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Title: Washing 
 and brainwashing
Author: CrimethInc.
Date: September 11, 2000
Language: en
Topics: hygiene, health, propaganda
Source: Retrieved on 7th November 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2000/09/11/washing-and-brainwashing

CrimethInc.

Washing 
 and brainwashing

“The remaining noticeable characteristic of ‘Che’ is his filth. He hates

to wash and will never do so. He is filthy, even by the rather low

standard of cleanliness prevailing among the Castro forces in the Sierra

Maestra. Once in a while, “Che” would take some of his men to a stream

or pool, in order that they might wash. On those occasions “Che” would

never wash either himself or his clothes, but would sit on the bank and

watch the others. He is really outstandingly and spectacularly dirty.”

— slanderous description of Che Guevara from the 1958 C.I.A. dossier

Even in the most anti-establishment of underground circles, I’m amazed

by how frequently I hear people complain about people they call

“hippies” or “crusty punks.” “These crusty punks came in here and

smelled up the whole place,” they’ll say. What great transgression have

these people committed to be so reviled? They have a different

orientation to the question of “cleanliness” than the rest of us do.

Where do our ideas and values about so-called “cleanliness” come from,

anyway? Western civilization has a long history of associating

cleanliness with goodness and merit, best summed up by the old

expression “cleanliness is next to Godliness.” In ancient Greek plays,

evil people and spirits — the Furies, for example — were often described

as filthy. The Furies were dirty, aged, and female, exactly the opposite

of how the playwright who described them saw himself; their filthiness,

among other things, identified them as an outgroup — as alien, animal,

inhuman. Over time, cleanliness became a measure with which the “haves”

separated themselves from the “have-nots.” Those who possessed the

wealth and power required to have the leisure to remain indoors,

inactive, scorned the peasants and travelers whose lifestyles involved

getting their hands and bodies dirty. Throughout our history, we can see

that cleanliness has been used as a standard of worth by those with

power to ascribe social status — and thus, the “Godly,” the

self-proclaimed holy ones who stood above the rest of us in hierarchical

society, proclaimed that their cleanliness, bought with the labor of the

others who were forced to work for them, was a measure of their

“Godliness” and superiority. To this day, we accept this traditional

belief: that being “clean” according to social norms is desirable in

itself.

It should be clear from the history of our ideas about “cleanliness”

that anyone who is critical of mainstream values, any radical or punk

rocker, should be extremely suspicious of the great value placed on

being “clean” according to traditional standards. Besides, what exactly

does “clean” mean?

These days, cleanliness is defined more by corporations selling

“sanitation products” than by anyone else. This is important to keep in

mind. Certainly, most of these products have an uncanny ability to cut

through natural dirt and grime — but does removing natural dirt and

grime with synthetic chemicals necessarily constitute the only

acceptable form of sanitation? I’m at least as frightened by these

manufactured, artificial products as I am of a little dust, mud, or

sweat, or (god forbid!) a stain from food or blood on my shirt. At least

I know where the dirt/”filth” came from and what it’s made of!

The idea that it is worthwhile to use chemicals (whether they be

deodorant, detergent, or shampoo) to eradicate organic dirt has some

frightening implications, too. First, it supports the old Christian

superstition that the biological body is shameful and should be hidden —

that our bodies and our existence in the physical world as animals are

intrinsically disgusting and sinful. This groundless idea has been used

to keep us insecure and ashamed, and thus at the mercy of the priests

and other authorities who tell us how to become “pure”: once, by

submitting to their holy denial of the self, and now, by spending plenty

of our money on the various “sanitation” products they want to sell us.

Also, as capitalism transforms the entire world from the organic

(forests, swamps, deserts, rivers) to the inorganic (cities of concrete

and steel, suburbs of asphalt and astroturf, wastelands that have been

stripped of all natural resources, garbage dumps) the idea that there is

something more worthwhile about synthetic chemicals than natural dirt

implies that this transformation might actually be a good thing
 and

thus implicitly justifies their profit-motivated destruction of our

planet,

In reality, these corporations are far less concerned with our actual

health and cleanliness than they are with selling us their products,

anyway. They use the high value we traditionally have placed on

sanitation to sell us all sorts of products in the name of cleanliness


and who knows what the real, long-term health effects of these products

are? They certainly don’t care. If we were to become ill in the long run

from using their special cleansers and hi-tech shampoos, they could just

sell us another product — medicine — and keep the wheels of the

capitalist economy turning. And the shame about our bodies (as producers

of sweat and other natural fluids which we deem “dirty”) that they

capitalize on and encourage also aids them in selling us other products

which depend upon our insecurity: diet products, exercise products,

fashionable clothes, etc. When we accept their definition of

“cleanliness” we are accepting their economic domination of our lives.

Even if they agree about the questionable nature of today’s sanitation

products, most people today would still argue that sanitation is still

healthier than filth. To some extent this is true — it probably is a

good idea to wash your feet if you step in shit. But, aside from obvious

cases like that, there are a thousand different standards of what is

clean and what is dirty across the world; if you look at different

societies and civilizations, you come across health practices that seem

suicidal by our sanitation standards. And yet, these people survive as

well as we do. People in Africa a few hundred years ago lived

comfortably in a natural environment that destroyed many of the very

prim and polished Western explorers that came to their continent. Human

beings can adapt to a wide variety of environments and situations, and

it seems that the question of what kinds of sanitation are healthy is at

least as much a question of convention as of hard-set biological rules.

Try violating a few of the “common sense” rules of Western sanitation

some time, and you’ll find that going a few weeks without a shower and

eating out of garbage cans aren’t really as dangerous or difficult as we

were taught.

Perhaps the most important question when it comes to the unusual value

we place on traditional “cleanliness” is what we lose by doing this.

Once, before we covered up our natural scents with chemicals, we each

had a unique smell. These scents attracted us to each other and bound us

emotionally to each other through memory and association. Now, if you

have positive associations with the scent of the man you love, it is

probably his cologne (identical to the cologne of thousands of other

men) that you enjoy, not his own personal scent. And the natural

pheromones with which we once communicated with each other, which played

an important role in our sexuality, are now completely smothered by

standardized chemical products. We no longer know what it is like to be

pure, natural human beings, to smell like real human beings. Who knows

how much we may have lost because of this? Those who find me disgusting

for enjoying the scent and taste of my lover when she hasn’t showered or

rubbed synthetics all over herself, when she smells like a real human

being, are probably the same ones who shudder at the idea of digging a

vegetable out of the ground and eating it rather than eating the

plastic-wrapped, man-made fast food that we have all been brought up on.

We have become so accustomed to our domesticated, engineered existence

that we no longer know what we might even be missing.

So try to be a little more open minded when it comes to the “crusties.”

Perhaps they just smell bad to you because you’ve never gotten a chance

to discover what a real human being smells like. Perhaps there might be

something worthwhile about being “unwashed” in the conventional sense

that you haven’t noticed before. The moral of this story is the moral of

all anarchist stories: accept only the rules and values which make sense

to you and really are in your best interest. Figure out what’s right for

you and don’t let anybody tell you different — but also, make an effort

to understand where others are coming from, and evaluate their actions

by your own standards, not according to some standardized norm.

Eight Reasons Why Capitalists Want to Sell You Deodorant.

they are impotent and opposed to all manifestations of sensuality and

sexuality. Sexually awakened people are potentially dangerous to

capitalists and their rigid, asexual system.

to be reminded of that. Animals are dirty. They eat things off the

ground, not out of plastic wrappers. They are openly sexual. They don’t

wear suits or ties, and they don’t get their hair done. They don’t show

up to work on time.

don’t like individuality. There are millions of body smells but only a

few deodorant smells. Capitalists like that.

always looking for new illnesses to cure. Capitalists love to invent new

medicines. Medicines make money for them and win them prizes; they also

cause new illnesses so capitalists can invent even more new medicines.

that.

Eating meat and other chemical-filled foods sold by capitalists makes

you smell bad. Wearing pantyhose makes you smell bad. Capitalists don’t

want you to stop wearing pantyhose or eating meat.

Insecure people don’t start trouble. Insecure people also buy room

fresheners, hair conditioners, makeup, and magazines with articles about

dieting.

they win marketing awards for it.