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Title: Suicide, Desperation, and Clowns Author: negroyverde Language: en Topics: fun, nihilism, suicide Source: Text salvaged from a deleted reddit post (URL unavailable). Originally submitted to /r/anarchism by negroyverde on 13th December 2016.
Suicide is a force of unthinkable strength and volume at this point in
history. It is almost banal. Kids younger than ten carry out this act
with a frightening level of success, and many more fail in their
attempts. The demography of suicide is presently a very interesting
subject - mostly, it represents the general feeling that there is No
Alternative. It is the ultimate act of isolated revolt, in its most
desperate and atomized form. It is capital's preferred option for those
who are discontent, as it leaves the dominant social order intact
quietly, while drumming up sympathy for "those poor people" who took
their own lives. It does not demand any discussion on why.
The intelligent revolutionary harnesses dominant social trends for their
ends. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was one of the first to figure this
out, in tandem with Hafez Al-Assad, Bashar's father. They figured it out
in a vulgar way - by inducing those who followed them to commit suicidal
acts of military and terrorist strategy. Of course neither Khomeini nor
Assad was the first to sign up to blow themselves up - Allah had willed
a different path for them, surely. Peasants were used as pawns, and to
this day, are induced to blow themselves up for the sake of the
hierarchies that exploit them and their survivors.
It is obvious that this represents some of the most extreme cases of
hierarchies preserving themselves and exploiting their subjects. The
anarchist is quite likely, if not practically duty-bound, to reject
this. Does this mean that suicide is of no use to us? In my mind, it
does not. It simply means that we would do well to approach the matter
from the other end.
Presently, resources are not scarce in the postindustrial west. There
are homes, there is food, the means exist to produce a brilliant
standard of living for nearly all people, were those means in our hands.
What is in absolutely short supply, however, is meaning. Our peers who
are currently chest-beating and flag-waving their way around the likes
of Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, and all variants of the anti-neoliberal,
ultra-nationalist ideologies are given a prepackaged set of parameters
within which meaning can be produced. If they can't find themselves a
job, or a spot in the army, they can at least find themselves a sense of
belonging in a hyped-up mob of hyper-emotions like hatred and fear. They
can find their views and existences affirmed by the society that already
exists - family, labor, positions of power, moral authority, it all
stands strong and in such a fashion that the project of continuing to
exist seems to be a good idea (for them).
Those who imagine another way of living see no obvious road to it, and
as such, there is unbelievable inertia, apathy, depression, and suicidal
urges springing up on the left and among anarchists. They do not see the
world they imagine - if they are even able to imagine it at all -
affirmed anywhere. We have some ideas here on this board, some theories,
even some quite reasonable historical analyses pointing us in the
direction that seems sound and decent. But these ideas mean very little
if they do not appear to be readily practicable or of much consequence.
This puts us on the downward end of a war of meaning and individual
self-preservation. Our "post-truth" world is so flaccid, and so without
content, that the individual frequently sees the voluntary ending of
their own existence to be a more reasonable alternative to resistance,
because all forms of resistance heretofore imagined are not, apparently,
of much consequence. This is more true of the so-called "liberal left"
than of anarchists, but is still generally relevant for most anarchists
who are not naive enough to be hopped up on ideology 24/7.
Opposition to violent means is at a low among radicals, yet violent
means are notoriously good ways to get killed or imprisoned. Draw a gun
at a protest and you will be ended. Organize a militia and you will be
kept under the watch and quite possibly framed into imprisonment. Yet do
we not see the reality that is in front of us? The nature of violence
has changed. Classical combat, even updated to include the likes of
guerrilla warfare, is not particularly relevant. Yet force is still the
blood of history and power. Now, combat consists of the presence or
absence of meaning, and the subsequent affirmation or negation of
existence. Does the world around us, in how it is altered by our
adversaries strategically, drive us to a place of desperation? (It
does). Conversely, could we not begin altering the worlds of our
opponents to be just as desperation-inducing? Could we not, on the level
of the collective and the individual alike, compose targeted means of
driving our enemies to suicide?
This is the realpolitik of conversion. Radicalizing people does not
consist of convincing them through reasoned argument. It instead is a
matter of examining the nature of a person's desperations, and
addressing them by offering meaning. Luckily, unlike material resources,
meaning can be created by nothing. This is why Nietzsche, Stirner, and
Novatore offer some of the most relevant tendencies within anarchism
today. It is also the realpolitik of destabilization. As surely as we
create and distribute the means of producing meaning to those we align
with, we poetically expose the baseless and empty nature of the meaning
our enemies derive from the systems they interact with. If this means
the tables turn and they off themselves, this is our enemies killing our
enemies for us - far superior to direct violence. If it means they reach
a point of desperation, where their resolve is weakened, it may also
mean they are radicalized and brought into the anarchist fold, because
their old ideas gave way and fell apart (I know more former Nazis who
became anarchists in this way than you'd imagine).
My last point: What does this look like in practical terms? I think to a
certain extent we could brainstorm this in the comments, but my first
thoughts are:
1. We gain a reputation of being the ones who get the most out of life.
This means learning to Live Well. We must be seen universally as being
the top assemblage of humanity that is eating the best food, having the
best sex, creating the best art, and most importantly: having the most
fun. Somehow, radicals have gained the opposite reputation, as being
joyless guilt-mongers who lead austere and bitter lives, and infighting
constantly, living in squalor, and generally having a bad time. We need
to ask: What makes us happy? And begin doing that as a group, loudly and
in the streets. This might be more important than nearly anything else.
If we are seen as an order of existentially brilliant clowns, vagabonds,
and intellectual hedonists, we will draw a great deal of interest for
that fact alone - while implying that our enemies are boring and sad.
Their steady diets of hatred and fear make this easy to imply - because
it is true.
2. The point about fun makes sense only when it is situated in a larger
imaginative vision of a better society. Without this element, it becomes
little more than a self-righteous iteration of party culture. When we
posit a clear vision of how things could be, and we do so in a manner
that is accessible and viewed as being potentially close at hand, we
succeed in a critical way that we have continuously failed in since 1968
(generally). This means offering visions of how life could be that are
not highfalutin', distantly utopian, or explicated in dry academic
terms. For all the uses of our theory, it cannot ever exist in a vacuum,
nor can it exist without its proponents acting out this theory
prefiguratively. This is why fiction, cinema, poetry, and comedy are
immensely important. They create culture that has a vision, and that
vision is participatory here and now, in a manner that gathers people
together, often physically.
3. Clowning is a great tactic that embodies what I am saying here, I
think. The clown, in her foolish attire, fashions herself to be someone
who is bound to be rejected and loathed - but this is used to her
advantage, to make a mockery of the processes by which individuals are
rejected or thought to be fools. She empties herself out publicly in
order to attain a strategic position where she can completely cut down
and make fun of the world around her without firing a single shot. The
suicidal person may at times feel like a sad clown, a misfit who lacks
the energy required to laugh at the world that has fashioned him into
this sad character. Anarchists can offer a meaning-making culture that
converts the wallowing of the misfit, and all its desperation, into a
weapon of high enjoyment and utter decimation of our enemies. I am
envisioning roving gangs of redneck clowns on freak-bicycles, dressed
like sad alt-right kids, blaring country music, perhaps with Pepe masks,
riding near conservatives, white supremacists, and Trump supporters on
the street, heckling them and mimicking the sad behavior of these
people. All of this would be perceived as a joke, with no violent
intentions, and inevitably, a violent reaction would be provoked,
offering the perfect opportunity to both kick fascist ass (in a Pepe
mask) and to highlight the weak desperation of our adversaries. Entire
societies of dropout clowns could be formed, with the daily intention
and sole goal of embarrassing the enemy comedically - and having as much
fun as possible while doing it. These clowns could also act as a buffer
between police and serious protestors (we've seen some of this before in
Occupy and with the Guerrilla Clown Army from Scotland).
There is a lot more to say here on these points and maybe I'll write
more about it, but I figured I'd post this here for the sake of maybe
provoking some interesting discussion. Not sure what y'all will think.
if you read all this, thanks!