Most of you are familiar with Ed Abbey’s support of monkeywrenching from his published works as expressed in the exploits of his characters. You also may know that he was a proponent of anarchism as a political philosophy and anarchy as a form of social organization.
I am not Ed Abbey. I may not even be George Washington Hayduke (sometimes it gets a bit confusing). I am an anarchist, in action and in thought. My life is dedicated to bringing an end to capitalism as an economic system and to bringing down the corporate oligarchy that rules the United States, in the guise of democracy, and much of the rest of the world through economic domination and subjugation.
The corporate oligarchy is all powerful in this very real world. Trans-national corporations control almost all governments, including the government of the United States. This is not a conspiracy, the favorite pejorative of the corporate toady. It is a system of interlinking agendas that serves to bring all public discourse under its control. The sole purpose of a corporation is to make a profit and, despite the popular myth of competition, corporations cooperate to that end.
It is therefore impossible to change this system through democratic processes, since those very processes are controlled by the corporate elite. Again, this is not a conspiracy, but is a system of
information control that serves the purposes of the above-mentioned corporations. When you enter the voting booth, the important decisions have already been made for you so that it no longer matters which of the chosen candidates you grace with your approval.
However, as an anarchist with Marxist-Leninist tendencies, I know that capitalism inevitably leads to socialism in the grand scheme of things. Unfortunately, trans-national corporations with access to, and control of, temporarily unlimited cheap energy, have postponed the inevitably of the social process as they continue to lay waste to the natural world in pursuit of ever expanding profits. This is intolerable.
It is therefore my task to seek to speed up the process of capitalist collapse and replacement with decentralized anarchist socialism wherever possible. Since the current system is already in the beginning stages of decline and immenent collapse, I make it my task to find the beginnings of the cracks in the dam and concentrate my limited energies on these points of weakness.
My tools are many, including this here electronic computer. I have no compunctions against using capitalist tools against the oppressors. My purpose is to defeat and forestall the declared purpose of the corporate oligarchy, i.e. continually expanding obscene profits at the expense of the environment and the living beings that inhabit it. I do this by making sure that ecoraping is as expensive a proposition as possible.
To say that I am unpopular in some sectors of the population is an understatement. I have been photographed, videotaped, slammed to the ground, stomped on, verbally assaulted, arrested, thrown in jail with vomiting drunks, assailed in print, defamed, defiled and derided. My proudest moment was when the United States Coast Guard, prompted by the FBI, stationed a Coast Guard cutter in Prince William Sound to protect Exxon workers from “Earth First! terrorists. I have been denied access to Canada on several occasions while attempting to leave Alaska. When I had a phone, it was monitored. I am frequently visited by “maiden aunts” and “grandmothers” inquiring about my activities of late. I have generated enough government paperwork to account for a sizable grove of unfortunate trees.
As I stood on the oil-soaked shore of Montague Island, in Prince William Sound on September 15, 1989, I could only think of the words of Shakespeare, “Forgive me, thou bleeding piece of earth, that I am so gentle with these butchers.” (Sorry for the misquote, Bill, I don’t have the words in front of me) From that moment I dedicated my life to the end of corporate tyranny.
If you would like to join me and protect your corner of the world, I would be honored to share what I have learned these past seventy years. Much of what I know is in print, available in legitimate book stores. I can only offer what I have learned from personal experience.
Send a message, bang a drum, send up smoke signals and I will include you in this mailing.
Long live the weeds and the wilderness!
GWH