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Title: Considerations on Nihilism Author: Guerre au Paradis Date: January 2010 Language: en Topics: France, nihilism, revolt Source: Retrieved on November 2, 2010 from http://stormheaven.wordpress.com/lifeasagamble/considerations-on-nihilism Notes: From Guerre au Paradis N°1, that you can download here: http://www.non-fides.fr/GuerreAuParadis1.pdf Other english translations from this french anarchist journal can be found on Storm Heaven: http://stormheaven.wordpress.com http://guerreauparadis.blogspot.com
We would have preferred not to feel the need to write these lines. We
would rather speak of love, of freedom and fresh water, leaving aside
the negative, at least for a moment. However: a spectre haunts the
revolutionary tension, the spectre of nihilism.
Not the âclassicalâ nihilism, represented by Nechaev and his like of the
19^(th) century. Though maybe we can detect similarities, see a
continuity between the old and the new manifestations of this attitude.
It is known that each miserable epoch produces its batch of miserable
behaviours, which reproduce it in turn. Reactionary epochs, epochs where
the revolutionary perspective finds itself nearly completely smothered
beneath an enormous ideological morass, asphyxiated in the midst of the
political desert. Sometimes this desert is animated by the sad
celebrations of the democratic masses, ecstatic to live in the best of
all possible worlds, rushing off to the nightclubs to consume their
alienation in the form of alcohol and cocaine, spiritedly discussing the
tragic possibilities: Bayrou or Cohn-Bendit in the next electoral
cluster-fuck, the latest Top 40 hits [1], what to think of the Grenelle
de lâenvironnement[2], sealing themselves up in their cell phone or iPod
so as not to be too in touch with their fellows, winding their way
through the tons of merchandise, both accessible and untouchable.
A multitude of mechanisms that democracy knew to develop to forge the
citizen from nothingness: from student parties to the days against...
war, domestic violence, climate change, world hunger, GMOs and so on,
from television and advertising propaganda to the free journals
distributed en masse to massively annihilate minds, from 50-euro
internships in non-violent civil disobedience to the penitentiary
administration recruitment campaigns, from People magazine to the latest
gaming systemâs hot new shoot-em-up that feels âlike Gazaâ, we find
again this same carefree bonhomie, this same satisfaction, the forced
smiles, this repugnant âfun attitudeâ[3] face-to-face with the social
emptiness in which we are immersed, the same frightful impression of
living in an almost incredible age, where the positivist religion will
be enough to erase the ambient misery.
On one hand, mass welfare, lay-offs by the shovelful, generalized
poverty and precarity, increasingly common and powerful wage slavery
exploitation, total lack of perspective, despair and resignation,
occasional rage.
On the other, the mob of clowns and citizens always ready to tell you
itâs much worse in Bangladesh and that we have to know how to make do
with what weâve been given, and to continue to flounder joyously in the
swamp of survival. And that even if times are tough, at least here there
is peace and security.
When the nihilists of the 19^(th) century threw their bombs into crowds,
they were acting from the expression of a pure negativity, from a
radical and global refusal of society, anxiously awaiting the end times,
the end of the world, of making a definite end to a life devoid of
sense. There was something to destroy. More precisely: everything was to
be destroyed.
Today the nihilism produced by the democratic spectacle and by
democratic indifference has many meanings, different types of
expression.
On one hand, one feels that the world is not coming to an end, despite
the relative success of various versions of âcatastrophismâ; that on the
contrary it is working to hold on, to accompany the permanent changes of
the system that rules it, to adapt itself somehow to the epoch and its
norms, to follow the tendencies which create the illusion of renewal, of
an illusory change. In short, to paint the grey of daily domestication a
bright, fluorescent yellow. What is at stake is the sustainable
development of domination in all its aspects. All means seem to be good
for use to this end, and the saddest part of the business is to note
that the cops are not the principal tool of this politics, which knows
how to craftily wed a system of voluntary adherence with one of
constraint.
This is not to say that the economy and the State no longer need the cop
to maintain order, but that when the notions of exploitation and
oppression disappear from our common language, when people can no longer
put their rage and despair into words, nor point the finger at those
responsible for this permanent nightmare we call survival, the latter
have every reason to believe that their domination has many glorious
days ahead.
âThere is a lack of money, but money cannot bring us what we lack.â
Nowadays, the lack of and the quest for money have constituted
themselves as an unsurpassable horizon, they have become the value which
has replaced all others, until they have practically disappeared.
The desire for freedom, and the permanent battle which it necessitates,
occupy at best, in these morose times, the importance that one gives to
artifacts and archaic curiosities. Making money, raking in cash by any
means, becoming a popular personality, respected or feared, crawling up
the ladder of capitalist success by internalizing its laws. The first
rule is to banish all ethics, key to rising in this society where
stepping cynically on peopleâs throats is a sign of undeniable success.
Marking oneâs territory, to have your clan, your little private racket,
claiming ownership of a neighbourhood, or even a city, to gain fame and
power.
None of this is new, but it was once more or less eclipsed by another
type of antagonism, one between classes and more broadly social; a war
against oppressors, for freedom. After the 70s and the revolutionary
push which shook capitalist society, the putrid wind of reaction blew
through, bringing out with it numerous frantic lovers of a revolt
without concession, vanquished by abnegation or brutal repression.
One could say that it in this period of ebb that the current period
began, during which capitalism could lead its desired restructuring,
sweeping aside the subsequent, all-too-rare opposition, grinding
millions of individuals beneath its arrogant advance, carting along its
load of human despair and misery. These periods are always called
âcrisesâ, as if to speak of exceptional situations; this is to forget
that the economy is in perpetual mutation, that this crisis is not an
economic crisis, but the crisis of those whom the economy domesticates
and wishes to reduce to the state of slaves.
The fully developed capitalism of the 19^(th) century was already
passing humans through the industrial meat-grinder. And at the time,
nihilism was one of the reactions to this infamy. For cruelty is a
common response to terror, and cold hatred and total contempt generates
more and more inhumanity.
While disaster presents itself before our eyes every day, and we see
that there seem to be many who would seem to be accommodating it, rage
builds, a volcano inside each of us which erupts, sometimes wisely,
sometimes randomly, crying out that there are no innocents in this
nameless whorehouse.
So this blind anger lashes out against whatever crosses its path,
playing into the divisions already created by religion, nationalism,
sexism, and every kind of racket. Thus, revolt, the good old war against
authority, cedes its place to nihilism, whose facets, more than anything
else, are chaos and civil war, in which the prospect of freedom grows
further away, a terrain on which one is invariably outweighed by the
State and the system which it protects.
Sometimes the line between rage and despair is very fine, very fragile.
The abyss of nihilism awaits every sincere rebel who ceases to be
critical, to listen to their heart, stifling their dreams of mutual aid
and solidarity, saying that this is all useless, since no one gives a
fuck anymore, at least it seems so. A very thin line then, but one which
marks a real difference in perspective, between yet another
eschatological fantasy of the end of the world, and the anarchist desire
to annihilate every oppression in order that the rest, that is to say
pretty much everything worth living for, may grow and thrive.
Between nihilism and revolt we find the same rupture as between civil
war and social war, the same difference as between the oppression of all
by all and the revolutionary struggle against all authority.
Between nihilism and revolt there is a divide which contains all the
others: the rupture with this alienated and sick society, for the total
liberation of human relationships.
Faced with this alternative, there can be no doubt as to our choice.
The thirst for death that gives rise to democratic domination, by wars
between States, civil wars, wars among the poor, suicides by the
thousands, only increases our disgust.
And when we see the temptation for civil war poking its nose among the
revolutionaries to lead them into the quicksand of nihilism, we think
that there is serious danger there, against which we must spare no
criticism. Recently appearing slogans such as âAgainst nothing, for
nothingâ[4] represent a very real shift and are dark omens for the
future.
When we fight for nothing, and against nothing,
nothing makes any sense, there is nothing to do.
We can do nothing.
We could also decide to rearm our revolt,
and begin again to storm heaven.
Â
[1] â...nouveau classement du Top 50â in original.
[2] Le Grenelle de lâenvironnement was a series of political meetings
organised in France in October 2007, looking to make long-term decisions
on matters of environment and sustainable development. The term
âgrenelleâ comes from the Grenelle accords of May â68, and by analogy
means a multi-party debate which brings together government
representatives, professional associations, and NGOs.
[3] In English in original.
[4] In English in original. Given that the authors of Guerre au Paradis
identify themselves as interested readers of Fire to the Prisons,
dismayed by what they identify as FTTPâs shift of late away from anarchy
towards nihilism, I think it highly possible that this is a reference to
the infamous âFor Nothing, Against Everythingâ cover of issue #7;
particularly given that âagainst nothingâ is not exactly a common
formulation of nihilist orientation.