WILDFIRE: TOWARD ANONYMOUS WAR ON CIVILIZATION
T
he search for tools with which to make war on society is a central element of struggle. History, theory, analysis, propaganda: all vital to the spread and sharpening of revolt. However, as with all weapons, each of these can turned against us; each of these we can turn against ourselves. Academia recuperates radical historical research and theorizing, stripping it of its teeth and its relation to practices of attack. As anarchists become more concerned with the aesthetics of revolt (and their own careers as the avant-garde of capitalist cultural production) than with counter-information and generalization of subversive ideas, propaganda becomes indistinguishable from advertising. Artists draw from images of insurgency, captured moments which suffocate and die in the sterility of the gallery. Academia, advertising, the fashion industry, and the art world all operate vampirically, draining revolt of its purpose, its beauty, its joy. Those who engage with the word must be conscious of this, attempting to navigate away from and against recuperation, even as we use the enemy’s language. With this as our context, why design and distribute a publication about Direct Action and the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade? Certainly, when researching and drawing attention to any identifiable tendency or group, we run the risk of creating another historical spectacle to wonder at, or another “radical” commodity to consume, all as we continue to stay our hand in our daily lives. This risk is multiplied if the subject is far enough in the past, or closely enough related to an already recuperated cultural milieu, that its charge can be defused by nostalgia. One need only look at the Weather Underground, with its spectacular actions and relation to hippie youth culture, to see how revolutionary action can be effectively turned into an artifact. Direct Action and the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade certainly fit these parameters: their attacks were spectacular, and most members of the group were tied to the punk scene, a subculture that has been wholly subsumed by commodity culture. Despite this, it would be a victory for the careerist parasites to allow a group which in many ways acts as a forebearer to contemporary anti-civilizational struggle to be reduced to an historical or cultural museum piece. Rather than simply present these texts as they are, I hope to engage with them critically, with fervor, and always with an eye towards refining the daily practices of attack and subversion. 60
