Rise Issue 2

RISE FANZINE #2 Wow, this issue has taken a long time to come out. Granted, I have been thinking about it, kind of working on it, then scrapping what I’ve been working on, then starting again... and so it goes on. Regardless, here it is; issue 2 of RISE. RISE has largely had a web-based focus over the last few years, mostly focusing on interviews, news and sharing things about hardcore music and hardcore culture. I believe that hardcore is supposed to make you think. It is supposed to surround you with other people who give a shit about things, who have something to say, and who are angry, passionate, or feel a need for healthy release. It is supposed to be a foundation from which thought is sparked, and then acted on to change things; not for the sake of it, but to make things better. That is just my humble opinion though. From the first time I ever heard punk, before I even hit double figures in age, it was the lyrical content and message that grabbed me. The ideas contained within those messages e.g. non-conformity, DIY, human rights, radical politics etc. opened my mind and ultimately, I guess, began the shaping of the way that I currently think about the world. This naturally led me to become more interested in ‘alternative’ ideas, and my ears began pricking up at concepts like feminism, animal rights and liberation, ecology, and other progressive concepts. I guess I just never saw punk as a party or background noise to fuel my angst.

Moving on...

The focus of RISE is going to change. I feel that you can become lost in “news”. By this I mean: the process of getting a story up on your site first, having “exclusive” content, or being in competition with other fanzines, blogs or websites. It is just too much for me. I am shifting focus; RISE is going to be filled with more ideas than words, more essays than interviews, and more thought provocation than entertainment. Hopefully, some people will be offended. Hopefully at least one of your world views will be challenged. Don‘t get me wrong, I am not out to offend, provoke or start fights (as some may already believe), but simply to spread ideas that I believe have the potential to make this world a better place to live in, for all sexes, genders, races, age groups, and species.

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed compiling and editing it. This is the second and possibly the last physical fanzine for RISE, as I just don’t think I have the time to do a consistent fanzine justice.

Your friend, Pete

CONTENTS Page 4:

Not Just Boys’ Fun by Robyn Windsor

Page 8:

Top 10 with Rouleaux from Roastin’ Records

Page 9:

Photo by Tyrone James Ping

Page 10:

Feed the Others by Ali

Page 12:

Wolf Down Interview

Page 22:

Faces of Meth The Pit by Tom Mcwilliam

Page 24:

Conqueror Interview

Page 28:

Listen to This

Page 30:

Wasted Indeed by CrimethInc

Page 35:

Total Liberation

Page 36:

Veganarchy; An Interview

Page 44:

Expire ‘Pretty Low’ Album Review

Page 45:

Conqueror ‘Life on Repeat’ Album Review

Page 46:

my kind by Anonymous

Page 46:

The Good Stuff

rise.hxc.co.za / risehxc@yahoo.com / FB: RISEHXC / T: @RISE_HXC

Blind leading the blind obeying by tradition Veer away all you need is volition - Wolf x Down

not just boys’ fun by robyn windsor When I was rather small, although being a girl, my interests leaned towards all things “for boys”. For example, I never ever owned a Barbie, or anything even remotely related to that of a princess nature. Not everyone quite understood this because, well, I was a girl. I remember one Christmas, two family members (bless their cotton socks) decided to buy me a Barbie, probably in hopes I would “come around”. I remember smiling and saying thank you and all that, whilst thinking “What in god’s name am I supposed to do with this thing? Her accessories include a handbag and a brush“. Needless to say, I have no idea what ever happened to old Barbie, as that was the first and last time I touched the box I never took her out of. I was still confused nonetheless as to why they bought me that hideous thing when they knew “how I was”. I mean, I loved Street Sharks and Beast Wars, Bart Simpson, Lego, Ninja Turtles, and Judge Dread. I hailed Action Man as the king of all things badass, I dressed up as either Michael Jackson or as a clown (I’m not sure why) for any party that required a costume, I played soccer and I won’t even get started on Biker Mice.

these things made sense to me As I got older, I was criticized a lot for being the way I was. I remember my sister’s friend asking me once if I “was going to have a sex change when I was older” and laughing at me. My mom owned a hair salon and some of her clients were “very concerned” and asked my mom if she wasn’t worried that I was going to turn out gay (as if that was a bad thing. As if any of these things were bad.)

I became very aware that the way I was wasn’t what people would call “normal”, and it bugged me. I was young and didn’t know any better and it scared me. I didn’t want to be something that was rejected by our oh so ‘normal’ society.

Despite feeling pressured on a daily basis to hand over my natural traits for those of a more feminine nature, I simply couldn’t because it was really counter intuitive to behave any other way, because this was what I was like naturally. I could not understand the motivation behind acting and liking things that you should like as opposed to liking them because you just bloody well do. But succumbing to those pressures and not being yourself is just ludacris and it is not always easy especially for young kids who are surrounded by these pressures. Kids can be goddamn ruthless. If I had a Rand for every time I was asked this exact question “When are you going to start dressing like a girl?” I would have quite a few bucks hey.

I absolutely loathe the way people treat each other today, most of the time without even knowing it. Although things have changed, it’s still very prevalent in our society today, for girls as well as guys. It’s still very apparent. Guys must be big and strong, and carry everything for the girl (If I can carry it I will, as I am not a baby), girls must cook and clean, guys should be exceptional handy men and MUST be the bread winner (how embarrassing if the female was!

Can you imagine?! Sis!), guys need to be the prince from all the Disney movies and woo her until she pukes butterflies and shits a rainbow, and it must be a relationship between a male and a female. We both need our careers to be set in stone at the age of 25 with a ring on our finger and a baby or two on our lap in our house we can’t afford.

I am definitely not judging people’s life choices if they resemble the above (I am the product of the lifestyle mentioned above), if your lifestyle makes sense to you and truly makes you happy then that is awesome, but do it for that reason, not because it’s what you should do. That is all. Make art because you love it, not because the idea of being thought of as an artist is pretty darn cool. Get married because you truly love the person and would rather spend an entire day fighting with them rather than not spending it with them at all, not because it’s what you should be doing at your age.

Do things because you love it and it makes sense to you, not for the likes and the Noddy badges.

and if you’re only young once and these days they move so fast why would you waste one second of them falling in line following rules?

- bane

photo by robyn windsor

ALL THINGS PUNK AND HARDCORE CDS / DVDS / VINYL / BOOKS / ZINES WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/MINORITYRECS

MINORITYRECS@GMAIL.COM JHB, SOUTH AFRICA

Top 10 with Rouleaux from Roastin’ Records This is a pic of me with some of my favorite LPs. I decided to show a collection of classics that have made a big impact on my musical taste. These are albums that I keep coming back to and I listen to them regularly.

Minutemen ‘Double Nickels on the Dime’:

Ceremony ‘Ronhert Park’:

Bad Religion ‘Stranger Minor Threat ‘Out of Than Fiction’: Step’:

An unconventional bunch of songs that make up the most incredible album.

Minutemen stays on point throughout.

This album captures the feeling of suburban hate and lazy rebellion.

Gatvol of everything and everyone.

Fast paced straight up punk that got me into this kind of music in 1994. The best part of my discovery of Bad Religion was that I learned how to use a dictionary properly.

Hooray for me!

Discharge ‘Hear Cro-Mags ‘The Age of Nothing, See Quarrel’: Nothing, Say I love this album Nothing’: because it still sounds dangerous every time I listen to it.

Unrelenting fast and furious hardcore punk from the d-beat pioneers. It's dark and it's different.

Germs ‘GI’: Kills 99.9% of all known germs.

Fugazi ‘7 songs’:

An album/ep for out of step misfits that is always relevant. You can never listen to this enough.

This band is what music obsession is about for me. So many great interesting musical moments. FU-FUCKIN-GAZI have never written a bad song. Ever.

Hüsker Dü ‘Zen Arcade’:

Descendents ‘I Don't

Listen loud and over and Want to Grow Up’: I don't want to grow up. over again. It sounds abrasive, but before you know it, you get so into the story the album tells, that you have to sit through it once more.

Photo: Tyrone James Ping

Feed The Others

by Ali

Urban Gardening, or Urban Agriculture, has in the last few years become something of a trendy topic within a variety of social circles. For young and privileged hipster types it could be seen as a fashionable pastime. For academics and those concerned about food security, Urban Gardening is often seen as a solution to the recent global food crises and a way to improve the resilience of cities to such shocks, which are likely to become increasingly frequent in the face of climate change. In addition, Urban Gardening offers a way to reconnect to our natural surroundings and take back some personal control in our predominantly corporate food system.

Recently I have been researching agriculture within Cape Town and whether it offers any alternatives to neoliberal capitalist development: the ideology that dominates South Africa and much of the world today. During my research I became somewhat disheartened to find that many of the agricultural projects here are led by non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The result of this is that much of the agriculture taking place within Cape Town is characterised by a top-down approach, with organisations thinking mostly inside the box and sometimes seeming to blame the victim by suggesting that poverty comes from a lack of will or a bad “mindset”.

Over time however I began to see more of the complexities of the situation and the alternative viewpoints around agriculture in Cape Town. The final interview of my research was with Tysia Nabanye, which means “feed the others” in Xhosa. The Tysia Nabanye project describes itself as a “a comprehensive working model of sustainable farming and design for the local community.” Tysia Nabanye is tucked away on the slopes of Signal Hill and is part of an almost 20-year-old squatted community. Given the painfully slow progress of land reform in South Africa, this project could be considered part of a movement to do “land reform from below” by using occupations as a strategy. The project has only been in existence since September 2013, but when I visited in February it was flourishing with a wide range of crops and aesthetically beautiful; all of which has been achieved with virtually no support. For me this was one of the most inspiring projects I came across in Cape Town and it gave me a lot of hope about the possibilities linked to Urban Agriculture. In hoping to spread some of this inspiration, here is part of the interview I conducted with Mzukisi, Vuyolwethu, Unathi and Masixole from Tyisa Nabanye: So this is a Permaculture project, what does Permaculture mean?

Permaculture is a design strategy that mimics nature into the garden and it uses natural resources, convenient technology, people and animals and plants in order to create and enhance the ecosystem.

What’s the most important aspect of this project?

We want to take initiative, work with the land, provide food for ourselves and inspire other young people to do the same.

What visions do you have for this project in the future?

We would like to have like fruit trees and like abundance in terms of food and just to enhance this place. Like getting rid of alien plants and plant more indigenous kind of trees and shrubs, that are suited for this environment. And hopefully get the rest of the community members who are also squatting here to be involved in the future hopefully.

Are the other residents here interested so far?

They like it. They are inspired because after we’ve started this some of them have started their own gardens but I suppose they are busy with their own lives. They don’t really have the time to be involved like we are, but they are liking it, they are interested and they have been inspired by it.

What’s the political situation like in agriculture right now?

At the moment they are trying to support some subsistence farmers but it’s more focused on big industrial farming, which supports the idea that food is a commodity, when it should be the other way around. Every community should have gardens so that they don’t depend on buying food so that they can eat.

What do you think the City Of Cape Town has as a focus in terms of development?

Their focus of development is based on capitalism I can say, but there are small moves into like eco stuff, like the green movement and but it’s kind of slow, like everything is focused on like big corporate companies. And the infrastructure is mostly not friendly for poorer people it’s always up-market.

What do you think the main problems are for people who want to do farming?

The main problem is land; acquiring land and getting like start up capital. Also, the lack of inspiration because, although it’s now becoming popular and gardening is a cool thing to do, it’s still in it’s infancy.

And what are the main problems you face?

The main problem is that we don’t own the land. We’re sort of here illegally. The other problem would be that we are not being funded at the moment. We’ve sort of become resourceful; we use whatever we have.

What role do you think smallholder farmers have in the development of Cape Town?

I think it would be to inspire the people you know to start these initiatives, because we have a big problem of poverty, so if people start planting their own food, they could generate income and they could also feed themselves. If the small farmers who are doing it can be models of that working, other people will see that this thing works, and they can get inspired.

Do you think there are enough interventions from NGOs to fight poverty?

They are trying to an extent yes, but not on a big scale. I think the challenge is what you said earlier; that this kind of development is focused on capital. I think that’s also one of the big challenges.

So, what do you think, instead of capitalism, is the alternative we need to look for?

Well to be more social, because if we are social then we can reduce poverty because people would start these initiatives and start bartering, trading and sharing, you know, and sustaining themselves. And you know when you hungry you can’t even think properly; you do foolish things. At least if you can have something to eat then you can start thinking better.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

With the farm we would like more exposure with people. We have like a Facebook page and we have a website, but it’s still in the process of being built.

So you want people to know about it and come see the project?

To come see the project and we would like support as well in terms of resources and money if possibly but mostly resources to take it further. And in Cape Town, as I was saying, I would like to see the small farmers and the social groups getting bigger and interacting together and just making it beautiful.

The Tysia Nabanye farm can be found on Erf 81, Military Road, their facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/tyisanabanye/, where you can find regular updates. Be sure to visit and support these guys in what ever way you can.

Wolf Down, in my opinion, are one of the most important hardcore bands around today. Say what you will, but they are one of the only bands who are talking about things that actually matter. We caught up with their guitarist Tobi...

Where did the name 'Wolf Down' come from?

Our band name is a reference to the logic of modern society, with all the negative impacts it has on our planet. To “wolf down” means to devour something very hastily. We’re living in an age of abundance, disposability and blind consumerism and it’s becoming clearer than ever that our way of living is far from reaching the proclaimed “sustainability”. Care to remember what happened with that huge oil spill? Everybody forgot about it and we go on just like before. The catastrophe of Fukushima is probably not as present as it should be anymore either. In general, the topic of earth exploitation and destruction can be found in our lyrics and is a central matter of our band.

What do each of you do outside the band? Are any of you involved with any organizations or anything?

The others are trying to make ends meet by doing

smaller jobs. I, for my part, am still a student. You could say that our lives are revolving around the band though.

We all need to sacrifice a substantial part of our daily life to keep the band thing going. To me, it’s still a big honor to be able to tour other countries with some great people by my side, make new friends and see a thriving scene all over the world. I’ll never take that for granted.

When you come home from tour, which I just did (we toured Asia for the last weeks), it’s always kind of a letdown to fall back into your habitual environment with all these new experiences in the back of your head and it just makes you wanna leave as soon as possible (D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S.). So I guess I just try to bridge the time best possible, while trying not to turn into a complete dropout, until we leave for the next tour. For the others it’s no different I suppose. I myself like to read a lot of books, eat good vegan food, spend time in nature, hang out with friends and catch up with local politics. As far as organizations are concerned, some of us are involved in local political groups, but no formal ones or anything. Tommy used to be some kind of biggie in the regional Sea Shepherd organisation, but after discovering the flaws in their activities, he decided to part ways with them.

Why use hardcore to spread your message? What does hardcore mean to you?

Hardcore has always been a way to express your rage about things that happen in the so-called “outside world”; to put all that shit into words and turn it into a message that can be delivered to an audience. The straight edge bands of the early days tried to spice the angry, loud and fast punk music up with content that goes beyond the nihilistic “no future” kinda attitude.

They challenged the kids to rather turn their hate into something productive instead of merely being destructive and self-harming. That’s why I guess hardcore is the most adequate form of musical expression for our perspective. We think that positive things can spring from negative emotions. In the present capitalist pile of shit we’re living in, there are enough reasons to be angry. All it takes is a way to canalize your anger. And I don’t agree with that pacifistic hippie bullshit kinda view that suggests for the sake of the matter. it is better to present it in an unagitated, calm way to prevent people from getting offended. I’m gonna quote the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison here: “I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice.

On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man who’s house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch. AND I WILL BE HEARD.” I do think that this is a very “hardcore” thing to say.

Political protest is supposed to be inconvenient and thus should spark discussion. Above all, in the respect of animal rights. it’s a matter of life and death for non-humyn beings, therefore I consider hardcore punk as a very suitable form of articulation. I want our music to be the spark that puts hearts on fire. Direct action is the word; if something mispleases you, be outspoken about it and try to change it.

To return to the second question: We had a short summary in our “Bring Back the Politics” split with True Valiance from the UK. I will use this to clarify what we consider as “hardcore”: “Hardcore: our community, a movement of the black sheep, a place we call our own, where we feel at home and make our own decisions. Not

just a place that we create by ourselves and where we feel safe, but also our approach to improve it. Our counter-model to mainstream society, not a copy or a cheap recreation of the latter. Let’s not be modest and just call it a shelter for the outcast. What we create is a manifestation of our discontent. We don’t need to hide, we want change and that’s what counts. Think for yourself, act for yourself, act together, communicate, reach hands, open hearts, break down the walls, don’t build them... that’s what this is about. Music is only the clearest expression of our vital culture. We are solidarity, open-minded and positively aggressive. Angry at those who shut up and close their eyes. Together we’ll make the difference. So don’t be gullible, question everything and be aware! Against the odds, we’re the seeds of the new world to come! Always more than music.“

ALWAYS MORE THAN MUSIC Thinking about what hardcore means to me nowadays, I had a flashback to our tour in South East Asia. I experienced the hardcore scene to be pretty pure and honest over there, most of all in Malaysia and Singapore or the Philippines. People were really caring. The shows were overflowing with passion. You could tell that hardcore really means a lot to these people and it moves them like nothing else in the world. When we played in Manila/Philippines and kids were going crazy to our songs, I closed my eyes for a few seconds and thought “Yeah, this is totally where I wanna be”. It made me happy to see the people having so much fun and that’s how it’s supposed to be. I wish people in the more or less “oversupplied” hardcore scenes like the one in Europe would cherish what they have as much as those kids did. My opinion on hardcore is pretty torn. Everytime I just came home from tour, having seen all those cities in different countries and having met all those wonderful people who share my view of politics and life in general, I know in the back of my head that the hardcore scene harbors these kind of people all over the planet and it still ignites a glimmer of hope in the hardcore scene within me. Festivals such as Fluff Fest in the Czech Republic or Ieperfest in Belgium seem like a community of mostly like-minded people to me. Then again, when I set my focus more on political structures and thus get enough distance for a critical view on the hardcore scene, I get disappointed pretty often. It’s just not enough for me, to see hardcore merely as a self purpose.

Just living from one show to the next, always sporting the latest trendy shirts, is too trivial for a purpose in life to me. Maybe hardcore has never even been as political as I want to see it through my romantic, rose-tinted glasses. The time in which hardcore was most offensively-minded, the vegan straight edge culture of the 90s, gave birth to disgusting tendencies such as the hardline movement with all that pro-life shit.

Maybe on the one side the idea of direct action was directly linked to bands, which may even have inspired people to take action, but on the other side people were judged because of their sexuality. Anyways, I think we can learn a thing or two from any kind of hardcore movement. I draw a positive individualism and the general questioning of societal norms from the DC-Hardcore such as Minor Threat or 7 Seconds, the idea of solidarity and sticking together from Youth Crew such as DYS and from the aforementioned 90s metalcore such as Chokehold I draw a deep social criticism, which necessarily must lead to activism. There are points of criticism to be found in any of those movements, without any doubt. I wish for young hardcore kids to chose the best elements of each and build their own philosophy from it. That’s where I see a potential in hardcore. I guess there is, or should be, some kind of fundamental consensus. For example, that there’s no place for neo-nazis and fascists within the scene. It would be awesome if kids could get into more profound politics through hardcore. At this point, I can suggest the books of Gabriel Kuhn, who deals with hardcore and anarchist practice. The bottom line is: Get educated, get organized, get active! “Take care of each other so you can be dangerous together”. Form an affinity action group with your friends and kick some ass.

Are all of you Straight Edge and Vegan? Do you think that this is an important element to Wolf Down as a band?

Yes, all members of Wolf Down are vegan and straight edge and yes, it certainly is an important element. That’s why we openly use the term “vegan straight edge” to describe our band. We’ve heard people say that it’s stupid to label music to that extent or ask us something

like “Since when do you label music according to your eating habits?”, but I guess these people have no clue that we’re definitely not the first band to use this term.

The tradition of vegan straight edge bands goes back to the early 90s and despite all the stupid shit that has evolved within the hardline part of vegan straight edge such as the religious, homophobe, pro-life elements or overly militaristic fetishism of violence, we think we have some things in common with vegan straight edge bands like Gather, Seven Generations or Chokehold. We share ideas of a struggle for total liberation. We are a pro-feminist, anti-fascist, anti-sexist and anarchist band that stands solidary with the LGBTQ community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) and of course intersex people, too (I’m currently doing a paper on the latter for university. All I can say is, it’s very interesting.).

Veganism and the straight edge are simply tools for us to reach that goal of total liberation. And here’s why: If you‘ve ever read the CrimethInc pamphlet called “Wasted Indeed” or the book “Sober Living For The Revolution”, you will get our idea of straight edge as part of a political struggle. While we would never force anyone to quit doing alcohol or drugs, we think it’s necessary to point out the negative impacts; that the consumption of such may have on your environment, and also the benefits that come with abstaining from alcohol and drugs. On a smaller scale, straight edge challenges you to think twice, if you ever caught yourself behaving like a piece of shit when intoxicated. Sexual violence and other transgressions of limits are likely to happen under the influence. So straight edge is taking care of yourself and others. On a bigger scale, straight edge is a means to the liberation of humyn and non-humyn animals and springs from an anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist perspective. I won’t let society dictate me how to have fun and I just can’t get how harming my body and numbing my senses is supposed to be normal. I won’t play no part in this society of blind and passive consumers, won’t be another well-functioning cogwheel in this despicable machinery. I challenge you to have a thought about how the capitalist system maybe even needs its participants to get intoxicated on weekends,

for them to be able to function properly at work during the weekdays. Despite everything, straight edge should always be part of continuous self-reflection. You’re not the brightest bulb in the box just because you live sober.

That alone doesn’t make you any better than anyone else. A sober asshole is still an asshole, and of course, the straight edge scene is not immune to the problems of the “outside world”: arrogance, superficiality, macho behavior, consumerism, homophobia, sexism and patriarchal structures. Nevertheless, I regard straight edge as an attempt to do better; at least it should be.

Full consciousness anywhere at any time is just of great value to me. I feel it brings a lot of advantages for the political struggle, too. And in a world in which it’s considered “cool” for young people to get super wasted and experiment on all kinds of drugs, I think pointing out alternatives is a good thing. For further information I really recommend reading the “Wasted indeed” CrimethInc pamphlet.

WE DON’T THINK REAL CHANGE IS TO COME FROM SIMPLY BOYCOTTING PRODUCTS AND SHARING YOUR FAVORITE RAW FOOD RECIPES. Going back to what I said about the struggle for total liberation, I always thought that straight edge was inextricably linked to veganism. Veganism to us is not just a diet, as declared by lifestyle vegans that see it merely as a way to stay healthy. It’s a conscious ethical decision of causing the least suffering and harm done to the planet and its inhabitants, just as straight edge is to us. Thus, we don’t feel that veganism is “giving up your favorite products and food”, as meat-eaters like to put it into questions: “Don’t you miss XY?”. No and no. No, because there’s just about every delicious meal in a tasty cruelty-free vegan version and no, because there’s just no other way. It’s not a choice that is open to anyone. You’re not free to choose if you wanna hold yourself a slave or not, are you? So why do we think it’s everyone’s personal decision to exploit, torture and murder animals? Despite all this, veganism is a means, not an end. We don’t think real change is to come from simply boycotting products and sharing your favorite raw food recipes. Be honest to yourself, veganism alone is not even saving animal lives. Thus, veganism is to be used as a stepping stone only. The consensus of our society about animal exploitation will not be broken without further action. If we want to achieve animal

liberation, the animal rights movement needs to become a political and social movement just like the abolitionist one. The abolition of slavery and struggle for Black people was not won by boycotting cotton. To be successful, a movement needs a broad bandwidth of actions. And the direct actions of sabotage, property destruction and animal liberation carried out by underground ALF activists are just as vital as the clean-cut vegan on the TV talk show. So let’s raise our voices to be heard, and never forget, thousands of individuals are being tortured, mutilated and killed right this second. In a wider context, veganism to us is part of a struggle for total liberation, including not only non-humyn, but also humyn animals. Just as humiliated womyn and people of color or of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds striving for true equality, the gay couple or queer and trans people striving for acceptance, people with disabilities for support, refugees for shelter and animals for a right to live without suffering and exploitation, we all aspire to be free and healthy. Not the same, but equal. Only by exposing the commonalities in the different forms of oppression and understanding the nature of the hierarchies and the mentality of the oppressing forces towards their subjects, we can find a way to mutually improve, amend and progress in fighting back, united and strong: “Unity of oppression”. When fighting our own separate fights, we may dismantle and maybe break out the one or two specific spokes that represent our pain in the wheel that is oppression, but it won’t stop the wheel from turning, it will still continue to roll over our comrades. Thus, to achieve our goal of true and lasting liberation, we need to reach hands and make it one common struggle for liberation, to build a unity of the oppressed and break all the spokes in this seemingly everturning wheel: “So you can stay cool behind your window and choose the view you want to see. But as long as there are others held captive, do not consider yourself free.”

Most people seem to think that vegans are morally self-righteous, or argue that it is unhealthy, expensive, or simply too much effort. I'm sure that you hear things like that all the time though. How do you respond to critiques like this?

I guess I already answered this question largely in the last one. Sure, seen from the perspective of a meat-eater, veganism alone is enough of an inconvenient issue just by itself to get people pissed. That’s what they call “cognitive dissonance” in psychology: The

phenomenon that people tend to somehow alter the issue according to their needs, if it collides with their own point of view. Easy example: A guy in a bar tries to hit on a girl and gets rejected. He says to himself something like “Whatever, she was ugly anyways.” I see that same kinda logic in many discussions about veganism. Saying that, I don’t think vegans are the better persons. It‘s not some kind of “holier-than-thou” mentality that meat-eaters always wanna see in vegan people, but just the attempt to be less shitty.

Unfortunately it’s nearly impossible to live completely “cruelty-free”, but what’s there to say against living your life trying to do as least harm to others and the planet as possible? Trying, I’m gonna stress it again. Minor Threat said something pretty wise: “At least I’m fucking trying. What the fuck have you done?”

say that I surely do love vegan fast food as well and sure, veganism CAN be unhealthy too if you just feed on fries and ketchup everyday. If you eat consciously and healthy, a vegan lifestyle is definitely healthier than a omnivore one, though. There are enough studies stating how bad animal products such as meat or milk are for your body, you better check that. Listen to Dead Prez – “Be Healthy” too.

Besides that, I don’t think it should be a financial question whether to support the killing of other sentient beings or not. I’m a student myself, I don’t have a lot of money and all I can say is I’m not starving either. I’m doing pretty fine actually. Concerning the “effort” that you mentioned, there are some positive aspects that come with it too. Veganism definitely increases your awareness of what you put in your body, you learn how to cook new meals and generally become more conscious of eating. You learn to cherish a good, handcooked meal instead of mindlessly stuffing your body with fast food waste everyday. Saying that, I gotta

no authority but yourself. We despise the idea of borders, nations and governments. Sadly, the term “anarchy” or “anarchism” leaves people with a bitter taste, thanks to mainstream media propaganda which uses these words as some kind of synonym to ”chaos” or to describe a situation where the “law of the jungle” allows you to cause destruction and harm to others without any order. True anarchism is the exact opposite; it is order without rule. Another misconception is to state that “anarchy will never work”, while pointing out that the nature of mynkind is necessarily evil. Contrary to popular belief, anarchists do not have a certain final

How would you describe yourselves politically?

We are anarchists, who share the dream of a just and free society, where the individual is able to prosper and creatively unfold itself and the distribution is based on the “each according to his/her needs” principle. Thus, we strife for an abolishment of all hierarchy. We do not want to have someone decide over our lives. There should be

goal; there’s no point where our struggle for total liberation will ever achieve full satisfaction and come to a full stop. It will always stay a constant process of self-reflection and change towards emancipation. Vital to such a development is the education and selfemancipation of the people. This development, which includes minor everyday struggles as well as major struggles against reactionary anti-progressive forces in our society, we like to call the “social revolution”. In an age, where “revolution” has been turned into yet another hip marketing slogan, it’s important to point out the difference: Our call for revolution is the call for radical subversion of the current system and establishment. By this, we do not mean a violent coup d’état, where a small group of people kills its way through the government.

We mean change by society as a whole. We don’t think pacifism can get you anywhere though. Fighting the state in violent way has always been a reaction to the violence we’re exposed to every day (I recommend the essay “How nonviolence protects the state” by Peter Gelderloos). Radical subversion means abolishing the capitalist economy system of exploitation, which never “has caused” any crisis, but IS the crisis itself. It means organising the resistance against the destruction and exploitation of nature and its inhabitants, towards earth, animal and humyn liberation. Furthermore, it is breaking out from the hegemonial patriarchic order, towards a society free from hierarchy, oppression, exploitaton and exclusion. Thus, revolution is not a singular (Facebook) event, but an infinite process. The revolution is here and now. Sometimes its rumble gets louder and clearer, sometimes it’s just a promising whisper. Therefore, we will not resign, but keep fighting for a world free of domination, where there are neither masters (whether in the skies or on the ground) nor slaves. Preguntando caminamos.

PREGUNTANDO CAMINAMOS I get a strong feminist ideology coming through your lyrics and your online presence. I guess as a female-fronted band in a culture like hardcore, which is still overwhelmingly male dominated, you have to deal with remarks about that all the time. Do you think that feminism is still as important today as it always has been?

First of all I gotta stress that we don’t like the term “female-fronted”. What difference does it make anyways?

I don’t get how the gender of the person doing vocals

can be such a big issue to people. Who cares if they are male, female, queer, transgender or intersex? And sure, feminism is and will always be important, as long as hegemonic masculinity exists (I recommend “Masculinities” by R. W. Connell). Therefore, it’s just wrong to say that feminism is “about equality”. Sure, the end goal of feminism is equality, but feminism is first and foremost about liberation: from sexism, from homophobia, from white supremacy, from ableism and all other forms of oppressive thought and behavior. Without first dismantling the systems that keep us oppressed, equality is impossible. About the problems that girls face in the hardcore scene, I’m gonna quote an interview with the photographer Angela Owens: “It’s exhausting to constantly have your motives questioned. So much of hardcore is by men for men. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been physically pushed out of space, or how often I’ve been told what bands I can or cannot like because I’m female. The fact that anyone thinks they have a say in whether or not a woman has the right to be here is more infuriating than I can put into words.

Women are involved in hardcore for the same reasons as every other human. Anyone who thinks women are here “for the wrong reasons” should take a step back and think about what men in hardcore are like. You don’t get into hardcore because you’re a good looking, well-adjusted, and successful member of society. We’re all fucked up. You’re not a catch. Women are not flocking to hardcore shows to meet you. Or maybe that’s not you, maybe you are considerate and respectful. But your friends are shitheads. Call them out. Women have been a part of hardcore since day one. We’re here whether you like it or not. If you feel the need to disparage another person because their anatomy is different than yours, then you’re the one that doesn’t belong here. Every woman in hardcore deserves a gold medal for refusing to be pushed out by the bro mentality that hardcore should be safe from.”

There seems to be quite a big Neo-Nazi presence in Europe. Why do you think this is? What kind of presence do they have? What can be done about it?

How do you deal with it? etc.

The continuity of neo-nazism in Europe and most of all Germany and the ex-German states in the east can be credited to the lack of accounting for the past. After 1945, the majority of all administrative bodies and governmental institutions just kept on working with the same people filling the same positions as they did during

the Nazi regime, or they just got shifted. Most of the trials against national socialist crimes were just a big joke. In the decades since the war, the German people have always tried to hold their tongue about what happened in the past, to just make the world forget about what happened. We visited the Buchenwald concentration camp as a band some months ago and I found an adequate quote for this in the exhibition: “‘We didn’t know! We didn’t know!’ I first heard these words on a sunny afternoon in mid-April, 1945. They were repeated so often during the weeks to come, and all of us heard them with such monotonous frequency, that we came to regard them as a kind of national chant for Germany...” This kinda logic is to be found still, in the year 2014. The state obviously thinks problems with neo-nazism in society are better kept under wraps than seriously dealt with or opposed. It’s crystal clear that pretending a nazi problem doesn’t exist is very dangerous. The consequences of such a strategy can be seen in the so called Bosphorus serial murders that took place in Germany between 2000 and 2006, leaving ten people dead and one wounded, mostly ethnic Turks. The attackers called themselves National Socialist Underground (NSU). The following process of investigation revealed, in a series of scandals, how the state knew about the actions of the NSU and even had a hand in the matter themselves. Now they are trying to conceal their errors which allowed the death of 10 innocent people, killed by nazis. The anti-fascist action, an informal movement of anti-fascist people, which we consider ourselves part of, therefore is an important countercurrent, unveiling and fighting the problems with fascism and other reactionary forces in society. Never forgive, never forget. Apart from neo-nazism, the rise of the political right-wing in whole Europe is becoming another big problem. The same old idiots, now dressed in suits are now trying to get into the parliaments; wolves in sheeps clothing. Their racism is just based on a different vocabulary now. From the Belgian Vlaams Belang, to the French Front National, the Italian Lega Nord, the English UKIP, the Dutch Freedom Party, the German Alternative For Germany and many more.

Right-wing populist to radically right-wing parties are increasingly gaining ground. The so-called “New Right” is developing new patterns of argument, standard slogans such as “foreigners out” are turning into more subtle, pseudointellectual phrases, which are more likely to reach consensus, such as “People should live in their countries of origin and tradition.” Mostly, the targets of

their hate speech are immigrants and refugees. The mindset behind these new slogans is still the same old racist, völkisch-nationalistic bullshit with a new livery.

People should be aware of these new tendencies and confront those shitheads whenever possible. Sabotage their election campaigns, interfere with group/party events, make their propaganda disappear and confront them physically whenever necessary; just make them feel resistance. Their hateful message isn’t welcome anywhere. Talking about reactionary and fascist forces within society, I gotta admit that my knowledge about African history, or more specifically South African history is very limited. Unfortunately hey don’t teach it in schools here, even with all that European colonial background that many African countries have. It’d be very interesting to hear about South African politics, too!

Can you tell us more about "Free Joel"?

For a quick overview, I’m just gonna quote the international call for solidarity that the campaign #freejoel (check facebook.com/freejoel) made public: “We, anti-fascists of Stockholm, call upon the international left-wing movement to show solidarity and support to one of our imprisoned comrades. He is in jail for defending a local community-organized anti-racist demonstration in the Kärrtorp area of Stockholm against a brutal nazi-attack on the 15th of December. Locals of all sorts, including parents with their children, elderly and youth gathered in their neighbourhood to show strength against a nazi organisation that had been attacking local anti-racists and spreading nazi propaganda in schools in the area. They gathered in a peaceful protest when they were attacked by the most militant nazi group in Sweden with knives, sticks and glass bottles. Antifascists at the scene defended the local families from the attack and were injured themselves. One of the anti-fascists got arrested by the police a few days later although the anti-fascists did nothing but defend

themselves. A week later, on the 22nd of December, the largest manifestation in modern history in Sweden against racism and nazism took place in the same area.

Around 20.000 people gathered with a clear message: Nazis are not welcome in our society!“

vital to be prepared in case of arrest or other state repression. No talking to the police, no bragging in front of friends. There’s a lot of literature on that topic to be found on antifa blogs or websites (affinity group readers or whatever). Searching for appropriate comrades for an affinity action group, it’s very important to be able to So in a nutshell, Joel is in jail for self-defense. It seems trust each other completely, so you should get to know the authorities in Sweden are increasingly trying to cast each other first. Sometimes secret agents are infiltrating a cloud of state repression over anti-fascist structures, political scenes, trying to gain respect among the bringing charges against people and imprisoning activists to leverage the whole structure from within comrades. Shoutouts go to all and bring activists into jail. people engaging in the antiCaution is the highest fascist struggle against precept. When surfing the fascists, nazis, police forces internet about activist and a repressive state over causes, security and privacy there. If you wanna show are very important too: Use WITHOUT BREAKING THE LAW solidarity, writing letters to encrypted browsers such as political prisoners is always “Tor” and encrypted an option to help them get through their harsh daily messaging such as “Jabber”. Doing political actions routine behind bars. After understanding the rules which should be a process of constant self-reflection and you have to follow to be able to write them (check the self-education. Educate yourself, educate others. Each Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) website), it's easier than it one teach one. Read books and articles and give them to sounds and can be a very interesting communication, your friends. Build a network of information. Nothing’s too. So pick one and just go ahead! To strengthen our better than to be able to rely on your friends. Have self-defense you can support anti-repression discussions about politics and spend an adventurous organisations such as the ABC too. Let's bring attention night out. There’s few things that I feel as alive with as to the attacks of the state that threaten our structures feeling the wind blowing into my face in the safe dark of and fight back collectively against the criminalisation of the night, taking my life back and fighting for others. It our struggles against injustice and for freedom! Real gives you a sense of freedom, and if it’s only for those social progress rarely has been made without breaking few moments taking a swing at the oppressors. This the law. topic actually made us write our song “Loving Embrace”: “There was a time we made 5 fingers to a fist, friends What advice would you give someone who wants to who tried to change dark days for the better. We used to get involved in activist causes, but have no idea spend nights of war on the summer streets, allies who where to even begin? made a stab to break away from the fetter.”

I’d recommend you first of all check if there are local groups in your town. If there is a leftwing space, squat, What bands should we be listening to right now? political bookstore, community kitchen or whatever, just You definitely should check out Demonwomb. Good join one of their meetings and catch up with local friends playing the hardest metallic hardcore you could politics. From my own experience, it’s very easy to get to imagine. Holy from Italy are some great people doing know new people who might be interested in doing some real good dark and crusty powerviolence. This actions with you. I always thought people were very Routine Is Hell is the perfect raw soundtrack to wrecking welcoming in those structures. Of course you should yourself on the skateboard, XRepentanceX is great 90s come to terms with what kinda actions you’d like to do vegan straight edge from the UK and Forsaken are metal and how far you want to go before planning something riff masters. Apart from that listen to War Charge from further. If you want to go ahead planning actions that Scotland and Skaggs, some raw Oi-punk from Germany. might exceed the boundary of legality, I’d recommend That new Rude Awakening record is pretty heavy too. I’m you get familiar with the procedures and dangers of absolutely stoked about the new Lana Del Rey and other political actions, such as legal rallies, first. It’s looking forward to the release of the Gaslight Anthem LP.

REAL SOCIAL PROGRESS RARELY HAS BEEN MADE

Books/literature/documentaries you’d recommend?

Sure, there are too many actually haha. Some of my favourite books are George Orwell – Hommage To Catalonia and all of his other works as well obviously (1984, Animal Farm). Other great books are Sober Living For The Revolution, anything by the CrimethInc collective (Message In A Bottle, Recipes For Disaster, Evasion), Beating The Fascists – a story about antifascist action, and the writings of Gabriel Kuhn about anarchism, vegan straight edge and hardcore are strongly recommendable too. I also love Slavoj Zizek. For some classics, check out Emma Goldman and Marx. I don’t only read political literature though. I’m an absolute admirer of Oscar Wilde (read The Soul Of Man Under Socialism). He was such a genius and has the best language ever. My favourite by him is, without any question, The Picture Of Dorian Gray though. Other great reads are Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Jack Kerouac, and of course Calvin & Hobbes. Yeah. For documentaries check out Living The Utopia (about the Spanish Civil War), If A Tree Falls, Bold Native and Blackfish. Keegan of xTrue Naturex has got a movie project about the meat industry and it’s impact on the environment. It’s called Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret; keep your eyes peeled for this. If I can give you any advice on non-political things to watch, check the True Detective series. I watched the whole first season in a few days and all I can say is I’m probably addicted. That ending is like the most bloodfreezingly thrilling shit ever. Last but not least my favourite tumblr blog is ihaveseenanotherworld.tumblr.com and you can find so many good anarchist reads on theanarchistlibrary.org – incredible!

Any last words? Come visit South Africa!

Thanks for the interview, mate! And props to anyone who made it up to this point. In the age of such a short attention span that‘s truly an achievement. I’ll use my “last words” to encourage all of you to do something: start a band, write a zine, organize a show or a protest, anything. Create something and motivate others. Self-reflect and don’t let the world get you down. Welcome others with open arms and play no part in this world of walls. “I won’t freeze you out / this world is cold enough”. Show love and solidarity to those who need it and be passionate in your rage against injustice. Be aware and get involved. I dearly hope we meet somewhere along the road. And yeah, we’d love to come to South Africa. Invite us over and we’ll be there, promise! XOXO

Conqueror. Photo by Tyrone James Ping.

Since our last interview with Conqueror, you guys got signed to Genet Records! Nice one!

How did that happen? What does it mean for the band?

Thanks! I had been in contact with the guys from Ieperfest for some time, trying to work out the logistics of having us play at Europe’s premier hardcore festival. After a lot of back and forth, the guys mentioned that they also run Genet Records and would be keen to do a release for us.

They had previously done releases for bands such as Rotten Sound, Walls of Jericho and Kingdom, so we jumped at the opportunity. In terms of the band, its a great platform for us to get our music out in Europe and have a home base somewhere else in the world. We’ve built a great relationship with the guys at Genet and are super excited for the future!

You guys have an amazing European tour coming up. Where are you guys playing? Give us the low down.

We will be playing in Europe over July /August, touring with fellow Genet Records band, ASHES. We’re hitting Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden and Czech Republic.

Your new album 'Life on Repeat' definitely shows your music evolving and taking an even darker and heavier approach than ever. Take us through the recording process for the album?

We recorded the album over December 2013. The whole thing took about a week. We recorded and mixed it ourselves and had our friend, Rogan Kelsey from Lapdust Studios, master the album.

If a listener had to take one thing away from listening to Conqueror, what would you want it to be?

Bruises from a wild couch mosh, and perhaps an interest and awareness that South Africa has an underground music scene.

You guys are probably one of the hardest working South African bands, and it's obviously paying off. Most other bands seem really lazy in comparison. What does it take to make it work?

We put a lot of time into the band, but it doesn’t feel necessarily like hard work. We love booking shows, printing merch and writing music. The whole scope of the hardcore community. It’s about more than just the music. Seeing kids at shows pick up albums from Minority Records or whatever distro is there, to buying other local bands merch and music. It all helps build a better sense of community and excitement in the scene. Seeing kids in JHB singing along to PEASANT on their first tour up here was amazing to see! To me, that’s progression.

What local and international acts are you guys feeling at the moment?

I’ve had the HOURS album, “As You Were”, on repeat since it came out. On an international tip, been listening to lots of BENT LIFE and the upcoming ASHES release, “No Compromise”.

What does the future hold for the band now that you've signed to a label and are touring internationally?

We have a split 7” with PEASANT coming out on Roastin’ Records later in the year and we’re looking to do another release on Genet Records in 2015. Super stoked to be doing an SA tour with our mates, ASHES in February!

The JHB underground scene is owning at the moment. Why do you think so?

I don’t think it’s just JHB. Port Elizabeth, Durban and Cape Town seem to be doing really well at the moment. New bands are coming up and some great releases have been put out in the last couple months.

There’s a fresh excitement at shows again and kids are stoked on local bands again.

One of my favourite things about Conqueror is how you do everything yourselves. What's your opinion on bands who have managers, agents, tour buses etc...

It’s dependent on the band really. In South Africa I don’t really see the point.

There are only a handful of people that play music full time, and for them it makes sense. Being in a hardcore band, the DIY ethic builds great relationships with people in other cities and putting on shows and doing releases is part of that. I think you would be distancing yourself from your scene if you run things through a middle man. That being said, we’ll take a roadie to carry gear and some fresh white towels at each show pronto, haha!

"Hardcore is probably at the best point it's ever been". What do you guys think?

No Warning are playing shows again!

Anything else to add?

Shout out to RISE! Be sure to check out HOURS, WILDERNESSKING, BLACK MATH, PEASANT, THE MOTHS. Thanks for the chat. www.facebook.com/CONQUERORHC

LISTEN TO THIS SOME RECENT RELEASES YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT

ALPHA & OMEGA NO REST, NO PEACE

BACKTRACK LOST IN LIFE

BANE DON’T WAIT UP

COLD WORLD HOW THE GODS CHILL

DEAFHEAVEN SUNBATHER

OATHBREAKER EROS | ANTEROS

WOLF DOWN STRAY FROM THE PATH

RUDE AWAKENING COLLATERAL DAMAGE

TEST OF TIME

BY DESIGN

VIOLENT SONS NOTHING AS IT SEEMS

WILDERNESSKING THE DEVIL WITHIN

YOUNG AND IN THE WAY WHEN LIFE COMES TO DEATH

www.capeelectrictattoo.com

WASTED INDEED

by CrimethInc.

Peering through the fog behind his eyes, he saw an alcohologram: a world of anguish, in which intoxication was the only escape. Hating himself even more than he hated the corporate killers who had created it, he stumbled to his feet and headed back to the liquor store.

Ensconced in their penthouses, they counted the dollars pouring in from millions like him, and chuckled to themselves at the ease with which all opposition was crushed. But they, too, often had to drink themselves to sleep at night – if ever those vanquished masses stop coming back for more, the tycoons sometimes fretted to themselves, there’s gonna be hell to pay.

Ecstasy vs Intoxication

For a world of enchantment or anarchaholism?

Sloshed, smashed, trashed, loaded, wrecked, wasted, blasted, plastered, tanked, fucked up, bombed. Everyone’s heard of the arctic people with one hundred words for snow; we have one hundred words for drunk. We perpetuate our own culture of defeat.

Hold it right there - I can see the sneer on your face: Are these anarchists so uptight that they would even denounce the only fun aspect of anarchism - the beer after the riots, the liquor in the pub where all that pie-in-the-sky theory is bandied about? What do they do for fun anyway, cast aspersions on the little fun we do have? Don’t we get to relax and have a good time in any part of our lives?

Do not misunderstand us: we are not arguing against indulgence, but for it. Ambrose Bierce defined an ascetic as “a weak person who succumbs to the temptation of denying himself pleasure,” and we concur. As Chuck Baudelaire wrote, you must always be high - everything depends on this. So we are not against drunkenness, but rather against drink! For those who embrace drink as a route to drunkenness thus cheat themselves of a total life of enchantment.

Drink, like caffeine or sugar in the body, only plays a role in life that life itself can provide for otherwise. The woman who never drinks coffee does not require it in the morning when she awakens: her body produces energy and focus on its own, as thousands of generations of evolution have prepared it to do. If she drinks coffee regularly, soon her body lets the coffee take over that role, and she becomes dependent upon it. Thus does alcohol artificially provide for temporary moments of relaxation and release while impoverishing life of all that is genuinely restful and liberating.

If some sober people in this society do not seem as reckless and free as their boozer counterparts, that is a mere accident of culture, mere circumstantial evidence. Those puritans exist all the same in the world drained of all magic and genius by the alcoholism of their fellows (and the capitalism, hierarchy, misery it helps maintain) - the only difference is that they are so self-abnegating as to refuse even the false magic, the genie of the bottle. But other “sober” folk, whose orientation to living might better be described as enchanted or ecstatic, are plentiful, if you look hard enough. For these individuals - for us - life is a constant celebration, one which needs no augmentation and from which we need no respite.

Alcohol, like Prozac and all the other mind-control medications that are making big bucks for Big Brother these days, substitutes symptomatic treatment for cure. It takes away the pain of a dull, drab existence for a few hours at best, then returns it twofold. It not only replaces positive actions which would address the root causes of our despondency - it prevents them, as more energy becomes focused on achieving and recovering from the drunken state. Like the tourism of the worker, drink is a pressure valve that releases tension while maintaining the system that creates it.

In this push-button culture, we’ve become used to conceiving of ourselves as simple machines to be operated: add the appropriate chemical to the equation to get the desired result. In our search for health, happiness, meaning in life, we run from one panacea to the next - Viagra, Vitamin C, Vodka - instead of approaching our lives holistically and addressing our problems at their social and economic roots.

This product-oriented mindset is the foundation of our alienated consumer society: without consuming products, we can’t live! We try to buy relaxation, community, self-confidence - now even ecstasy comes in a pill!

We want ecstasy as a way of life, not a liver-poisoning alcoholiday from it. “Life sucks - get drunk” is the essence of the argument that enters our ears from our masters’ tongues and then passes out of our own slurring mouths, perpetuating whatever incidental and unnecessary truths it may refer to – but we’re not falling for it any longer! Against inebriation - and for drunkenness! Burn down the liquor stores, and replace them with playgrounds!

For a Lucid Bacchanalian, Ecstatic Sobriety!

Spurious Rebellion Practically every child in mainstream Western society grows up with alcohol as the forbidden fruit their parents or peers indulge in but deny to them. This prohibition only makes drinking that much more fascinating to young people, and when they get the opportunity, most immediately assert their independence by doing exactly as they’ve been told not to: ironically, they rebel by following the example set for them. This hypocritical pattern is standard for child-rearing in this society, and works to replicate a number of destructive behaviors that otherwise would be aggressively refused by new generations. The fact that the bogus morality of many drinking parents is mirrored in the sanctimonious practice of religious groups helps to create a false dichotomy between puritanical self-denial and life-loving, free-wheeling drinkers with “friends” like Baptist ministers, we teetotalers wonder, who needs enemies?

These partisans of Rebellious Drunkenness and advocates of Responsible Abstinence are loyal adversaries. The former need the latter to make their dismal rituals look like fun; the latter need the former to make their rigid austerity seem like common sense. An “ecstatic sobriety” which combats the dreariness of one and the bleariness of the other - false pleasure and false discretion alike - is analogous to the anarchism that confronts both the false freedom offered by capitalism and the false community offered by communism.

Alcohol & Sex in the Rape Culture Let’s lay it on the table: almost all of us are coming from a place where our sexuality is or was occupied territory. We’ve been raped, abused, assaulted, shamed, silenced, confused, constructed, programmed. We’re badasses, and we’re taking it all back, reclaiming ourselves; but for most of us, that’s a slow, complex, not yet concluded process.

This doesn’t mean we can’t have good, safe, supportive sex right now, in the middle of that healing - but it does make having that sex a little more complicated. To be certain we’re not perpetuating or helping to perpetuate negative patterns in a lover’s life, we have to be able to communicate clearly and honestly before things get hot and heavy - and while they are, and after. Few forces interfere with this communication like alcohol does. In this culture of denial, we are encouraged to use it as a social lubricant to help us slip past our inhibitions; all too often, this simply means ignoring our own fears and scars, and not asking about others. If it is dangerous, as well as beautiful, for us to share sex with each other sober, how much more dangerous must it be to do so drunk, reckless, and incoherent?

Speaking of sex, it’s worth noting the supporting role alcohol has played in patriarchal gender dynamics. For example - in how many nuclear families has alcoholism helped to maintain an unequal distribution of power and pressure? (All the writers of this tract can call to mind more than one such case among their relatives alone.) The man’s drunken self-destruction, engendered as it may be by the horrors of surviving under capitalism, imposes even more of a burden on the woman, who must still somehow hold the family together - often in the face of his violence. And on the subject of dynamics...

The Tyranny of Apathy “Every fucking anarchist project I engage in is ruined or nearly ruined by alcohol. You set up a collective living situation and everyone is too drunk or stoned to do the basic chores, let alone maintain an attitude of respect. You want to create community, but after the show everyone just goes back to their rooms and drinks themselves to death. If it’s not one substance to abuse it’s a motherfucking other. I understand trying to obliterate your consciousness is a natural reaction to being born in alienating capitalist hell, but I want people to see what we anarchists are doing and say ‘Yeah, this is better than capitalism!’, which is hard to say if you can’t walk around without stepping on broken forty-ounce bottles. I’ve never considered myself straight-edge, but fuck it, I’m not taking it anymore!”

It’s said that when the renowned anarchist Oscar Wilde first heard the old slogan if it is humiliating to be ruled, how much more humiliating it is to choose one’s rulers, he responded: “If it’s humiliating to choose one’s masters, how much more humiliating to be one’s own master!” He intended this as a critique of hierarchies within the self as well as the democratic state, of course - but, sadly, his quip could be applied literally to the way some of our attempts at creating anarchist environments pan out in practice. This is especially true when they’re carried out by drunk people.

In certain circles, especially the ones in which the word “anarchy” itself is more in fashion than any of its various meanings, freedom is conceived of in negative terms: “don’t tell me what to do!” In practice, this often means nothing more than an assertion of the individual’s right to be lazy, selfish, unaccountable for his actions or lack thereof. In such contexts, when a group agrees upon a project it often ends up being a small, responsible minority that has to do all the work to make it happen. These conscientious few often look like the autocratic ones - when, invisibly, it is the apathy and hostility of their comrades that forces them to adopt this role. Being drunk and disorderly all the time is coercive - it compels others to clean up after you, to think clearly when you won’t, to absorb the stress generated by your behavior when you are too fucked up for dialogue. These dynamics go two ways, of course - those who take all responsibility on their shoulders perpetuate a pattern in which everyone else takes none - but everyone is responsible for their own part in such patterns, and for transcending it.

Think of the power we could have if all the energy and effort in the world - or maybe even just your energy and effort? that goes into drinking were put into resisting, building, creating. Try adding up all the money anarchists in your community have spent on corporate libations, and picture how much musical equipment or bail money or food (-not bombs ... or, fuck it, bombs!) it could have paid for - instead of funding their war against all of us. Better: imagine living in a world where cokehead presidents die of overdoses while radical musicians and rebels live the chaos into ripe old age!

Sobriety & Solidarity Like any lifestyle choice, be it vagabondage or union membership, abstention from alcohol can sometimes be mistaken as an end rather than a means.

Above all, it is critical that our own choices not be a pretext for us to deem ourselves superior to those who make different decisions. The only strategy for sharing good ideas that succeeds unfailingly (and that goes for hotheaded, alienating tracts like this one as well!) is the power of example - if you put “ecstatic sobriety” into action in your life and it works, those who sincerely want similar things will join in. Passing judgment on others for decisions that affect only themselves is absolutely noxious to any anarchist - not to mention it makes them less likely to experiment with the options you offer.

And so - the question of solidarity and community with anarchists and others who do use alcohol and drugs. We propose that these are of utmost importance. Especially in the case of those who are struggling to free themselves of unwanted addictions, such solidarity is paramount: Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, is just one more instance of a quasi-religious organization filling a social need that should already be provided for by anarchist community self-organizing. As in every case, we anarchists must ask ourselves: do we take our positions simply to feel superior to the unwashed (er, washed) masses - or because we sincerely want to propagate accessible alternatives? Besides, most of us who are not substance-addicted can thank our privileges and good fortune for this; this gives us all the more responsibility to be good allies to those who have not had such privileges or luck - on whatever terms they set. Let tolerance, humility, accessibility, and sensitivity be the qualities we nurture in ourselves, not self-righteousness or pride. No separatist sobriety!

Revolution So anyway - what are we going to do if we don’t go to bars, hang out at parties, sit on the steps or in front of the television with our forty-ounce bottles? Anything else!

The social impact of our society’s fixation on alcohol is at least as important as its mental, medical, economic, and emotional effects. Drinking standardizes our social lives, occupying some of the eight waking hours a day that aren’t already colonized by work. It locates us spatially - living rooms, cocktail lounges, railroad tracks - and contextually - in ritualized, predictable behaviors - in ways more explicit systems of control never could. Often when one of us does manage to escape the role of worker/consumer, drinking is there, stubborn holdover from our colonized leisure time, to fill up the promising space that opens. Free from these routines, we could discover other ways to spend time and energy and seek pleasure, ways that could prove dangerous to the system of alienation itself.

Drink can incidentally be part of positive and challenging social interactions, of course – the problem is that its central role in current socializing and socialization misrepresents it as the prerequisite for such intercourse. This obscures the fact that we can create such interactions at will with nothing more than our own creativity, honesty, and daring. Indeed, without these, nothing of value is possible – have you ever been to a bad party? – and with them, no alcohol is necessary.

When one or two persons cease to drink, it just seems senseless, like they are ejecting themselves from the company (or at least customs) of their fellow human beings for nothing. But a community of such people can develop a radical culture of sober adventure and engagement, one that could eventually offer exciting opportunities for drink-free activity and merriment for all. Yesterday’s geeks and loners could be the pioneers of tomorrow’s new world: “lucid bacchanalism” is a new horizon, a new possibility for transgression and transformation that could provide fertile soil for revolts yet unimaginable. Like any revolutionary lifestyle option, this one offers an immediate taste of another world while helping create a context for actions that hasten its universal realization.

No war but the class war - no cocktail but the molotov cocktail!

Let us brew nothing but trouble!

Postscript: How to Read this Essay With any luck, you’ve been able to discern - even, perhaps, through that haze of drunken stupor - that this is as much a caricature of polemics in the anarchist tradition as a serious piece. It’s worth pointing out that these polemics have often brought attention to their theses by deliberately taking an extreme position, thereby opening up the ground in between for more “moderate” positions on the subject.

Hopefully you can draw useful insights of your own from your interpretations of this text, rather than taking it as gospel or anathema. And all this is not to say there are no fools who refuse intoxication - but can you imagine how much more insufferable they would be if they did not? The boring would still be boring, only louder about it; the self-righteous ones would continue to lambaste and harangue, while spitting and drooling on their victims! It is an almost universal characteristic of drinkers that they encourage everyone around them to drink, that barring those hypocritical power-plays between lovers or parents and children, at least - they prefer their own choices to be reflected in the choices of all. This strikes us as indicating a monumental insecurity, not unrelated to the insecurity revealed by ideologues and recruiters of every stripe from Christian to Marxist to anarchist who feel they cannot rest until everyone in the world sees that world exactly as they do. As you read, try to fight off that insecurity - and try not to read this as an expression of our own, either, but rather, in the tradition of the best anarchist works, as a reminder for all who choose to concern themselves that another world is possible.

FOR EVERY LIFE, FOR WE’RE DEDICATED TO BRINGING

LIBERATION

FREEDOM FOR ALL ENSLAVED

TEAR THE BLINDFOLD FROM OVER YOUR EYES. FORGET ALL THAT YOU THOUGHT YOU ONCE KNEW. AFTER 10,000 YEARS OF TELLING LIES, DEDICATED TO SPREADING THE TAKING PRIDE IN THIS PATH THAT WE TREAD.

TRUTH

IN DEFENSE OF THE EARTH SPEAKING OUT SO THE WORDS OF THE VOICELESS CAN FINALLY BE HEARD NOW’S THE TIME TO AND DESERVED.

TAKE ACTION FOR FREEDOM JUSTICE

FIGHT FOR LIFE.

TAKE A STAND FOR TRUTH & COMPASSION. THERE’S NO TIME TO WAIT FOR CHANGE. SHOW DEDICATION THROUGH YOUR WORDS AND ACTIONS. TOGETHER W E C A N E N D T H E I R S U F F E R I N G .

TOTAL LIBERATION SMASH HIERARCHY. DON’T BUY INTO AUTHORITY. STRIVE FOR SUSTAINABILITY. RESOURCES ARE RUNNING OUT. DISCONTENT BECAUSE WE’RE NOT FREE. OPPRESSORS ACT OUT OF GREED.

COMPASSION & EQUALITY ARE BOTH necessary.

REJECT THE MYTHS WE WERE TAUGHT TO BELIEVE. IT’S TIME TO DEPROGRAM OURSELVES. QUESTION STEREOTYPES AND TRADITIONS. FOLLOW NO GODS, NO MASTERS. LOOK AT THE ROOT OF RACISM, SEXISM, SPECIESISM AND YOU’LL SEE IT’S ALL BEEN FABRICATED TO KEEP US APART.

BREAK DOWN THE BARRIERS THAT ENSLAVE US ALL. - GATHER (TOTAL LIBERATION)

VEGANARCHY: AN INTERVIEW This interview has been edited. The original interview that this was taken from took place quite a while ago, but I thought there were things in it worth sharing. Aragorn is a member of the collective that owns bolo’bolo, an anarchist vegan cafe/info shop in Observatory, Cape Town. He is also involved in making a documentary on Anarchism with Steffi (who now lives overseas). I hope you find this interview as inspiring and challenging as I did when I first put it up on Rise’s website.

What was your motivation behind opening bolo’bolo?

Steffi: Aragorn and I left Joburg in November 2010 because we were disillusioned with what Joburg had to offer for radical / alternative people. The social movements were falling apart while the inequalities were getting worse. The vegan community was growing but there was only a handful of expensive vegetarian restaurants. There was no space for people to hang out and come together to discuss how to create a better world. There was no movement we wanted to be part of. Everything seemed old-fashioned. We tried our best to make things happen. Aragorn used to co-own a vegan restaurant called Earth2 (the first one in the country!) which lasted for about two years and also had a kind of infoshop space called Further, from which he sold radical literature. Earth2 and Further ran from around 2006 - 2008.

We used to do weekly film screenings to raise consciousness about the environmental crisis, animal rights and social struggles.

We tried to set up reading groups but people were too comfortable with their own lives or preferred to spend the little free time they had at a bar. And the way South African cities are shaped, it’s hard for those people who are not comfortable to be in the spaces we created.

We wanted to create a documentary that was missing from the ones we showed and the one set of ideas we are both so passionate about: Anarchism. It is often misunderstood and we noticed with our film screenings that there isn’t one good documentary on the subject. So we set out to do it ourselves.

Another reason for filming our documentary was the anarchist survey we did in 2010 which showed us that other places have more to offer (and therefore to learn from). You can read about this here: http://www.pimpmygarden.org/anarchistsurvey.com/results/ We traveled to South and North America and Europe and we went to lots of infoshops (spaces for radical people to get together and get cheap literature) and vegan restaurants. We found some amazing spaces and decided that we should do something similar upon our return to South Africa. We knew then that we wanted to try set up a new life in Cape Town. Everywhere we went the best communities of activists were in places where there was a gathering space, where people grew affinity groups and real communities. That’s why we thought that we need to have a space in South Africa where people can come together, read books and discuss ideas. And we thought we could sustain such a place by selling coffee and snacks.

We called it bolo’bolo because it’s the name of one of our favourite books which describes a sustainable world based on small communities. It’s also a joke in anthropology of a place where none of the usual rules apply. Anthropologists like to point out that general rules don’t apply everywhere and that there is always an exception. We use this to show that there are societies around the world that don’t have a government. Not everyone wants to be ruled over. And we show that these societies live in egalitarian communities. We’re always happy to tell people more about them if they ask.

Our shelves at bolo’bolo contain a range of material on anarchism, sustainable living, grassroots environmentalism, animal liberation, queer theory, psychedelics and counterculture. We also print lots of our own little zines on these and other subjects and sell them on a donation basis.

Why did you decide to come back to South Africa, and not just stay overseas, where it seems that there are much bigger and more active communities of alternative/radical people?

Aragorn: A couple of reasons. Mostly, sheer practicality – I’m a South African without the ability to move overseas very easily, and most of my friends and family live in SA. Also, the big and active communities overseas are well-established and comfortable already; joining one of them just feels like a bit of a cop-out really. I’m far more interested in trying to start up something locally than participating in the subcultural consumerism that makes up a lot of the anarchist / vegan scenes in big European / US cities like Berlin, Portland, San Francisco, London and so forth.

Steffi: I would prefer to live in those places that have big activist communities and lots of vegan restaurants like the San Francisco Bay Area or even Berlin, where some of my best friends live. But I agree with Aragorn that it’s better to start something where you come from (or in my case, where I live) and not where there’s already lots of people doing stuff. Portland really is where young people (and hipsters) go to retire, like they say in the awesome TV-series called “Portlandia”. There’s lots of spaces and even a vegan “mini mall”. But there is no time for activists to retire just yet or we will face an environmental collapse. Going to a vegan restaurant is not going to change the world. We need to create lots of spaces around the world, in order to create a better world.

How have you found the general reaction to bolo’bolo, and how did people react to Earth2 and Further?

Aragorn: The reaction to bolo’bolo has, to our surprise, been overwhelmingly positive. It has also made us realise what might have gone wrong with Earth2 and Further (both of which were run by Aragorn and his ex-partner Anastasya Eliseeva): while the ethos and intentions were almost identical to those hopefully reflected in bolo’bolo, we didn’t work hard enough to ensure that these earlier spaces didn’t feel exclusionary. Both Earth2 and Further suffered from being too countercultural; the confrontational anti-capitalist posters and hard line animal rights angle alienated everyday passers by and we ended up largely preaching to the converted.

That said, perhaps these spaces did also serve as kindling for the fire: while they might have been a little ahead of their time – Earth2 was the first vegan restaurant in the country and Further was hopelessly obscure in the ideas it promoted and cultural artefacts it sold – both spaces helped to convey a sense that these values were starting to take hold in South Africa and served as an early hub, however tenuous, for vegans, anarchists and the like.

I know that you are both vegan. We probably know the obvious reasons as to why someone would choose a vegan lifestyle, but what are your personal convictions behind this dietary choice?

Steffi: Personally, I grew up in the countryside in Austria, next to lots of farms. I spent my childhood playing with calves, cows, lambs, goats and lots of kittens and cats. I also loved horses. At some stage my brother teased me by saying I’m eating my friends when I ate salami (which in Europe is made from horse meat). So I gave up eating salami. Next I noticed how my favourite cows and calves would disappear from one day to the next. So I stopped eating beef. It was all very gradual until at the age of 12 I finally became a vegetarian. It became a lot easier when my meat-eating parents turned Hare Krishnas and became vegetarian a few years later. Over the years my best friend’s brother became vegan (and straight edge) and I started to think more about those things

I thought it’s just something radical or puritanical and that as a vegetarian I was already preventing the torture and killing of animals.

It was only when I was 19 that I stumbled upon a website (that’s when I first started using the internet) that showed “the truth about dairy” and how that when you consume milk and dairy products you still contribute to the slaughter and torture of animals and it showed how those cows often live in worse conditions. That’s when I decided to go vegan, but it took me another two years to finally give up that amazing organic Alpine small-farm cheese I still ate. It was only recently that I discovered that the reason so many people find it hardest to give up cheese is because there are so-called casomorphines in cheese. In other words, another version of morphine, a drug. That was 8 years ago and I’m healthier than ever. I’m hardly ever sick (and I was a sickly person before) and I’ve turned a lot of people into vegans. Not by preaching, but simply by doing it. If you want to be a true vegetarian and prevent the suffering of animals, you have to go vegan. It’s as simple as that. And it really is simple these days. It’s so much easier than just 8 years ago. Everyone can do it.

So, personally I became a vegan out of ethical reasons, because I love animals and I don’t want to hurt them. But it’s good to know that it’s also the most environmentally friendly and even healthiest diet :-) Aragorn: I used to argue that I was vegan for ethical, health and environmental reasons. These days I tend to argue that I’m vegan for purely ethical reasons. After all, to be concerned with one’s own health is to pursue an ethics of self-care, while being concerned to preserve and enhance the integrity of the natural world emerges from an ethos that values life over death: the complex and heterogeneous over the dull, the grey and the homogeneous.

In other words, I became vegan so that I could ethically align myself with life in all its richness and diversity – the specific lives of oneself or of other animals or the life in general of the myriad fragile, highly interconnected ecosystems that comprise our planet. To me, veganism is very obviously a necessary (though far from sufficient) condition for anyone who holds these kinds of ethical values.

Steffi, you’re from Austria originally, and you’ve both travelled all over the world. South Africa has a big “braai” culture, and meat is consumed by the majority of the population. One thing that’s also always bothered me is the conservative ideas associated with women’s roles. Do you have any comments on this? Do you have any comments on other topics prevalent to South Africa?

Steffi: South Africa has a big meat culture. But so does Austria and many other places. Everyone always argues that it’s part of their culture. As an anthropologist, I don’t like the “culture excuse”.

Cultures change all the time. If you look back in history, you will find that until two generations ago, people ate much less meat than now, everywhere. That’s when the meat industry was started being subsidised by governments and meat became cheaper. This trend can be reversed as quickly as it started. Meat eating was never a huge part of many traditional societies’ diets. You will find that except for the Eskimos and a few other societies living in very harsh

climates, most people ate meat only on special occasions, e.g. the slaughter of a goat for a wedding, still very common in most of the world. Meat might have been eaten, but the mass farming of animals and the torture of them was never part of any culture.

Despite the culture excuse, we often hear that “a man needs to eat meat”. That’s of course a very macho thing to claim. In fact, too much meat can make men impotent. And after all, stallions and bulls are plant eaters! :-) It’s true, though, that most of the vegans I know are female and there is a high percentage of lesbians in the vegan community. The strong macho and braai-culture in South Africa definitely contributes to the high consumption of meat here. There’s definitely a correlation, especially when I think about other strong meat consuming countries, such as Argentina with it’s Gaucho (cowboy) culture or the US with its cowboys and rodeos etc. But there are lots of websites now that discuss a vegan diet (and even raw vegan diets) for athletes. You can look like a big macho man but still be soft on the inside and not kill animals. After all, the protein shakes that athletes consume are made from soy protein. There must be a reason for that ;-) Aragorn, you’re South African. From my own personal experience, practicing veganism/vegetarianism/anything progressive, radical or alternative, is not that common to find in South Africa among the majority of people. How were you exposed to the ideas that shape the lifestyle you currently lead? What were the beginnings that led you to where you are now?

Aragorn: I discovered anarchism through the industrial music counterculture in the early ’90s, after reading an article by John Zerzan in a book called Apocalypse Culture. This was way before the internet had hit South Africa, back when interesting books were almost impossible to come by and the only access most people had to radical ideas was through small local anarcho-punk distros like the legendary Backstreet Abortions (who were putting out awesome ‘zines on anarchism and veganism way back in the late ’80s already!).

I was already a vegetarian at the time, but not for any reasons I could have articulated with any degree of clarity – it was mostly just an intuitive shift that only grew into full veganism in late 2005 when I opened Earth2 as a vegetarian restaurant and was encouraged by the two vegan chefs we interviewed to turn it 100% vegan. Their arguments made complete sense and suddenly I realised why I’d been vegetarian for so long and why veganism was the only logical progression from that.

Tell us more about your documentary on Anarchism. When will we be able to see it?

We used to run a documentary film club in Johannesburg (The Unblinking Eye, now in JHB and Cape Town) where we screened films on environmental issues, animal liberation, radical politics, grassroots resistance movements, counterculture and so forth. We were always desperate to show a good film on anarchism; most people, especially in South Africa, have absolutely no idea what anarchism is, or make ridiculously naïve arguments about why it could never work.

What we quickly discovered, however, is that no such film exists. While there are a couple of films, mostly incredibly dated, about specific anarchists like Emma Goldman or specific highlights in anarchist history like Spain in 1936, there’s not a single one that explains the history and key ideas of this important philosophy in any depth. Seeking to remedy this sorry situation – and armed with little more than a DSLR camera and a bit of cash we’d saved and crowdfunded – we embarked on a six month tour of South America, North America and Europe to meet and interview anarchists from around the world.

The experience was inspiring and heartbreaking in all sorts of different ways and we came out of it with very different anarchist positions to those we’d held going in. We met all sorts of amazing people, made great friends and were occasionally sorely disappointed. We hung out in endless infoshops and vegan cafés – some of them thriving and inclusive community spaces and some hopelessly subcultural and cliquish. We interviewed famous old anarchists and enthusiastic young collectives, visited anarchist academic conferences and radical reading groups, had countless discussions and debates with platformists and primitivists and post-leftists and post-anarchists and more, were gifted rare autographed books and back issues of magazines we’d always dreamed of getting our hands on, and spent many of

our evenings sleeping on the floors and couches of friendly strangers. We came back to South Africa with a small mountain of external hard drives containing over a hundred recorded interviews. Our task now, in the little spare time we have, is to figure out how to create an awesome trailer for our film so that we can generate the funding we need to pay a professional editor to help us make a documentary that is worthy of the subject. We’re hoping the have the trailer finished really, really soon, but we’re not going to rush the process. As for a release date for the full film, who knows? http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anarchism-A-Documentary/113880171992624 http://www.anarchismdocumentary.net/ In your first answer, you mentioned that Anarchism is often misunderstood. The literature that I’ve read and the research that I’ve done seems to support your statement. Why do you think that this is so? It seems like many Anarchists have opinions of what Anarchy actually is. Would you attempt to define the term?

We asked over a hundred anarchists to define anarchy and anarchism for us and we received well over a hundred different answers! While some anarchists are utterly committed to providing a conclusive definition, even if this means performing bizarre acts of exclusion and hermeneutics on the existing corpus of broadly anarchist historical and theoretical material, our personal sense is that anarchism is first and foremost an ethic, one that emerges in very different ways in various times and places.

Very broadly, anarchism is the view that relations of hierarchy and domination serve to separate us from what we are capable of. In other words, when we structure the world and our relations with each other hierarchically, we limit our freedom. Anarchists argue that we can live in other ways that expand our possibilities for both individual and collective freedom. In doing so, they challenge an idea that is common to both libertarian and socialist thinking: that liberty and equality are part of some kind of zero-sum game where the more you have of the one, the less you have of the other.

Instead, anarchism sees these two terms in productive relation with each other, two parts of a single principle of ‘equal-liberty’ whereby personal liberty is best supported and enhanced by conditions of social equality and full social equality is only possible when we seek to maximise each person’s liberty.

Or, as Mikhail Bakunin, one of the first anarchist thinkers and revolutionaries, much more poetically stated it: “I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.”

We can also, of course, locate the emergence of anarchism in specific historical moments and amongst specific sectors or classes of society, tracing at the same time a single lineage of anarchist heroes like Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta and whoever else, but this is always only a tentative mapping. As Peter Marshall puts it in his excellent history of anarchism, Demanding the Impossible, the drive for human community based on equal-liberty stretches far beyond the emergence of a distinctly European, Enlightenment-rationalist, industrial working class movement in the mid-19th century, far back into the Neolithic.

Some might argue that if we eventually reached a state of Anarchy, many people may misunderstand or choose to abuse the “freedom” associated with it. What do you think about this statement?

What we’ve often found when discussing anarchism with the cautiously enthusiastic is that most of their worries about what would go wrong with anarchism involve thinking of people as they are now and not how they could be. And, of course, people who are separated from their personal and collective power by the social relations of hierarchy and domination that comprise so much of the contemporary world – the State, capitalism, patriarchy and so forth, and who are taught to be self-serving, competitive, materialistic, servile and by turns submissive and authoritarian, are probably going to behave pretty terribly if you suddenly drop them into conditions of anarchy.

People who grow up with different social relations, however, and learn to value egalitarian principles like mutual aid, solidarity, voluntary relations, equal-liberty and direct action, will respond in much healthier ways to conditions of anarchy.

While it’s important to think about people as they could be in the best of circumstances and not just how they happen to be in the worst of circumstances, in some ways this also creates a kind of chicken and egg situation: you need decent people to create a decent society but you need a decent society to create decent people. For most anarchists though, this doesn’t pose much of a problem – it simply means we have to simultaneously work to change both society and people, that we have to organise to dismantle capitalism and the State and so forth, but also challenge their more subtle forms of appearance in our small, everyday relations with those around us. Think of these two parts of anarchist practise as revolutionary and evolutionary anarchism; some other people describe them as ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ politics. A few anarchists are unfairly dismissive of the micropolitical, referring to it pejoratively as ‘lifestylism’, but we don’t think we’ll ever successfully achieve lasting conditions of anarchy unless we also overcome the State and the capitalist in our own heads.

And, as Howard Zinn said, “if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvellous victory.”

Total liberation are words I have seen come up a few times in anarchist and vegan forums. What do they mean to you?

Steffi: Total liberation means that all the struggles for a better world for everyone, including non-humans, are connected and have to be connected. We won’t have a better world when women , people of colour, disabled people, LGBTI people etc are still seen and treated as inferior, or when animals are still tortured and killed to be eaten. As one of my favourite bands, Gather, puts it in their song, Total Liberation: “It’s time to deprogram ourselves, question stereotypes and traditions, follow no gods, no masters, look at the root of racism, sexism, speciesism and you’ll see, it’s all been fabricated to keep us apart. Break down the barriers that enslave us all.”

Aragorn: For me, total liberation and Anarchism are the same thing. An ethos of equal-liberty and a preference for thriving and diversity both entail pursuing non-hierarchical relations with each other, other animals and the natural world we’re so deeply interconnected with. Anarchism is incomplete without animal and Earth liberation and both of these are incomplete without anarchism; all three are just different, partial manifestations of the same ethic.

I know that Steffi is Straight Edge. What are your motivations behind being Straight Edge? Aragorn, what are your views on mind-altering substances?

Steffi: I became Straight Edge when I was already 23. Most people go straight edge when they are very young. And sometimes it seems like the younger you went straight edge the cooler you are. I’m happy that I experienced what alcohol and weed (never took anything else) does to me and that I can speak from experience. I know what I gave up and I know why. I never really liked alcohol. For some reason I had to drink vast amounts to get drunk and then I would get sick quickly and get nasty hang-overs. I never liked people talking about how drunk they were on the weekend. It always seemed pathetic to me.

Like, don’t you have anything else to talk about except on getting off on how shit you felt?

Then I was doing research on the wine farms in the Western Cape and spent many weeks drinking wine all day long. I had wine tastings at 9am already, every day. By the way, the research was not on wine but on working conditions on the wine farms in South Africa (which are really horrible; and the dop system – in which workers get paid in alcohol – is still in place on many farms!). But you first have to go through the official program of wine-tasting to get to speak to the workers. After a few weeks I couldn’t stand wine anymore. I switched to beer, but South African beer is shit (and, as I figured later, not even vegan) in comparison to Austrian and German beer. I stopped drinking beer and started smoking weed. At some stage I just thought to myself, why the fuck am I so desperate to change my consciousness? Why the fuck do I drink? And then I realised that I just did it to fit in, mostly out of peer pressure. I never liked peer pressure but here I was fully trapped in it. So I quit it all It also helped that at around the same time I started going to hardcore gigs and met other straight edge people.

It seems harder to be straight edge in South Africa than in Europe though, which sucks! But South Africa also opened my eyes to a political dimension of being straight edge: I noticed how most alcohol advertising is in townships and how people spend all their money on booze to forget about the shitty conditions they live in, instead of fighting them. And let their kids run around unattended while they get trashed. I started to agree with Malcolm X who said “They know that you are more dangerous sober than when you are drunk”, referring to the CIA’s introduction of illegal drugs into African American communities to criminalise them. The highest rates of alcoholics is amongst the poorest people. So, again as with meat, I had one reason to go straight edge, but then there were so many additional reasons that added on to that and it just seems logical for me for so many reasons to be straight edge. And as my friend Gabriel Kuhn shows in his book Sober living for the Revolution, there is a very cool political dimension to the straight edge scene (which is in return closely connected to the growth of veganism).

Aragorn: I respect the straight edge philosophy (although I worry when it ossifies into intolerant hardline dogma) and I like the idea of ‘sober living for the revolution’. I also worry when people use substances to escape or when it dulls activism or makes the working class complacent with the injustice of their lot.

That said, I have also experienced great personal benefit from the purposeful use of psychedelic substances. To some extent, they helped me wake up to the injustices going on around me; they taught me to question everything I’d been told about how the world was supposed to work, who was in charge, how people should relate to each other and so forth. In other words, they helped micropoliticize me.

Even if this wasn’t the case though, and accepting that all substances have their singular risks, I still think it’s up to each of us to make an informed decision about how we’d like to modulate our personal neuro- and biochemistry (whether through diet, dance, meditation, sex or the ingestion of psychotropics). After all, in an anarchist society there won’t be anyone to tell us what substances we can and cannot ingest!

More fundamentally, the drive to alter consciousness exists throughout nature – even ants get high and enjoy it! We can, as countless other cultures have, use entheogenic plants wisely and with intent, in order to rekindle our relationship to the natural world, gain deep insight into ourselves and those around us and create and enhance conditions of collective ritual – the celebratory, ludic aspect of our being that is all but lost in contemporary society.

What bands/music/literature/books/websites would you prescribe to people to visit should they be interested in finding out more about Anarchy and or veganism?

Aragorn: That’s a long list! My music tastes are far from conventional, even for an anarchist, but there’s an awesome amount of literature available on these subjects. The Wikipedia entries for anarchism and veganismare both pretty good, and there are lots of free anarchists texts at www.theanarchistlibrary.org. www.vegansociety.org.za has some good information on it about veganism and the wider world of animal rights and vegan nutrition is a Google search away.

Of course, if you’re in the area, popping into bolo’bolo is a much better idea!

Steffi: I can try give you a list: Bands: There’s an entire genre called “anarcho-punk” which originated with CRASS and includes bands such as R.A.M.B.O., Anti-Flag, Oi Polloi, Propagandhi, Against Me!, Citizen Fish, Sin Dios, Subhumans, Strike Anywhere etc. If you’re looking for hardcore: Refused, Gather, Anchor, Point of No Return. Many of these bands are also vegan (and often straight edge).

If you don’t like fast music try David Rovics (folk) and a music genre called “riot folk” or “anti-folk”.

There are a lot of vegan musicians but not many bands with explicit vegan lyrics. Some of the latter include The Smiths and Morrissey, CRASS (punk). Even if I hate them, I have to say Earth Crisis. Vegan bands I personally like are Gather (hardcore), Anchor (hardcore), Seven Generations (hardcore), Point of No Return (hardcore),xTrue Naturex (folk), Anti-Flag (punk), Citizen Fish (punk), R.A.M.B.O. (punk).

Literature: Cindy Milstein: Anarchism and its Aspirations (short introduction), Ruth Kinna: Anarchism (medium introduction); Peter Marshall: Demanding the Impossible (extensive introduction); Alexander Berkman: The ABC of Communist Anarchism (old but still the best introduction, can also be found online). If you prefer novels: George Orwell: Homage to Catalonia; or science fiction then check out Ursula leGuin: The Dispossessed.

For veganism, Steve Best: Igniting a Revolution; Charles Patterson: Eternal Treblinka. And check out the novels by South African author J.M. Coetzee, who is a vegan and often talks about it in his books.

Websites: libcom.org, infoshop.org, anarchistnews.org, zabalaza.net for anarchist news from South Africa. To get literature in SA visit our homepage www.missingshelf.co.za or our shop :-) www.vegansociety.org.za, www.rootsofcompassion.org.

www.vegansociety.org.za www.anarchismdocumentary.net www.missinghself.co.za www.bolobolo.co.za

EXPIRE ‘PRETTY LOW’ ALBUM REVIEW Before I start this review, I just wanted to say how stoked I was when I saw that a quote by us went out with the press release for this album! It kind of blew my mind that the band or Bridge 9 had even heard of us.

“Titled Pretty Low, this new album features eleven tracks of honest and uncompromising hardcore and is the follow-up to Expire’s B9 debut Pendulum Swings which was called ‘one of the best hardcore albums to be released this decade’ by Rise HXC.” You can read an old interview we did with Expire on www.rise.hxc.co.za.

Pretty Low is the second full length release (first was Pendulum Swings) from one of the American Mid-West’s finest hardcore bands, Expire. It was mastered by Jay Maas from Getaway Studios, so it goes without saying that the quality of the actual music on this 11 track album is mind-blowing. Everything is super clear, while not compromising on the dark, dirty sound Expire are known for.

One of my favourite things about Expire is how bouncy/groovy their music is. You’ll have your head bobbing along to the music before the first 10 seconds into the first song, the title track, “Pretty Low”. Maximum mosh and bounce. In my opinion this album is even a bit heavier than Pendulum Swings, especially obvious to me in some of the guitar riffs and Zach’s backing vocals. It is obvious how hard they’re playing in the recordings. Marcus beats those drums harder than most ever will, and Josh belts out some of the most aggressive, honest and heart-felt vocals you’ll most likely ever hear in hardcore. Forget programmed instruments and over-mastered sugar coating; this is real, honest, heavy, tight hardcore at its best.

The lyrics for Pretty Low are once again pretty personal sounding lyrics, and I love them. They are just really open and honest, and I can feel something of what Josh (or whoever else wrote them) was going through when writing them. I can personally relate to a few of them, and this is what I love about Expire. They are not trying to be gods or rock stars, they’re just writing angry, “human” music with angry, human lyrics that anyone can relate to. They are often quite dark, depressing or melancholy sounding, but at the same time, often encouraging e.g. “and if a day comes / where I miss the light / it’s only I that can turn the tide / I’m at a crossroad / where you choose / you either fight or you lose / refuse to let my life be reduced to rubble”. This is what I went through, this is what I’m feeling, and maybe you’re also feeling like this, but all hope is not lost; I got through it, so you can too. That’s what I get from the lyrics anyway.

I must admit that my ears pricked up straight away when I heard the line “I won’t shed another tear for just another set of tits” in Just Don’t, because it sounded pretty sexist, but reading more about the motivation behind them, and reading it in context with the rest of the song’s lyrics, made me realise that it can be translated in a few ways. I don’t think for one second that Expire meant this to be demeaning of women. Personally I feel like the lyrics are expressing frustration at the lyricist’s self, at chasing unhealthy relationships based on things like good looks. Any doubt was wiped away with the lyrics to Fiction anyway.

I’m sure that a lot of people will be able to relate to coming across the type of “leech” that the lyrics to Nobody talk about. One of my favourite tracks on the album has to be Forgetting, both because it is fucking heavy, and because the lyrics are so honest. Losing who you are in vices and escapism is something that we all do sometimes. Callous is about something I personally think about pretty often: “I don’t know why we bother / To heed the words of our fathers”. It screams in the face of the lie that if you work hard and just try to make money, you will find happiness. You can almost taste the anger and hatred in the lyrics to If It Were Up To Me, at someone’s anger at not being able to save someone from the horror of sexual abuse. This was also one of my favourite songs on the album. Second Face ends off the album in true moshy Expire style.

Definitely one of the best releases of this year in my opinion.

The official release date for Pretty Low was June 17. Get a shovel.

Pretty Low Track listing: 7. Forgetting 1. Pretty Low 8. Callous 2. Just Don’t 9. Rejection 3. Fiction 10. If It Were Up To me 4. Gravity 11. Second Face 5. Nobody 6. Old Habits

CONQUEROR ‘LIFE ON REPEAT’ ALBUM REVIEW A few reviews have already been written about Conqueror’s new full length album, Life on Repeat, talking mostly about the sound and walking you through listening to the album. So instead I’m going to write about how this album resonated with me personally, and offer my own insights, especially the lyrical content.

This is a hardcore punk album. A real one. Hardcore was born out of a place on anxiety, anger, feeling displaced, and a profound hatred of society and authority.

You can argue that hardcore is what you make it, and that you can replace anger with passion or whatever, but you cannot change where it came from. That was where the sound came from. In my opinion, it is the most honest “human” sound that has evolved i.e. it is angry, it is violent, it is ugly and it wants to be heard.* I’m not sure about the rest of you, but when I am in a certain mood e.g. sad, angry, stoked, I listen to something that reaffirms that emotion; I like to feel and know that someone else went through the same, or similar, feelings I did, and wrote lyrics about it, often turning emotion into words in a way that I could not. If I’m angry, I don’t feel like listening to something happy. It just irritates me. I like to process that anger through listening to angry music. It makes me feel better. I guess it is a kind of therapy for me, while at the same time being a form of escapism.

Honestly, Conqueror’s lyrics have more depth and honesty than your vaguely-motivational, pseudo-positive lyrics ever have.

Immediately it is clear that the lyrics are full of hatred towards the human race, towards working, towards religion, and towards society. I can relate to this. Every time I read about another corporate giant ruining the Earth, another species on the brink of extinction, racist, homophobic and sexist hate crimes, a city trying as hard as it can to purge itself of the poor etc. I can’t think about anything else, I get anxious, my breathing often gets heavy, and I need to find a way to process it. Maybe it isn’t that healthy, but at least I know that I feel, even if I live in a world that doesn’t seem to. “My blood runs cold for the cruel and callous“.

The raw criticism of humanity reminds me a lot of the views of Fall of Efrafa (although the sound is very different), especially in the song “Serpent Within” with lyrics like “Return to the dirt / corroding the surface / decay like the Earth“. It is sometimes overwhelming to “wake up” and realise how many people are so blissfully ignorant of almost everything, buying into ideas that do nothing but blind.

Perhaps, when the lyrics refer to the “serpent” within and “evil” they are referring to the story of The Garden of Eden, where the serpent (Satan) encourages Adam to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil, “evil” being enlightenment and education, and thinking critically and rationally. Another good example is the line “Why waste a second on a breed / that value status, wealth and greed“. Maybe I’m over-thinking these lyrics…

Another theme in Life on Repeat is the feeling that we are wasting our lives away by working jobs we hate and living in routines that are soul destroying – “Cause all I fucking see / is life on repeat / 7 days a week / 9 to 5…“. While a few of us seem to have figured out a way to do what we love as a living, or to escape “the system” completely, the majority of us exist in repetition, created by capitalism and enforced by the state and society. How often do you hear an uncle talking about how much they hate their job, how expensive things are etc., but when you try to start a conversation about how we could possibly live differently, and create a different kind of world for future generations, the exact same lifestyle is defended furiously? It blows my mind. So instead we become “bottled up”, which often causes unexpected negative outcomes in other areas of life – “I fought for a life I despised…” “World of Hate”, to me, touches on the consequences that come from living in a machinist system, as does “Day In Day Out” – “Power corrupts / money controls / feed the system / give your fucking soul / this life of servitude I lead / strapped in / bled out…”

“Blood Surfer” is probably one the angriest songs against religious institution that I have ever heard. It is a harsh criticism of man-made (“the road you built“) belief systems, although it is obviously using Christianity as the target, the dominant religion of the Western world. It is infuriating to see (granted, not all) leaders of a faith that talks about serving others dressed to the nines, marrying 19-year old supermodels, flashing their gold jewellery around, preaching servitude to congregations of desperate people. “I don’t want no part of it“.

The album is summed up with the song “LDMS”. Whilst I can’t relate to finding mine in drugs, I completely understand all of us can relate to the need to find escape somehow. Life on Repeat is a brutally honest unleashing of rage on a world in which it sometimes seems like “life don’t mean shit”. My favourite song was probably “Misanthropic ‘Till I Die”. The breakdown at the end is so rad. *I am not saying there is anything wrong with positive music, or that hardcore is meant to be anything specifically. Many of my favourite bands have positive lyrics. Check out Mindset, Punch, Bane or Verse. I’m also not trying to interpret the lyrics of this album, or somehow suggest that the band meant anything specifically when writing Life on Repeat, only how it resonated with my own life when I listened to it.

i dont hate my kind but sometimes i hate what we do people so many fucking people how do i embrace them all can i hate them all they all drone along following their tales doing what theyre supposed to do sometimes i cant believe im one of them they seem to be taking over in masses they have become too greedy swallowing up the Earth and all its purity as they govern and overthrow all thats in their path other beings dont have a say anymore or did they ever what can control these people climate maybe unbeknown universal forces perhaps all they can control they bloody well will have they evolved beyond their potential no longer just adapting but ripping the natural restraints that held them together as a natural entity are they now god enough is enough something take them out take me out our time is done

- anonymous

THE GOOD STUFF DISTROS:

ZINES / PUBLICATIONS:

MINORITY RECORDS ROASTIN’ RECORDS

BURN BLACK ZINE THE L.A. JOURNAL THE INCENDIARY TIMES XGRRRLX ZINE

DOCUMENTARIES: WINNEBAGO MAN BLACKFISH WE ARE LEGION CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY SCHOOLING THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL LOSERS LET’S NOT LIVE LIKE SLAVES IF A TREE FALLS INDIE GAME: THE MOVIE OCCUPY LOVE ONE LIFE THE CREATORS THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD

ARTISTS: ALEX CF JAMIE MOORE SKULLBOY WORK BY WELL

RECORD LABELS:

HATE 5 SIX THE DEATH OF A MODERNIST NOISEFIX

6131 RECORDS BRIDGE 9 RECORDS CULT CULTURE DEATHWISH INC. GENET RECORDS LOCKIN’ OUT POSITIVE AND FOCUSED REVELATION RECORDS SIX FEET UNDER RECORDS THINK FAST! RECORDS TRIPLE B RECORDS

TATTOO:

MERCH:

CAPE ELECTRICE TATTOO HANDSTYLE CUSTOM TATTOO LOLA MALONE TATTOO STARCROSSED TATTOO

EVIL GREED HELLFISH FAMILY

OTHER:

CLOUD STUDIOS LAPDUST STUDIOS

ONLINE:

BOLO’BOLO INFOSHOP/CAFE FOOD NOT BOMBS

RECORDING:

TOWARDS A COMMUNITY OF UNITY A COMMUNITY OF INTOLERANCE TOWARDS INTOLERANCE OF ACCEPTANCE OF LOOKING OUT FOR EACH OTHER OF GIVING OF LOVING OF FREEDOM OF COMPASSION OF RESPECT OF NO SEXISM, HOMOPHOBIA, RACISM, SPECIESISM OR ANY DISCRIMINATION OF MUTUAL AID OF SOLIDARITY OF ACTIVISM OF RADICAL POLITICS OF TOTAL LIBERATION