#Fredy Perlman

[girl-debord]

"Once the radical is thrown out, he’s no longer in the Liberal’s jurisdiction: he’s an 'outside agitator,' and a 'criminal.' The Outsider no longer 'belongs' in the Liberal’s university. Members of the Columbia SDS Chapter, for example, are now 'outside agitators'; they are 'not students' and consequently 'have no right to be on campus.' YET LAST YEAR THEY WERE STUDENTS OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY; they were thrown out by Liberals, and if they return to fight back, they’re arrested by cops."

- Fredy Perlman, I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror and Violence (published 1969)

[forbidden-sorcery]

As long as we still live and sing, we’re not doomed, we remain at least as real as it; freedom remains more than a myth, figment or literary flourish; the exterminated live on in us as our dream spirits and guides. Even if we cannot yet see the breaches in the electrically charged barbed wire; we already know that inmates found their way out of the entrails of earlier mechanical monsters, camped outside the hulks that had seemed so real, and saw the abandoned artificial carcasses collapse and decompose.

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

Well I'm back home now. Prepping to table a few shows next month, including Lagrimas and some midwest emo festival. I'm also tabling the liberal pride event and radical pride too. Last year at rad pride I got cleared out and made like 300$ in donations. Anyways, here's some rad books I racked today.

[111seedhillroad]

...every time we take a step we're surrounded by the ideological birds of prey who feed on our possibilities, feed themselves with concepts of our desires and reenslave us with beautiful combinations of words which seem to depict the world we failed to realize.

Letters of Insurgents (1976) Fredy Perlman

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

In a brief space I can only say that the part of life spent in Arbeit, the triviality of existence in a commodity market as seller or customer, worker or client, leaves an individual without kinship or community or meaning; it dehumanizes him, evacuates him; it leaves nothing inside but the trivia that make up his outside. He no longer has the centrality, the significance, the self-powers given to all their members by ancient communities that no longer exist. He doesn’t even have the phony centrality given by religions which preserved a memory of the ancient qualities while reconciling people to worlds where those qualities were absent. Even the religions have been evacuated, pared down to empty rituals whose meaning has long been lost. The gap is always there; it’s like hunger: it hurts. Yet nothing seems to fill it. Ah, but there’s something that does fill it or at least seems to; it may be sawdust and not grated cheese, but it gives the stomach the illusion that it’s been fed; it may be a total abdication of self-powers, a self-annihilation, but it creates the illusion of self-fulfillment, of reappropriation of the lost self-powers. This something is the Told Vision which can be watched on off hours, and preferably all the time. By choosing himself a Voyeur, the individual can watch everything he no longer is.

Fredy Perlman, Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom

[anarchistin]

The Liberal does not admit, even to himself, that he is a member of a group; he does not like to be called a Liberal; he does not admit, even to himself, that Liberals run other departments and other universities, that Liberals run the dominant hierarchies of American society; he does not admit that HIS POWER COMES FROM THE FACT THAT OTHER LIBERALS WILL BACK HIM UP.

Unlike the Reactionary, he does not admit that when he fires a radical he expects other Liberals to do the same. The Liberal’s 'liberalism' is an ideology which informs him that he’s an 'individual' who exists in a vacuum, and that his decision does not bind anyone else.

He denies that all Liberals are bound to one Liberal’s decision. He lies to himself: if it ever happened that a group of Liberals rehired the radical and fired the Liberal, the Liberal would shout 'We all agree that...' and 'Our basic principle is...' and 'How can we tolerate such a blatant denial of our most sacred...' — in other words, 'WE’RE ALL PLEDGED TO ACT TOGETHER'; 'WE’RE MEMBERS OF THE SAME GROUP'; 'WE’RE ALL ENGAGED IN THE SAME PROJECT' — and the project is the continued functioning of the corporate-military system.

– Fredy Perlman, I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror and Violence

[homoerotisch]

I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror and Violence

[nedfelix]

The Reactionary does not claim to be “neutral”: he’s overtly pro-Capitalist; he’s an ardent supporter of every American corporate and military bureaucracy; he’s openly fighting to maintain the power of the groups who are presently dominant, and he overtly wants to eliminate any real threats to that power. The Liberal claims to be “neutral” and “objective”; he claims that he’s NEITHER on the side of the “establishment” nor on the “other side”; he claims that he’s not on any side: he’s not in society but above it. However, to the Liberal, only the action of the corporate-military bureaucracy is “legitimate”; the action of the radical is not. And just like the Reactionary, the Liberal thinks of the action of radicals AS A THREAT, which means that the Liberal sees himself ON THE DOMINANT SIDE, the side that’s threatened. He does not recognize the provocations of the bureaucracy as provocations; only the actions of radicals are provocations. The Liberal accepts the rules of the dominant bureaucracy, and he defends those rules. He’s not “objective.” A challenge of the dominant rules is, for him, a “provocation.” The Liberal moves WITHIN THE DOMINANT BUREAUCRACY; his success comes from PLEASING THE PEOPLE WHO ARE ON TOP. The Liberal (whether professor or student) climbs WITHIN THE HIERARCHY and he wants to do so WITH A GOOD CONSCIENCE. The so-called “radical sympathies” of the Liberal are his means to maintain a good conscience while selling himself to those in power. The Liberal’s greatest fear, in fact, is to become “an outsider”; he wants to be an “insider” who is Good and Moral, Just and Objective. The Liberal rejects Imperialism, Patriotism, Racism, and even Capitalism--IN WORDS, but never in actions; and he knows the line between words and actions. Words make it possible for him to be a GOOD PERSON; action would make him an OUTSIDER. That’s why the radical is a threat to the Liberal; HE FORCES THE LIBERAL TO CHOOSE. In the face of a radical, the Liberal is forced to choose between acting on his “principles” (and therefore becoming an “outsider”), or accepting the dominant bureaucracy. The mere presence of the radical exposes the “neutrality” of the Liberal: HE CHOOSES TO ACCEPT THE DOMINANT BUREAUCRACY. The Liberal does not see himself as a dehumanized factor in a bureaucratic structure: his existence as a human being and his position in the hierarchy are the same to him. THAT’S WHY he cannot identify with the radical. For the radical, the provocations of the bureaucracy reach a LIMIT beyond which they’re no longer acceptable: they negate his existence as a human being and he fights to remain alive. But since the Liberal IS a slot in the hierarchy (since he IS an “associate professor,” a “director,” etc.), since he accepts himself as a slot and title in the bureaucracy, he cannot be provoked by the bureaucracy; his humanity cannot be negated by the bureaucracy BECAUSE HE NEGATES IT HIMSELF. For him there’s also a limit: this limit is reached when an “outsider” threatens the bureaucracy.

I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror and Violence, Fredy Perlman

[nando161mando]

'The Liberal rejects Imperialism, Patriotism, Racism, and even Capitalism–in words, but never in actions; and he knows the line between words and actions. Words make it possible for him to be a good person; action would make him an outsider.

That’s why the radical is a threat to the Liberal; he forces the liberal to choose. In the face of a radical, the Liberal is forced to choose between acting on his “principles” (and therefore becoming an “outsider”), or accepting the dominant bureaucracy. The mere presence of the radical exposes the “neutrality” of the Liberal: he chooses to accept the dominant bureaucracy.'

– Fredy Perlman, I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror and Violence, 1969

[girl-debord]

"The Liberal claims to be 'neutral' and 'objective'; he claims that he’s NEITHER on the side of the 'establishment' nor on the 'other side'; he claims that he’s not on any side: he’s not in society but above it.

However, to the Liberal, only the action of the corporate-military bureaucracy is 'legitimate'; the action of the radical is not. And just like the Reactionary, the Liberal thinks of the action of radicals AS A THREAT, which means that the Liberal sees himself ON THE DOMINANT SIDE, the side that’s threatened. He does not recognize the provocations of the bureaucracy as provocations; only the actions of radicals are provocations. The Liberal accepts the rules of the dominant bureaucracy, and he defends those rules. He’s not 'objective.' A challenge of the dominant rules is, for him, a 'provocation.'"

- Fredy Perlman, I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror and Violence

[forbidden-sorcery]

The footprints of the national armies are the traces of the march of progress. These patriotic armies were, and still are, the seventh wonder of the world. In them, the wolf lay alongside the lamb, the spider alongside the fly. In them, exploited workers were the chums of exploiters, indebted peasants the chums of creditors, suckers the chums of hustlers in a companionship stimulated not by love but by hatred — hatred of potential sources of preliminary capital designated as unbelievers, savages, inferior races. Human communities as variegated in their ways and beliefs as birds are in feathers were invaded, despoiled and at last exterminated beyond imagination’s grasp. The clothes and artifacts of the vanished communities were gathered up as trophies and displayed in museums as additional traces of the march of progress; the extinct beliefs and ways became the curiosities of yet another of the invaders’ many sciences. The expropriated fields, forests and animals were garnered as bonanzas, as preliminary capital, as the precondition for the production process that was to turn the fields into farms, the trees into lumber, the animals into hats, the minerals into munitions, the human survivors into cheap labor. Genocide was, and still is, the precondition, the cornerstone and ground work of the military-industrial complexes, of the processed environments, of the worlds of offices and parking lots. Nationalism was so perfectly suited to its double task, the domestication of workers and the despoliation of aliens, that it appealed to everyone — everyone, that is, who wielded or aspired to wield a portion of capital.

Fredy Perlman - The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism

[midnightcowboy1969]

I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror and Violence (1969) by Fredy Perlman

[111seedhillroad]

every anarchist should read Letters of Insurgents. also just like fiction in general. theory is all just stupid stories anyways, pick up something with emotional teeth to rip your worldview to shreds.

[daloy-politsey]

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

Escape from death in a gas chamber or a Pogrom, or incarceration in a concentration camp, may give a thoughtful and capable writer, Solzhenitsyn for example, profound insights into many of the central elements of contemporary existence, but such an experience does not, in itself, make Solzhenitsyn a thinker, a writer, or even a critic of concentration camps; it does not, in itself, confer any special powers. In another person the experience might lie dormant as a potentiality, or remain forever meaningless, or it might contribute to making the person an ogre. In short, the experience is an indelible part of the individual’s past but it does not determine his future; the individual is free to choose his future; he is even free to choose to abolish his freedom, in which case he chooses in bad faith and is a Salaud (J.P. Sartre’s precise philosophical term for a person who makes such a choice [The usual English translation is ‘Bastard’])... People who don’t understand human freedom might think the terrible revelations could have only one effect, they could only turn people against the perpetrators of such atrocities, they could only make people empathize with the victims, they could only contribute to a resolve to abolish the very possibility of a repeat of such dehumanizing persecution and cold-blooded murder. But, for better or worse, such experiences, whether personally lived or learned from revelations, are nothing but the field over which human freedom soars like a bird of prey.

Fredy Perlman, Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom

[edwordsmyth]

Fredy Perlman