing Co-op between 1970 and 1980 are out of print, their relevance hasn’t lessened with the passing years. It is hoped there is interest in republishing them.

The books contain repressed histories, critiques from ultra-left, council communist, and anarchist sources. Discovering the works of Fredy Perlman, Jacques Camatte, Guy Debord, and others through B&R books contained the ideas that energized this publication to continue printing at a time of political quietism.

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Cover: Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park, NYC 2011, MTT mttphoto.com

4 Seattle Shooting

CP Et SM

6 A Fascist by Any Other Name

Bill Weinberg

8 The Struggle to Get Back to Zero

Peter Werbe

10 Veil of the Vile

Jesús Sepúlveda

12 Eat Your President

The Mormyrids

14 The Russian Revolution Unfinished

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Growing numbers of people compelled to flee their homes because of ongoing devastations of wars, cataclysmic climate change, and intractable environmental crises! It’s not a Hollywood sci-fi horror movie—it’s the world of industrialization and capitalism. As the system grinds on, it continues to multiply threats to all living creatures on the planet.

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We took on the theme of Revolution, Revolts, Riots, and Rebellions even before the candidates were chosen by the major parties for the US election.

As we say in these pages, social explosions are generated by the oppressive nature of the state itself, and of the economies it has always protected—from early slave society, through feudalism, and into capitalism.

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Revolutions, Revolts, Riots, and Rebellions have been a constant in human affairs since the emergence of the state 8,000 years ago. They are popular responses to life being administered by a political apparatus which governs on behalf of a class of rulers. They are sometimes planned; other times, spontaneous.

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Fri. Oct. 4

DICK GREGORY. civil rights activist, comedian, and write-in candidate for president, will speak at Oakland U., Sports & Rec. Bldg. 10 am $1 adm. Take I-75 to Rochester University Dr. Exit.

GRANDE BALLROOM. The Ten Years After are there along with The Rationals and the Dave Workman Band. AND, Barry Kramer has now added bullshit posters to his groovy psychedelic counter. You must be 17. Grand River & Beverly.

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On a damp dreary Friday the 13^th September morning a battered funeral hearse was driven to the gates of Fort Wayne Induction Center.

The hearse was stopped at the M.P. Station just inside the gates and the driver was told to leave the base. The driver turned the car around and stopped in the driveway. Six pallbearers got out of the hearse, opened the tailgate and took out a casket, designed with the Resistance Omega and other peace symbols.

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NEW ORLEANS, La., Sept. 12, The Word/LNS—A Fort Polk soldier was busted here, during his participation in a peaceful protest demonstration against Governor Wallace.

The soldier, Private Michael Borne, of Chalmette, La., approached the marchers and asked the nature of the demonstration. He was told, and invited to join which he did. He marched approximately five minutes, amidst cat-calls, and jeers from Legionaire hecklers.

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a review of

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 1968. $5.95,

A special wildness with words, a special Taste for gory Under-Thirty-Decoding is all part of Tom Wolfe’s cool Aid to the “electro-pastel 400-horsepower energy and abundance of postwar American westernmost Reality.”

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Unclassifieds cost 50 cents per line per issue. Figure four words per line. (A word is a word including one and two letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible. DISCOUNT RATES: Five runs cost 35 cents per line.

Get “High on Mt. Rushmore”

Meditation in a “straight” evening, Proposes an accurate record to enlighten moment’s passion. Charles Lindblom, Wayne.

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As I was sitting in Grant Park in Chicago August 28 what to my tear-gassed eyes should appear but a beautiful young girl with a free copy of the Fifth Estate.

She handed me a copy with a smile on her face so I immediately began to read every page, through the tears in my eyes. It was beautiful to say the least.

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A Political Art Show—January 22-February 12, 2017

Produced by 333 Midland at their Annex Gallery,

Highland Park, Michigan www.333Midland.com

Cary Loren, found urinal, gold paint, stickers

Curator: Rick Cronn

33 Artists; 66 works

333 Midland is located in a complex of abandoned postindustrial factories brought back to life by a renaissance of Detroit artists.

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Poster: Ernesto Yrena. One of many available for free download at theamplifierfoundation.org. Hundreds of them were put up all over Washington for the Trump inauguration.

Now that Donald J. Trump has brought bogus right-wing populism back to the White House and Congress is under firm Republican control, serious talk about gutting Social Security and Medicare is again coursing through Washington.

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In a lightning move, Elektra Records signed the MC5 and the Stooges to long-term recording contracts in New York September 26.

The move was engineered by Elektra’s publicity director, Danny Fields, who flew out to hear the bands last weekend at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit and the Union Ballroom in Ann Arbor, where the 5 and the Stooges were playing a benefit for the Children’s Community School.

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Welcome to BioMorph. I’m Herb Fanley. You’ve read the brochures and watched our holograms I see. Please have a seat and I’ll be happy to answer your questions.” “Would you care for coffee? Good. We can relax a little before we get to your questions and take the opportunity to have a good look at a C-Drone.”

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Editors’ Note: The following article by brother Baker, Research Director of People Against Racism, is a rebuttal to the apology for the Beatles’ song “Revolution” done by “critic” Ralph Gleason in the last issue of this paper [FE #62, Sept. 19-Oct. 2, 1968] .

So the Beatles don’t like revolution.

That’s O.K. You wouldn’t either if you had a billion jillion dollars. The old society, you see, has been very good to the Beatles, so what do they have to gain by identifying with those who would change it? Very little indeed. So don’t be surprised.

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John Mayall is an incredible musician—insomuch that not only is he a formidably versatile and adept instrumentalist, but he possesses a respect for his music which is unswerving.

Famous as he is for changing his personnel for each album, the Bluesbreakers belong to Mayall. That is why there will always be a John Mayall band. Strange though it may seem I can compare him to Frank Zappa, in that both are people with an awful lot to say but they cannot say it alone. Both tried (“Lumpy Gravy” and “Blues Alone”) and both attempts were good but neither really served its purpose. Both Zappa and Mayall are band leaders. Please bear that in mind as you read this review and/or hear the album.

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Editors’ note: While the Beatles are copping out, the Rolling Stones are running a hard line. The following is part of the lyrics from their latest record:

CHORUS:

But what can a poor boy do

Except to sing for a rock n roll band.

Guess in a sleepy London town,

There’s just no place for a street fighting man.

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“The problem with San Francisco groups is, I was expecting wonders and miracles and what I heard was a bunch of white blues bands that didn’t sound as funky as my little band in high school.”

—Frank Zappa

“Big Brother is a joke.”

—Mike Bloomfield

“That’s Jim Gurley. He’s the SADDEST guitar player in the whole world.”

—Hippie

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It must have been like watching one of his own underground movies.

There was Ralph Pickett, manager of the Detroit Repertory Theatre and a friend, Bob, running around in the back woods of Ft. Wayne, Indiana harvesting acres of grass with Sheriff’s deputies lurking down the road waiting to make a bust.

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Consider destroying (or purposefully forgetting) your headphones.

Whether you live in a city or rural area, the daily use of headphones physically and aurally blocks your connection to the surrounding sonic environment. Listening as a way of knowing is lost to listening as a way of consuming.

An SFGate news story, “Absorbed Device Users Oblivious to Danger,” recounts a 2013 incident on a San Francisco light rail train that illustrates one of the many dangerous consequences of alienation created by industrial, technological society.

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“The Female,” current attraction at the Trans-Lux Krim in Highland Park, comes as close to being an obscene movie is anything I’ve seen.

The principal action is set in a Mexican whorehouse, and includes graphic scenes of two or more people in bed engaging in various acts of sadism, fellatio, foot fetishism, and plain old sexual intercourse. This is not, in my opinion, what makes “The Female” an obscene movie.

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If Luis Bunuel had not directed “Belle de Jour,” it probably would have turned out to be nothing more than a case history from the pages of Krafft-Ebbing. On the very surface it merely tells the story of how a wealthy married woman sets out to solve her “abnormal” sexual hang-ups.

Since she is a masochist, who secretly yearns to be dominated, debased and sexually abused, her life of complete comfort leaves her cold. For relief, she frequently resorts to erotic daydreams, but finally the moment comes when she is compelled to act out her sexual fantasies. After a couple of false starts, she becomes a Belle de Jour, an afternoon prostitute, in a small middle-class brothel.

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FORT HOOD, Tex.—A court-martial found five black soldiers, including two Detroiters, guilty of refusing to obey an order growing out of a demonstration against possible anti-riot duty at the Democratic National Convention.

The specific charge was failing to report for reveille.

A sixth soldier, Pvt. Ronald McCoy, 23, of Philadelphia was acquitted.

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Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

arf! arf!

QUESTION: My wife and I think it might be interesting for her to have intercourse, perhaps regularly, with a German Shepherd dog. We have not experimented, however, because we are afraid of weird diseases that we might get. What’s the deal?

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