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Title: Auschwitz-Disneyland Author: Anonymous Date: 2013 Language: en Topics: Return Fire, La Mauvaise Herbe, spectacle, internet, alienation, green capitalism, biopower, anti-civ, civilization Source: Translated for Return Fire #1 from the French-language anti-civilisation journal La Mauvaise Herbe, Volume 11. no2 Notes: To read the article referenced in this text's footnote, PDFs of Return Fire and related publications can be read, downloaded and printed by searching actforfree.nostate.net for "Return Fire", or emailing returnfire@riseup.net
I live in Auschwitz-Disneyland. I make sure that all my papers are in
order,
I document my existence on social networks,
I apply for grants and loans. I wear clothes that express who I am, I am
a walking billboard, a name tag, I pick a style. I take a train, a
subway, my car, un Bixi[1], it's so convenient. I take a shower, I smell
good, according to the ads this foaming gel makes me irresistible.
Auschwitz-Disneyland is the countryside in the city, the city in the
suburb, and the suburb in the countryside. Auschwitz-Disneyland is naked
life in one's Sunday best, the hegemony giving itself the answer. In
Auschwitz-Disneyland, “holidays make you free.” In Auschwitz-Disneyland,
we order at the drive-through, we studying by distance learning, and we
shop online.
In Auschwitz-Disneyland, “water comes from the tap and food comes from
the supermarket”, food found in the skip also comes from the
supermarket. Spectacular capital of Biopower and the bio-political
Spectacle: Auschwitz-Disneyland is the name of the metropolis and that
of the empire. Auschwitz-Disneyland is not synonymous with the
Spectacle, but rather, that which the Spectacle prevents us from keeping
our distance from. Auschwitz-Disneyland is not civil war, but the denial
of civil war to such a degree that it becomes a weapon.
Auschwitz-Disneyland does not call itself Auschwitz-Disneyland, it is
called: Montréal, Burlington, Club Med, the Univerisity of Québec in
Montréal, Athens, Amiens, Dix-Trente, Bagram, Oakland,
Bois-des-Fillions, and I'm skipping some. The inhabitants of
Auschwitz-Disneyland are citizens. In the aftermath of a riot, the
citizens come out of their condominiums armed with brooms. Living in
Auschwitz-Disneyland is an anaesthetic experience, which deprives us of
the beauty and possibility of sensory experience.
I wouldn't know how to say exactly how this all started, if it was
domestication, patriarchy, agriculture, the State, cities, symbolic
culture. There is also this god from the desert, jealous and terrible
liar whose promise is no stranger to the hegemony of
Auschwitz-Disneyland. This god, who could not have been so hideously
jealous and a horrible liar if he had really been alone, managed to
convince his disciples that he was the only god and that nothing that
links us to the here-and-now is of importance, that what mattered was
elsewhere and he held the key for it. Although we are no longer as loyal
to this tyrannical buffoon, we continue to diligently follow his
terrible promise. Auschwitz-Disneyland is the objective incarnation of
this promise, the absolute negation of the possibility of being here,
now. Here-and-now, is no longer here-and-now, it is just next door, out
of reach, fenced off, it is a no-man's land that crosses the empire, it
is subject to police surveillance at all times. When I try to escape
Auschwitz-Disneyland is not to go elsewhere, it is to rediscover the
here-and-now. I do not dig a tunnel, but a hiding place, a shelter.
Auschwitz-Disneyland subjects the world to its empire through use of
powerful tools such as reason, technique and grammar. In a world whose
ins and outs are contained in symbolic mediations, do not underestimate
the power of grammar. Grammar shapes minds and stories, it also brings
many prohibitions, of course it is not permissible to join the words
“Auschwitz” and “Disneyland” with a hyphen, to try to give them one and
the same meaning. In Auschwitz-Disneyland, resistance, like all
counter-cultures, has developed a vocabulary of its own, but fails to
overcome the enemy grammar; the word “ecocide” will never hold weight
against the concept of “economic growth”. The combination of a
counter-cultural vocabulary with the authoritarian grammar of mass
society can only lead to ridicule, we must see how easily the “New World
Order”, “Bilderberg” and “chemtrails” conspirators put an end to any
political conversation. Facing the risk of being confined to jargon, it
is beneficial to talk through the force of rocks, paving stones,
poles...
Auschwitz-Disneyland is less the Apocalypse in motion, than the negation
of this Apocalypse in the service of its expansion. The task falls on
the best agents of the Apocalypse of denying the slightest trace of the
latter, and to wipe out the unfortunates who had the audacity and
recklessness to pronounce its name. It is perhaps no coincidence that
Saint Peter became the head of the church by denying Christ three times.
If this negation of the Apocalypse returns in the sphere of the
spectacular, to specialists, in the private sphere we become all
subcontractors. We prefer, most of the time, to deny our desire to end
the domination, in favour of a trans-historical oppositional perspective
and of 'counter-power'. In doing so, we deny the possibility of
abolishing Auschwitz-Disneyland, by contenting ourselves with a space
for demonstrations, a zone for free expression, a protest pen. We let go
of the gun to better cling to the barricade.
This mutilated negativity first results in our inability to sustain
ourselves without precarity, which also feeds our servitude. This
constant management of subsistence denies the possibility of note-worthy
experience, of bearing a relationship to the world which is not that of
domination.
A century of industrialisation, continental genocide and four years of
trench warfare eradicated everything up until the “possibility of
experience.” Then after that, it was relayed by the most horrible
images, rats shown alternating with a hated minority; and during that
time on other screens, a mouse wearing trousers, going to the restaurant
with his girlfriend, driving a car. Since scrapping experience,
progress, basing itself on images, has free reign, hiding the cost of
what little is given to us, cultivating our dependence, promising us
anything. In Auschwitz-Disneyland, progress maintains itself by
combining its best gadgets, which form so many layers which capture us
like cellophane. Auschwitz-Disneyland merges telecommunications,
cybernetics and pornography, and gives us the internet.
Auschwitz-Disneyland is also the triumph of sustainable development,
humanitarian intervention and green capitalism. Divided thought has
multiplied to the point of constituting an inseparable heap. New animal
torturers are the “finest minds” of cognitive science, and wise European
scholars, well-intentioned, try to prove the innocuousness of new
molecules that surround us. Where does the baby start and the bathwater
finish? The “banality of evil” is also the evil of banality. The dreams
of citizens reproduce sadness and the banality of their existence, their
interaction is limited to an interface. Another world is possible, you
want to laugh. This world is impossible, its end is desirable, that will
suffice. Jokers put forward superficial slogans: ecosocialism or
barbarism. If it's a matter of choice the answer is too easy, we are not
fooled, the 250 known species which have become extinct today are not
fooled. If it's a threat, we will respond with a roar, a fierce and wild
roar, we will roar with all our strength, we will roar for the 250 known
species which became extinct today.
Auschwitz-Disneyland can provide free education, cover itself with
windfarms, eat organic and drive electric cars, the “Princesses' Castle”
and her thousands of hideous copies could be made of recycled cardboard,
the horror would remain whole. To maintain itself, this world must keep
us out of the here, far from the now, outside nature and alien to each
other.
Auschwitz-Disneyland only maintains itself by cultivating this
estrangement within us towards others. We share a subway car, without
letting it show; we don't look at anyone, we are voluntarily absorbed by
some gadgets, some books, some music. When empty-handed, we pretend to
be alone, to be somewhere else; we are in the habit. We are mobilised
against the presence of the body and against the possibility that it
carries. Sometimes this mobilisation fails and the decorations get torn.
There are all these cities and suburbs ablaze when the cops execute the
“baddies”. There is Sobibor[2] where a dozen prisoners got the camp to
revolt: killing the guards, destroying the cells, fleeing into the
woods. There's also Woodstock '99[3], Seattle[4] and there is Oka[5].
A drone flies over a piece of desert, preparing to launch a missile at a
truck; we will say that it was carrying some “militants”. A landlord's
association decides to analyse the DNA of dog shit that stains their
lawns to find and punish those “guilty”. A counterfeit Mickey Mouse gets
on stage with a neophyte dictator for the greatest “joy” of children. An
Italian atomic energy official gets kneecapped[6]. The war is already
here, we know which side to choose. All that's left is to “desert with
arms”, to desert with a friend, with at least one friend, a friend, a
stranger, a stranger who became a friend, with two friends, five
friends. Deserting doesn't necessarily imply going elsewhere, “arms” are
not just useful for fighting; deserting implies creating a new
relationship to the world, exploring “here” and experimenting “now”,
noting the location of enemy devices, making a plan, plans, finding
yourself, finding a friend, two friends, five friends. Together we will
survive, heal, and of course fight, we will also experiment with this
new grammar, better yet this language without grammar, which will put an
end once and for all to “Auschwitz-Disneyland.”
[1] ed. – Similar to the 'Boris Bikes' cycle hire scheme.
[2] ed. – Sobibór was a Nazi German extermination camp in Poland.
[3] ed. – The 1999 Woodstock festival near New York ended with rioting.
[4] ed. – Seattle hosted the 1999 World Trade Organisation summit, with
big protests and much property damage.
[5] ed. – The 1990 'Oka Crisis' was a 78-day armed stand-off between the
Canadian military and Kanesatake indigenous protectors of traditional
habitat to be turned into a golf course. Other tribes set up blockades
and downed power-lines in solidarity.</em>
[6] ed. – See Rebels Behind Bars; 'We Refuse to Reduce Our Desires...'