💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › bob-black-jon-bekken-bob-black.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:54:54. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Jon Bekken & Bob Black Author: Bob Black Language: en Topics: letters, AJODA Source: author. Proofread online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3864, retrieved on December 2, 2020.
This is the second part of a letter which appeared in Anarchy: A Journal
of Desire Armed in 2009. [1] The first part of the letter dealt with
another fired professor, David Graeber.[2] Graeber accused me of, among
other things, “egopornography.” I settled his hash. It then occurred to
me that there was a bona fide egopornographer, Jon Bekken, who was still
at large, in a small way.
For an example of real egopornography, there’s the letter by
ex-Professor Jon Bekken, the disgraced former General Secretary of the
Industrial [sic] Workers [sic] of the World [sic]. Bekken, the offspring
of wealthy San Diego lawyers, in the late 1970s was a college student
and what is now called a lifestyle anarchist. He was the only member of
the “Groucho Marxist Caucus” at the University of California (San Diego)
[Not true, I ran that organization with him -- Jonathan Osborn]. His
well-meaning if puerile efforts to satirize Marxism ironically inspired
me to write “Theses on Groucho Marxism,” a much better use of the
gimmick, as Bekken acknowledged at the time. He called it “truly a
masterwork!”
Since the “Theses” were included in my book Friendly Fire, I much later
included his acclaim among the book’s back cover blurbs. Bekken’s fan
letter to me, and all of our correspondence, is in my archives at the
Labadie Collection of the University of Michigan where all are welcome
to read them.
Bekken went on to graduate school in Communications (which is just
journalism, a contemptible profession, not a discipline with
intellectual or scholarly content) – as Ward Churchill did – receiving a
Ph.D, as Churchill did not. Bekken was hired by the State University of
New York (SUNY) at Cortland, a cow college. As a state employee, this
anarcho-purist signed (as did Ward Churchill) a loyalty oath to uphold
the Constitution of the United States.
By then, Bekken had been, after a formal trial (!) by an IWW tribunal,
convicted of “slandering a fellow worker,” and expelled from the Boston
local. So, in Cortland, he founded his own one-man IWW local. Most IWW
locals, I suspect, are one-man locals.
Whether this make-believe unionism had anything to do with his getting
fired after his first year, I don’t know, but it’s unlikely. What I do
know is that, contrary to Bekken’s recent ravings, I had nothing to do
with it. It should be noted that until now, a dozen years later [2009],
Bekken has never publicized this accusation, not even in his own
Anarcho-Syndicalist Review where he regularly libels me and suppresses
my rejoinders.
I never communicated with the SUNY administration or faculty. This is a
recent fabrication. I considered, but never got around to, visiting
Cortland[3] to leaflet Bekken’s classes with his own Groucho Marxist
juvenilia. Later, over the summer, I phoned the Communications
department secretary to ascertain Bekken’s fall teaching schedule, only
to be told he would not be returning. I expressed regrets (okay,
insincerely), and asked, will Professor Bekken be teaching at some other
university? She laughed. Bekken, by being himself, had fucked up so
badly as forever to disqualify himself from academic appointment.
Bekken moved on to manage the Lucy Parsons bookstore in Boston, where he
got my books banned. When Lydia Eccles asked him why my books were not
carried, he screamed, “Bob Black is a fascist!” Having worn out his
welcome once again, he is now manager (not a “fellow worker”) at
Philadelphia’s Wooden Shoe Books, whose shelves he again keeps cleansed
of my books.
But, let’s go back to when Bekken threatened to use the state against
Autonomedia for its temerity in quoting Bekken on the back cover of
Friendly Fire. Bekken is so egopornographic as to denounce my resort to
the state to deal with a madman who nearly murdered me,[4] while he
defends using legal threats to avenge a prank.
His legal pretext was a New York statute allowing a civil action for
“misappropriation,” but also (what Bekken falsely denies), in his
threats sent to Autonomedia, he also claimed libel. That was legally
absurd, since the quotation was by him, not me, and it was about me, not
him. Don’t take my word for it; it’s all in the Labadie Collection.
Lawrence Jarach quoted [in AJODA] just one of Bekken’s extortion letters
to Autonomedia by which the goof thought he could make some money off an
imaginary illegality by the threat of state violence that he thought his
name on the book would double its sales.[5]
Bekken, like [David Graeber], somehow received a Ph.D without ever
having learned what counts as an argument. If, for instance, I
accurately refer to a historian’s argument that many Italian
Syndicalists became Fascists,[6] Bekken thinks he has refuted that
thesis by calling me a police snitch. Our only difference in using the
state against our enemies is that I succeeded and he always fails.
I issue this challenge: Let Bekken publicly swear that he will never
call the police on me no matter what crimes I may commit against him.
Indeed, he should renounce the police option against everyone in all
cases. If he is too cowardly or hypocritical to do that, he should
forever shut up about my use of the police in a life-threatening
situation. Don’t judge me till you’ve stood in my wooden shoes.
(Bekken never responded to my challenge.)
[1] Bob Black, “Horny Handed Sons of Porn” (letter), Anarchy: A Journal
of Desire Armed No. 67 (26)(2) (Spring-Summer 2009), 76-77.
[2] Bob Black, “Bob Black & David Graeber: An Unbridgeable Chasm,”
www.theanarchylibrary.org.
[3] I resided then, as I do now, in Albany, New York, also in upstate
New York but not close to Cortland.
[4] See Bob Black, “My Date with Jim Hogshire,” available online in
several places.
[5] At one point, Bekken promised to be merciful if Autonomedia put
little stickers on every copy of the book covering up my wicked words.
He’s so dumb that it didn’t occur to him that the first thing anybody
does, who finds such a sticker on a book, is peal it off to see what the
big-deal secret is. The attention of every buyer would be focused on
Bekken’s words, whereas without a sticker, nobody would have paid much
attention. My suggestion to Autonomedia was that it invite him down to
Brooklyn where he could affix the stickers himself.
[6] David D. Roberts, The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1979).