WARPED TOUR -- AMERIKKKAN ANARCHISM
On June 30, Northampton, MA. was host to Warped, a tour of punk bands and skateboarding and roller blading athletic events. Seeing this event as no more righteous then every other Amerikan leisure time activity, MIM and RAIL still saw it as an opportunity to engage in politically revolutionary discussions with First World youth. The decadent culture that Amerikan imperialism produces attracts and lays ground work for complacency toward oppression, which just creates a support group for reactionary imperialist politics. However, while still being born into the oppressor society, youth have more to lose from imperialism and form a potentially large revolutionary group.
The reactionary grip the imperialist have already taken on First World youth manifested itself with responses such as "I can't read". Most likely a lie for the majority, that acted as an easy, and seemingly funny, escape from talking politics. If any of these people were illiterate, or for that matter not falling friend to imperialism, they might want to take a look at all the Chinese peasants who had no choice in taking the "easy" way out and taught themselves to read with Mao's "On Contradiction", a thirty page essay on the meaning behind dialectics. It discusses the scientific reasoning behind contradictions and their unity in society, and was applied across the board from improving rice cultivation to ending the gendered roles people were being forced to play in society.
Some others proclaimed themselves as anarchists 100% against communism. When asked what they were doing now to end the oppression in the world, one responded with, "I listen to Rage (Against the Machine), that's enough." This just exemplifies, yet again, the decadent attitude that plays so well along side Amerika's imperialist power. It's also seriously offensive to the true motives behind Rage Against the Machines songs. They don't talk about sitting around and listening to their music, but rather are trying to use their music as a motivating force for revolutionary politics. This person has it all wrong, or should it be said, all right in favor for imperialist oppression.
Others agreed with MIM and RAIL's line on armed struggle. However the reactions were more in favor of just randomly killing people rather than realizing the tactical necessity behind picking up the gun. The imperialists are not going to give up the power without a long and all encompassing battle, which they have begun with years of starvation, land stealing and colonization. Armed struggle is not a blood fest like the pseudo- anarchists were advocating, but a necessity for finishing the battle in the favor of the masses that Imperialism began ever since the beginnings of colonization.
A few discussions on communism versus anarchism took place, and a bunch of zine addresses were exchanged. On person was starting a zine on anarchism, tribal living, anti-racism and anti- sexism who, on the address printed, "remember this is a zine for intelligent well informed punks. not fuckups with nothing to rebel against except the ever climbing prices of stussy wear." (Stussy wear is clothing manufactured "copying" the alternative/punk culture and now available, for a high price, on every trendy store shelf. Yet another example of capitalism's commodity fetishism.) At least someone out there is taking the end of oppression seriously and can see the true decadence and aristocratic position that a majority of Amerikkkans are adopting at a young age.
Amerika's youth does form a group of possible revolutionaries able to unite with the world's proletariat to overthrow imperialism. By adopting an ultra-left stance like anarchism, youth only work themselves into the hands of US imperialists by ignoring the principle contradiction, failing to organize around and against imperialism, and relying on metaphysical escapist ideas like individuality to change the world. The oppressors rely on youth to take such paths, because in the end they just produce another mystified supporter of US imperialism. If you favor a society without oppressive conditions as they exist today, the only route to change is uniting with the international proletariat and overthrowing imperialism by working with MIM and RAIL and revolutionary politics.
NOTE: For the zine mentioned above, write to Zach Lihatsh 131 Lyme rd. Hanover, NH, 03755