Anarchist

“ Now who are these “others” who the reasoning illegalist attacks — the anarchist who exercises an illegal profession. The “others” are those who want majorities to dominate or oppress minorities, they are the partizan of the domination or the dictatorship of one class or caste over others, they are the voters, the supporters of the state, of the monopolies and privileges it implies. In reality, these “others” are an enemy for the anarchist, irreconcilable adversaries. ”

“ You, my poor fellow, are an anarchist deprived of the help of that law and organisation which is so essential to anarchy. The one solitary difference is in your favour. You are not surrounded by inquisitive policemen; I am surrounded by inquisitive anarchists. ”

“ For the anarchists the problem of problems is this. Can the existing unjust social order, established and maintained by force, be forcibly swept away, so that the new order, in which force will be unknown, may take its place? Will the physical-force anarchist, the forcible expropriator, of to-day, be the peaceful brother of to-morrow? Anarchism is opposed on principle to the use of force; is it then permissible for the anarchist to slay and to expropriate; can Beelzebub cast out devils? The philosophic theorists of anarchism do their utmost to establish the right to kill. ”

“ The Bear was the first to protest.
‘It is the curse of Anarchism that every one wants to have his own opinion. It seems to me that when men like ourselves, who have guided the movement [129] for years, are agreed on the right course of action, a new comrade ought to accept our decision.’
I did not retort that the word Anarchist, if it meant anything, meant one who had his own opinion and refused to be guided by the agreement of others. There is nothing a fanatic resents so much as reason, except ridicule. ”

“ To the vision of thoughtful rulers and myriads of patriots throughout the world, reading history now as it is being created from day to day, the Anarchist naturally looms in the background of such a spectacle. ”

“ The Anarchist himself is persuaded of the superiority of our plan of dealing with him; he likes it and comes over in quantity, inpesting the political atmosphere with the "sweltered venom" engendered by centuries of oppression—comes over here, where he is not oppressed, and sets up as oppressor. ”

“ But, knowing as I do that no real anarchist has any part or lot in these infamies, I do not confess the facts with shame, but reiterate them with righteous wrath and indignation, in the interest of my cause, for the protection of its friends, and to save the lives and possessions of any more weak and innocent persons from being wantonly destroyed or stolen by cold-blooded villains parading in the mask of reform. ”

“ You see, dear Aleck, the philosophy of Anarchism is beginning to pervade every phase of human endeavor. In science, in art, in literature, everywhere the influence of Anarchist thought is creating new values ”

“ Whether we contemplate the vast areas of controversy laid bare to the scalpel of the Political Analyst in connection with the aspirations of the Socialist pure and simple, the Anarchist pure and simple, or the Nihilist pure and simple, or differentiate by a closer scrutiny the theories of the Socialist-Anarchist, the Socialist-Nihilist, or the Nihilist-Anarchist, we are driven irresistibly to the same conclusion—that Omniscience is still in its infancy. ”

“ A dagger in one hand, a torch in the other, and all his pockets brimful with dynamite bombs -- that is the picture of the Anarchist such as it has been drawn by his enemies. They look at him simply as a mixture of a fool and a knave, whose sole purpose is a universal topsy-turvy, and whose only means to that purpose is to slay any one and every one who differs from him. ”

“ O'Grady. "Think it over, Emperor, and you'll come to see that you can't possibly leave them here. You are an anarchist, an anti-military anarchist. You've often told me so yourself. Now, an anarchist, as I understand his position, is absolutely pledged to every kind of social reform. Whatever anybody else may do, an anarchist can't consistently go in for the over-crowding of tenement houses, or tolerate insanitary prisons. ”

“ It is the work of the Anarchist, of the revolutionist, of the intelligent, class-conscious proletarian to exemplify and cultivate this spirit and instill it in others. It alone can conquer the powers of evil and darkness, and build a new world of humanity, liberty, and justice. ”

“ There was an awful fascination about the Anarchist as he went on to describe the millennium of anarchy, where there should be no government, but where each man, standing as a law to himself, should seek his own good in the good of his neighbour. ”

“ If those who perpetrate these barbarities act with the design of promulgating the anarchist creed, they deceive themselves completely.
“Things will come to such a pass, there will be such disgust with the compagnons, they will inspire such horror, that no one will be willing to hear anarchy so much as spoken of.
“And yet the idea is beautiful: it is grand. See to it that it is respected. The persons who do evil in its name befoul our doctrines.” ”

“ Having established the aim, the goal to which we hold, we leave every anarchist free to choose from the means that his sense, his education, his temperament, his fighting spirit suggest to him as best. ”

“ But if the ruling class thinks that by executing us, hanging a few Anarchists, they can crush out Anarchy, they will be badly mistaken, because the Anarchist loves his principles better than his life. An Anarchist is always ready to die for his principles ”

“ Those who give this answer are called Anarchists, and their movement, Anarchy or Anarchism. The complete Anarchist is the perfect idealist; the man whose goal is entire freedom of action for all, knowing this to be the only possible condition in which equality and fraternity can exist. ”

“ The typical anarchist, then, may be defined as follows: a man perceptibly affected by the spirit of revolt under one or more of its forms,—opposition, investigation, criticism, innovation,—endowed with a strong love 156 of liberty, egoistic, or individualistic, and possessed of great curiosity,—a keen desire to know. These traits are supplemented by an ardent love of others, a highly developed moral sensitiveness, a profound sentiment of justice, an alert logical faculty, and pronounced combative tendencies. ”

“ I neglect, in a word, the more than interesting history of the slow evolution of modern anarchism, and coming directly, without further ado, to the France of to-day, attack the questions,—What is anarchy? What does the anarchist want? ”

“ He agrees first to rid brains of preconceived ideas, to put at liberty temperaments enchained by fear, to give rise to mindsets free from popular opinion and social conventions; it is thus that the anarchist will push all comers to make route with him to rebel practically against the determinism of the social environment, to affirm themselves individually, to sculpt his internal statue, to render themselves, as much as possible, independent of the moral, intellectual and economic environment. ”

“ From the first moment of my encountering the American social system, it seemed, I had been by way of becoming a rabid anarchist—that is, one feeling that he might become a gentleman regardless of his birth—and here were the disconcerting facts concerning a score of notables to confirm me in my heresy. ”

“ The Anarchist worships at the shrine of Liberty. Liberty is his goddess, and his only diety, in theory at least. He rejects all laws imposed on him from without, and respects only such laws as he himself ordains. ”

“ On conviction the Anarchist was marked, by an indelible brand in a painless manner, with a red O in sign of outlawry, and received his sentence of banishment—and in this way some thousands of the disaffected and idle were at once removed from our shores. ”

“ Similarly, the anarchist leaders assert that in anarchy no forces are lost, and that the manifestations which are, in appearance, the most foolhardy and shocking may have, equally with those which are, in appearance, the most reasonable, the saving merit of compelling the thoughtless world to think. ”

“ At the very dawn of the Anarchist theory, at the very first innocent actions of its partisans, there was such stern repression, the police so grossly ill-treating the poor devils that fell into its hands, that little by little came anger and rage leading to the most horrible reprisals. ”

“ The great objection behind which the adversaries of anarchy intrench themselves when driven into their last redoubts is this, that the anarchist ideal is beautiful, certainly, but much too beautiful ever to be realised, since humanity will never be well-behaved enough to attain it. ”

“ The Anarchist literature has not a determined origin, being not the expression of a system invented and progressively elaborated, but the negation of all systems, produced by the desire to batter down the despotic in all its forms, the rules and duty imposed by prejudice or by force, and to give impulse to the free development of human116ity. ”

“ All these measures were mere preliminaries to the final one of blossoming forth as a declared Anarchist. It is from the ranks of Socialism that Anarchism draws its recruits. Though the two theories are utterly opposed, they express the same discontent with civilisation. An Anarchist is little more than a Socialist who has gone out of his mind. ”

“ To be an anarchist is to deny authority and reject its economic corollary: exploitation — and that in all the domains where human activity is exerted. The anarchist wishes to live without gods or masters ”

“ Organization into families may answer to a need of human nature, but in the last instance it is based on law, and therefore must be something odious and impossible to an anarchist. But, indeed, I don’t understand anarchists. Does a man of that—of that—persuasion still remain an anarchist when alone, quite alone and going to bed, for instance? Does he lay his head on the pillow, pull his bedclothes over him, and go to sleep with the necessity of the chambardement general, as the French slang has it, of the general blow-up, always present to his mind? ”

“ Bors nodded slowly. "It's true the anarchist can't coordinate. The League can't organize. It's a paradox. Government by anarchists. Anti-government, actually. Instead of governing the world they tramp around to make sure no one else does." ”

“ Some day—and I greatly fear that day is not very far distant—some professional anarchist (for there are professional anarchists as well as professional thieves) will consider the time ripe for rebellion, and, raising the fraudulent cry of “Labor against Capital!” instead of his legitimate cry of “Rapine! Murder! Booty!” will lead this army of degenerates, composed of anarchists, nihilists, sexual perverts, and congenital criminals, against society. And who will bear the brunt of this savage irruption? The ultra-rich? ”

“ When we speak of the “anarchist” we mean to designate by that name a human being who is in a general way the enemy of all that exists, and who seeks to overthrow it by any means, however criminal and atrocious, but who has never been able to give an account in the slightest degree intelligible of the kind of society he thinks of putting in the place of that which he wants to destroy. ”

“ And I can tell you an anarchist isn't what you'd call a playboy. Anarchism isn't a bit like your futile old League. It doesn't go about the country making speeches and pretending it's going to boycott people that it hasn't the least notion of doing any harm to. A genuine anarchist, a man like the Field Marshal, for instance, doesn't say a word to anybody, but just goes quietly and blows up a town."
"I'll not have you speaking against the League, doctor. ”

“ Anarchism is still looked upon as propaganda on behalf of outrage, although its advocates now incline above all to favour strikes, and notably the general strike, as the instrument of anarchist revolution. The more consistent among the anarchists favour individual outrage in the most rigid sense of the term, contending that the deed must not be planned by the anarchist group, but must be the purely spontaneous act of an individual. ”

“ When we look into the origin of the Anarchist conception of society, we see that it has had a double origin: the criticism, on the one side, of the hierarchical organisations and the authoritarian conceptions of society; and on the other side, the analysis of the tendencies that are seen in the progressive movements of mankind, both in the past, and still more so at the present time. ”

“ So that the Anarchist idea, forced to reply to everything, was obliged to attack all social prejudices, to become thoroughly penetrated by all human knowledge, in order to demonstrate that its conceptions were in harmony with the physiological and psychological nature of man, and in harmony with the observance of natural laws, while our actual organisation has been established in contravention of all logic and all good sense. ”

“ There are striking relationships between anarchism and the so-called decadent movement. We see this in Nietzsche and in such poets as Tailhade. It is natural that anarchist ideals and methods, crime above all, should serve as a stimulant to weary souls. ”

“ By education, by free organisation, by individual and associated resistance to political and economic tyranny, the Anarchist hopes to achieve his aim. The task may seem impossible to many, but it should be remembered that in science, in literature, in art, the highest minds are with the Anarchists or are imbued with distinct Anarchist tendencies. Even our bitterest opponents admit the beauty of our "dream," and reluctantly confess that it would be well for humanity if it were "possible." ”