Why I Write Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Hate The Bomb
Lived experience apparently guides this world. It certainly guided Huey Newton to first set up his self-defence programmes, to educate himself and to put his feelings into action. It also guided him to write about all this. About his Party, his theory and about his experiences spent on the front lines against the AmeriKKKan Empire. It guided him to write “The Only Good Pig Is A Dead Pig” and “The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man”, both writings (in conjunction with his revolutionary conduct) ultimately contributing to a life cut short on the bloody streets of West Oakland, California. With his Party dismantled and his comrades dead, Huey’s writings remain his lasting legacy in today’s nostalgic times. Derrida talks about these ghosts, these spectres, that haunt the present. They are the unfulfilled promises of the past, the lost future of what could’ve been. Huey’s writings are just one such spectre, always weighing down on the radical writers of today. An untold number of outlaws and rebels have died before their time, their half-finished works remain the stories from which we piece together our world. Confronting the past remains a primary struggle for any would-be revolutionary. It is through writing about those lived experiences and connecting them with the ghosts of the past that we may solve the contradictions of the present. To not do so condemns our writing to a state of uselessness, an empty shout into the void.
My own series of writings, from scholarly essays to anti-imperialist tracts, are usually attempts at shouting into my own class. The shouts go: “Confront our whiteness, fuck Yankee Imperialism, defeat the scab mentality, beat the fascist menace etcetera etcetera.” All the hits from the 60s onwards repurposed for the modern audience. A long series of pieces with one singular goal in mind, encompassing everything from Palestine to Deliveroo strikers. The goal in question? Find a way to break Capitalist Realism and bring forth socialism. In other words, help put my class in power and stop the global shit-kicking taking place in the neo-colonies. Criticism and self-criticism remain a principled part of that struggle and therefore my writings are first and foremost critiques.
Marx called for a “ruthless criticism of all that exists” and this remains the dominant slogan that perseveres in my mind with every sentence that I jot down. I’m a natural critic on just about everything. I seemingly know fuck all about interior design, fashion or modern art yet I regularly take one mere glance at a piece and deride it as shit. Namely cos it doesn't take 5 years spent wallowing away in an Art college to realise most work today has been castrated by 50 years of neoliberal hegemony. It’s no wonder the CIA dug their abstract expressionism, meaninglessness is the modern mantra of neoliberal ideology. The privatisation of public life means the privatisation of everything, even your own apparently radical works. Maybe it’s the fact I’m some wannabe bohemian and work-shy red who has spent the last year on Universal Credit that I find more inspiration in Andreas Baader than some Oxbridge pedant. Baader’s “art” and slogans hit out at a more material reality than the art belonging to someone such as Banksy. “THE GUN SPEAKS!” hits far harder than the pompous stunts of a poser who’s each action’s only accomplishment is being blander than the last.
The buck doesn't stop at the art world though, not a fucking chance. Writers got the short straw too. Today’s works are overwhelmingly published in crude anti-communist crusader collections inhabited by every sycophantic social fascist that has crawled from out the woodwork over the last few decades. Hustlers, grifters and chancers all glow in today’s spotlight. Monotony is the order of the day; crude revisionism rules the airwaves. And the cunts wonder why there is no vanguard. They can’t even get their analysis right, what hope do they have of organising our battered communities. The answer of course is they never had any intention of doing so. They’re today’s “useful idiots” and they occupy our spaces like a fucking cancer. Their dead writing mirrors the dead social democracy they hope to resurrect. The perfect encapsulation of late stage necrocapitalism, one that presents nothing of value or use. It’s little wonder they’re so regularly promoted by the middle and upper classes, it’s hegemony plain and simple in its most boring format. The do-nothing writer is the plague of the left, one that should be combatted in every revolutionary production. My writing means to act as the opposite to the dead enders. It means to show up the current creed of the hack in red clothing and send the nihilistic trend to the dustbin of history.
Other fast and loud slogans also vie for domination in my mind. Chairman Mao says “It Is Right To Rebel!”, Võ Nguyên Giáp hoots “Crack the sky, shake the Earth”, George Jackson laments “This is it, gentlemen, the Dragon has come.” All the slogans though are directed towards one particular vision. Connect the dots, that is, your own experiences (of race, gender and class) with the comrades who came before you. Maybe then, others can connect their own lives with yours and also with the very same ghosts that haunt their minds as well as your own. My writing attempts to make sense of the queerness of my life, the class character of my speech (that follows me around no matter what space I run into) and my own participations in liberatory struggles that run alongside the global, near eternal, class conflict which is the crux of the modern neoliberal era of superprofits. My own situation, be it the way I wish to betray the Butchers Apron or the way I experience gender, is tied up with struggles globally. If my writing doesn't reflect that then I’m just another scab in a long line of scabs looking for the easy fix and grabbing the first solution offered by our own oppressors. Short term solutions presented by the hack commentariat are predicated on the continued violence of the colonial “Other”. The hope that my writing may contribute to challenging this mentality acts as my enthusiasm. I suspect this is not just true for me but many others sick to death of complacency and class collaborationism.
My writing though remains a speck of dust compared to those that struggled before me. Any writer who thinks of themselves as the next Lenin is more than likely a bullshitter. Worse yet are those that succumb to the neoliberal ideal with the first sniff of cash. Many a so-called leftist writer have turned traitor at the drop of a dime, whether it be a Guardian hit piece on the benefits of “humanely bombing a country to oblivion in the name of human rights” or a New Statesmen dog whistle article attacking our Trans comrades. Both sides offer very little to workers but achieve a great aim of the bourgeois press that the self-serving social fascists willingly sign up for. Manufacture consent pure and simple. The dull writings of dogshit deluders dominate the scene. But in the far-out spaces, way beyond the interest of the bourgeois institutions, writers of both an old and new kind are emerging. One that isn't afraid to confront the past and tackle the present whilst producing a new future.
Gramsci talks of “Organic Intellectuals”, well aware and organised members of the working class who not only analyse but actively fight against the social situation of capitalism. The writings of these sections from the working classes are among the chief inspirations for my work although a number of smaller inspirations have also made their impact upon me and my words. I say smaller, they're more personal hits from peculiar peeps who spoke to me directly (even if they didn't know it). Two people called Mathew and Rich whose online ramblings in their own respective and unconnected fields helped me discover my own queerness and break out of the mental straightjacket placed on many working-class youths living in the post-industrial, post-Fordist landscape of North East England (and the town of Bishop Auckland in particular). Through merely engaging their short works with their broader projects I found my identity and my voice. I’m immeasurably thankful and my writing seeks to reflect that thanks. It’s a love letter to them as much as it is a call for my class. The personal made political, as all writing should be.
The big hitters though remain those who wrote with a frenzy about the great stories of our time. The former lumpenproletariat turned hard boiled crime writer James Ellroy is one such demon dog, his engaging half-fiction accounts of the Red Scare, the JFK assassination, the Bay of Pigs and the Ku Klux Cop connection showcase an ability to write that I could only hope to one day come close to replicating. His depictions of sleazy liberals, Klanned up coppers and far right flunkey fanatics hit harder than any soppy moralist tales of “great men”. For there are no great men, only those who fight for their class or betray it. Class struggle is the motion that turns the cogs of history. It thus also directs all political writings, even if the author is unaware. Ellroy depicts as much a class struggle in his books as Nanni Balestrini, only his writing notes the truly dark underbelly behind American power politics instead of post-fascist Italy. Behind the smiles of media ready politicians with world class haircuts lies the white supremacist settler colonial state that murdered and enslaved entire races of peoples. Ellroy (perhaps unwittingly) uncovers that truth under the guise of crime fiction. This great unearthing remains a strong influence on yours truly.
J Sakai is another great influence. A Maoist whose investigations proved far too close to the bone for many of the utopian do-nothings. Some choice statements include:
No politician can ever be too racist to be popular in white amerikkka.
…we even find some middle-class white men claiming that they’ve “given up being white” (I can hear my grandmother saying, “More white foolishness!” with a dismissing headshake). Needless to say, they haven’t given up anything.
Why would capitalists need fascism? “Democracy” is doing the job for them full gale force — and let’s not forget that North America has at the same time become the conscience of the world lecturing everyone else on human rights. “How sweet it is!” (Guess Leonard Peltier must be a prisoner in China).
The selections all come from the mind of someone outside the academic spaces and the activist to grifter pipeline that presumes leadership over the current movements. Sakai speaks from the heart and pulls no punches and his style of analysis continues to infuriate even today. To write with such gusto, even if not 100 percent right all the time, speaks to a creative who truly wishes to confront the mass murder regimes that Capital holds sway over. His frankness and attitude come across all too well and is something every hit piece of my own seeks to reproduce.
There are of course countless others whose writings I rely upon in order to fathom my own, and my communities, social situation. The playwright Jean Genet is one whose brutal phraseology brings life to the human degradation under capitalism. His language turns shit into beauty and speaks to the talent at the heart of his craft. Edward Said achieves a similar purpose, his exquisite use of language in tandem with his analysis makes him one of the great organic intellectuals of the modern era. Perhaps most important though is the story of Basel-al Araj, a Palestinian organic intellectual in the truest sense of the phrase. A militant-scholar who meant to reengage the Palestinian resistance movement, his assassination by Israeli forces in 2017 leaves his collection of works as one more addition to the pile of unfinished revolutionary calligraphy. In spite of this, his call “…to be true, that is all. If you are true, you will be revolutionaries and resistance fighters” is an important lesson to radical writers worldwide. To even brush shoulders with such writers by engaging with their works in my own critiques is something that oversees any piece I put out.
In conclusion, I write not only for my class but for oppressed peoples the world over. Not in some opportunistic way to claim (and as many do, profit) from their struggles but as a means in which to analyse the world system that curb stomps, spits on and has desecrated communities the world over. The liberation of my class cannot occur locally, international finance has seen to that. So, my writing goes global and means to shine a light on the naked colonialism that has benefited Euro-American society. No liberation struggle goes off half-cocked and achieves nothing through half measures. My writing means to reflect that statement. In conjunction with this, through delving into history, and especially the history of our militant elders, my writing seeks to demystify an era from the gutter to the stars. A culture of McCarthyism still pervades reflections from the past and as long as it remains, we shall learn nothing and are condemned to repeat the same mistakes over and over. A truly critical reflection shall overcome this and every piece I put out has this goal in mind. Considering the boring apocalypse we currently live in, it’s the least I can do. But by connecting this critique with action, one day we may overcome our current reality. At the very least, it’s what I hope to achieve personally. I wouldn't be able to sleep if not.
A radical history of rabid pigs in Orgreave, of student mall bombers in West Berlin, of socialist hit squads in Belfast, of helmet clad working-class youth marching in Chicago and of communist fedayeen in Jerusalem are among some of the various stories of my work. All are connected, in both unity and struggle against an imperial entity with its black hearts in Washington DC and London. The awareness of this is my current mission. The future will likely present a different mission for me though if the economists are to be believed. Until then I simply write in parallel with my praxis.
“I can’t run a bank, and I can’t drive a truck, and I can’t lead a movement — but I can fuck up your mind.”— James Baldwin
