eclipse the past.WARNING BUD eA MON me CO ta A Od Today there is a booming discontent industry, consisting of entrepreneurs who cash in on your misery by selling you products that describe and decry it. Thus the exchange economy finds a place even for its enemies: perpetuating both industry and discontent as we struggle to fight them, we keep the wheels turning by selling more merchandise. And as in every other aspect of your lives, your real desires to make something happen are channeled into consuming— and your own abilities and potential are displaced, projected onto the “revolutionary” items you purchase. This book could be a part of that process. While we hope we are using our product to “sell” revolution, it might be that we are just using “revolution” to sel! our product.* The best of intentions can't proiect us from this risk. But we've undertaken this project because we felt that, in addition to our other, less explicitly compromised ac- tivities, it might be worth giving the old experiment one more try: to see if a commodity can be created that gives more than it takes away. For this book to have even the smallest chance of succeed- ing in that tall order, you can’t approach it passively, you can't expect it to do the work. You have to regard it as a tool, nothing more. This book will not save your life; that, my friend, is up to you. OK, that said, HERE WE GO!!! W@HEU Sepiseg enjen jo Buyjewos yim op of BuryAue Jo UILN 0} a!qISsodWU! SOULE 841 Pue—1SIX9 JOU JOM Se JYBIUL 4! “e[es 40} 1,us! BuIUJeWOS 4! ‘Alelo0s SIy} Ut “ye JOYY,Think about your direct _ bodily experience of life. No one can lie to you about that. _ How many hours a day do you spend in front of a television screen? A computer screen? Behind an automobile windscreen? All three screens combine? What are you being screened from? How much of your life comes at you through a screen, vicariously? (Is watching things as exciting as do/ng things? Do you have enough time to go all the things that you want to? Do you have enough energy to?) And how many hours a day do you sleep? How are you affected by standardized time, designed solely to synchronize your movements with those of millions of other people? How long do you ever go without knowing what time it is? Who or what controls your minutes and hours? The minutes and hours that add up to your life? Can you put a value on a beautiful day, when the birds are singing and people are walking around together? How many dollars an hour does it take to pay you to stay inside and sell things or file papers? What will you get later that could make up for this day of your life? How are you affected by being in crowds, by being surrounded by anonymous masses? Do you find yourself blocking your emotional responses to other human beings? And who prepares your meals? Do you ever eat by yourself? Do you ever eat standing up? How much do you know about what you eat and where it comes from? How much do you trust it? What are we deprived of by labor-saving devices? By thought-sav- ing devices? How are you affected by the requirements of efficiency, which place value on the product rather than the process, on the future rather than the present, the present moment that is getting shorter and shorter as we speed faster and faster into the future? What are we speeding towards? Are we saving time? Saving it up for what? How are you affected by being moved around in prescribed paths, in elevators, buses, subways, escalators, on highways and sidewalks? By moving, working, and living in two- and three-dimensional grids? How are you affected by being organized, immobilized, and sched- ule instead of wandering, roaming freely and spontaneously? Scav- enging? (Shoplifting?) How much freedom of movement do you have—freedom to move through space, to move as far as you want, in new and unexplored directions?And how are you affected by waiting? Waiting in line, wait- ing in traffic, waiting to eat, waiting for the bus, waiting for the bathroom-—learning to punish and ignore your sponta- a How are you affected by holding back your desires? By sexual repression, by the delay or denial of pleasure, starting in childhood, along with the suppression of everything in you that is spontaneous, everything that evidences your wild nature, your membership in the animal kingdom? Is pleasure dangerous? Could danger be joyous? Do you ever need to see the sky? (Can you see sters in it any more?) Do you ever need to see water, leaves, foliage, animals? Glinting, glimmering, moving? Is that why you have a pet, an aquarium, houseplants? Or are television and video your glinting, glimmering, moving? How much of your life comes at you through a screen, vicariously? Do videotapes of yourself and your friends fascinate you, as if you are somehow more real in image than in life? If your life was made into a movie, would it be worth watching? And how do you feel in situations of enforced passivity? How are you affected by a non-stop assault of symbolic communication— audio, visual, print, billboard, computer, video, radio, robotic voices—as you wander through the forest of signs? What are they urging upon you? Do you ever need solitude, quiet, contemplation? Do you remem- ber it? Thinking on your own, rather than reacting to stimuli? Is it hard to look away? Is looking away the very thing that is not permitted? Where can you go to find silence and solitude? Not white noise, but pure silence? Not loneliness, but gentle solitude? How often have you stopped to ask yourself questions like these? Do you find yourself committing acts of symbolic violence? Do you ever feel lonely in a way that words cannot even express? PESPCEKERGES "7 7Y £4 : Additional copies of this book are available for $8ppd from CrimethInc, Far East, PO Box 13998, Salem OR 97309 or get current information at wew.erimethine.com Plagiarized © 2001 by CrimethInc, Free Press Printed on recycled paper in Canada. English language (and all applications thercof) used without permission from its inventors, writers, or copywriters. No rights reserved. All parts of this book may be reproduced and transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, especially including photocopying if it is done at the expense of some unsuspecting corporation. Other recommended methods include broadcasting readings over pirate radio, reprinting tracts in unwary newspapers, and just signing your own name to this and publishing it as your own work. Any claim relating to copyright infringement, advocation of illegal activities, defamation of character, incitement to riot, treason, etc. should be addressed directly to your Congressperson as a milicary rather than civil issue. Ob, yeah... intended ‘for entertainment purposes onl,” you fucking sheep.sof Loe, ied Wi. CRIME THINE FOR BEGINNERSWaming: The word “revolution,” which Is used constantly throughout these pages with an unironic naiveté, may be amusing or off putting to the modam reader, convinced as he is that effective rasisiance to the status quo Is Impos- sible and therefore not aven worth considering. Gentle reader, we ask that you suspend your disbellef long enough to at least contemplate whether or not such a thing might be worthwhile It were possible; and then that you suspend It further, Jong enough to recognize this cisbellef for what it ls—despalr!‘Table o Discontents BD coc Cote Oat Tei Coated . Foreword by NietzsChe Guevara POPU Sea Sco rpmee as Ca Crete) Grom (ot ene Ceca 42, 44, 56, 83, 92, 99, 108, 119, 126, 132, 148, ERECT IL Important Documents: a CrimethInc. Contra-diction-ary ema g ei eeetrccanty Cisifor Capitalism, and for Culeure BP os po ee oe Demeter ny peeere ue) Gis for Gender Cea Crm e tices eros street CCL eS cco, eee Cons mas Coe nC nom tir: Lis fot Love . Mis for their Media, for Movement, and for Myth . Pis for Plagiarism, for Politics, and for Production Srnec unos uted . Tis for Technology, and for Theft; and finally, ee aN _ LIL Conclusion: Anywhere Out of This World een deens 7) Lee g . Index. BeAUetiae ewesWhat is crimethink? Today, everything that can't be bought, Sold, or faked is crimethink.Preface: What is a “Crimethine.”2 A spectre is haunting the world today: the spectre of crimethink, and the underground front which heralds it. In every corporate wash- room, on every street corner, under every roof from the ghettoes to the suburbs you can hear the whispers: “What is this CrimethInc.? Who are they? What do they want?” These questions can be approached, if not answered, CrimethInc. is significant for what it is not: it is not a membership organization. It is not an elitist vanguard that purports to lead the masses out of dark- ness to salvation—experience has shown a thousand times that such parties are the social forces that create masses. And it is not a Move- ment, either: for such things only exist as a part of history, and as such are subject to its laws—gestation, ascendance, decline. As crimethink is a force that exists beneath the currents of history, outside the chain of events, CrimethInc. is the first stirrings of a revolt that will take us all out of history. CrimethInc. is invincible because it is centerless, amoebic, invis- ible. Who is CrimethInc.? It could be anyone—the woman on the bus next to you could be one of us. Perhaps an autonomous CrimethInc. nucleus is at play in your town as you read this; perhaps you will form one when you're finished reading, Because CrimethInc. is an expres- sion of longings that are in every heart, it could be just three travelers in an Italian hostel tonight and two hundred thousand independent cells in full blown insurrection next month, As for what we want—you'd have to ask each of us, one by one, and hopefully you know better than to trust people when they answer that question. It was said of one of our predecessors, a body of ex-artists and theorists active primarily in the 1960's, that their group was unique in that it represented a stance rather than an ideology “not a position, but a proposition”). It would be tempting to say that CrimethInc. improves on their method in that it is founded on a shared desire, rather than a common critique; but this also misses the mark. CrimethInc. is a web of desires, all unique to the individuals who feel them; what sets CrimethInc, apart is that it is a means of interlocking these desires, of creating mutually beneficial relationships between people with different needs. This is why we have the bureaucrats and entrepreneurs, whose very existence depends on our isolation and frus- tration, shaking in their loafers. This is how we have come to be the ones to fire the first shots of the third and final world war, the war which will be fought for total liberation. 9 PrefaceeA UT Ted Crimethine. is the black market where brilliant schemes and wild abandon ECR ee ESCrimeThink for Yourself! How To Use This Book. Itis crucial to point out that this book isn’t designed to be used in the way a “normal” book is. Rather than reading it from one cover to the other, casting perfunctory votes of disapproval or agreement along the way (or even deciding to “buy in” to our ideas, in passive consumer fashion), and then putting it on the shelf as an- other inert possession, we hope you will use this as a tool in your own efforts—not just to think about the world, but also to change it. This book is composed of ideas and images we've remorse- lessly stolen and adjusted to our purposes, and we hope you'll do exactly the same with its con- tents. There’s no need to even read it as one unit if it doesn’t please you; such a thing might be too repetitive for the average bear, anyway: But please by all means use the images for post- ers, take sentences for your own writing, rein- terpret ideas and claim them as your own in- ventions, turn in the articles as papers for your Sociology class—if you must turn those papers in, that is! As for the contents themselves: we've lim- ited ourselves for the most part here to criti- cism of the established order, because we trust you to do the rest. Heaven is a different place for everyone; hell, at least this particular one, we inhabit in common. This book is supposed to help you analyze and disassemble this world—what you build for yourself in its place is in your hands, although we've offered some general ideas of where to start. In our next book we'll provide some more detailed suggestions, and share some of our experiences exploring the alternatives to the structures and forces we assault in this one. In the meantime, remem- ber: the destructive impulse is also a creative one ... happy smashing! -Nadia C. 1 Preface Against practicality we therefore disdain the example and admonition of tradition in order to invent at any cost something which everyone considers crazy!Forward! by NietzsChe Guevara 1. Normal? People from the (rapidly splintering) “mainstream” of society in Europe and the United States today take a peculiar pleasure in con- sidering themselves “normal” in comparison to legal offenders, politi- cal radicals, and other members of social outgroups. They treat this “normalcy” as if it is an indication of mental health and moral righ- teousness, regarding the “others” with a mixture of pity and disgust. But if we consult history, we can see that the conditions and patterns of human life have changed so much in the past two centuries that it is impossible to speak of any lifestyle available to human beings today as being “normal” in the natural sense, as being a lifestyle for which we adapted over many generations. Of the lifestyles from which a young woman growing up in the West today can choose, none are anything like the ones for which her ancestors were prepared by cen- turies of natural selection and evolution. It is more likely that the “normalcy” that these people hold so dear is rather the feelings of normalcy that result from conformity to a stan- dard. Being surrounded by others who behave the same way, who are conditioned to the same routines and expectations, is comforting be- cause it reinforces the idea that one is pursuing the right course: if a great many people make the same decisions and live according to the same customs, then these decisions and customs must be the right ones. But the mere fact that a number of people live and act in a certain way does not make it any more likely that this way of living is the one that will bring them the most happiness. Besides, the lifestyles associ- ated with the American and European “mainstream” (if such a thing truly exists) were not exactly consciously chosen as the best possible ones by those who pursue them; rather, they came to be suddenly, as the results of technological and cultural upheavals. Once the peoples of Europe, the United States, and the world realize that there is nothing necessarily “normal” about their “normal life,” they can begin to ask themselves the first and most important question of the new century: Forward! 12are there ways of thinking, acting, and living that might be mor e satisfying and exciting than the ways we think, act, and live today? oe © eee 08 PP las aoe Ee ea a a . er ere -e 0 0.0 0.08 Pa Sry e Pe ee >Transformation If the accumulated knowledge of Western civilization has any- thing of value to offer us at this point, it is an awareness of just how much is possible when it comes to human life. Our otherwise foolish scholars of history and sociology and anthropology can at least show us this one thing: that human beings have lived in a thousand differ- ent kinds of societies, with ten thousand different tables of values, ten thousand different relationships to each other and the world around them, ten thousand different conceptions of self. A little trav- eling can still show you the same thing, if you get there before Coca- Cola has had too much of a head start. ‘That’s why I can’t help but scoff when someone refers to “human nature,” invariably in the course of excusing himself for a miserable to live as the subject, rather than the object, of history— resignation to our supposed fate. Don’t you realize we share a com- mon ancestor with sea urchins? If differing environments can make these distant cousins of ours so very distant from us, how much more pos- sible must small changes in ourselves and our interactions be! If there is anything lacking (and there sorely, sorely is, most will admit) in our lives, anything unnecessarily tragic or meaningless in them, any cor- ner of happiness that we have not yet thoroughly explored, then all that is needed is for us to alter our environments accordingly. “If you want to change the world, you first must change yourself,” the saying goes; we have learned that the opposite is true. And there is another valuable discovery our species has made, albeit the hard way: we are capable of absolutely transforming envi- ronments. The place you lie, sit, or stand reading this was probably altogether different a hundred years ago, not to mention two thou- sand years ago; and almost all of those changes were brought about by human beings. We have completely remade our world in the past few centuries, changing life for almost every kind of plant and animal, ourselves most of all. It only remains for us to experiment with ex- ecuting (or, for that matter, not executing) these changes intentionally, in accordance with our needs and desires, rather than at the mercy of irrational, inhuman forces like competition, superstition, routine. Once we realize this, we can claim a new destiny for ourselves, both individually and collectively. No longer will we be buffeted about Forward! 14