Some reflections from Bob Black

Last night, I killed some time in a hole of a coffee shop by reading Beneath the Underground by Bob Black. It fitted my strange, somewhat dark mood, and, as usual, it brought up the questions around what is an anarchist, what should anarchists do, and how anarchism can be achieved in our lifetimes. I don't think Bob Black knows either. It has to be more than sitting around and firing off crtiques of other progressive elements.

Bob Black, however, does just that and with a fair amount of bite. A real nasty junkyard dog bite, and here's a taste (which fits with an earlier post I did on Northern Researchers):

In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, some Western anarchists (myself included) are mailing their literature to their resurgent but embattled comrades in Eastern Europe. Well and good. But why not also send it, at much lesser expense, to the small towns, the totalitarian horrorshows in Utah or Orange County or the Bible Belt? We can probably do more for peace and freedom in the world right here, on our own turf, than by exporting ideology to the rest of the world which has perhaps had its fill of our imperial outreach offerings.

No perhaps about it, Bob.

His obiturary for Gerry Reith is sublime:

It was a bunch of bull and Reith, in his last letters, said so, but he'd been driven to the brink. He left a note that said, "I have to get out, or die." In the event, he died, he shot himself. Reportedly he'd toted up the pro's and con's of life and death, and finding them evenly balanced, he flipped a coin.