Artistic anarchism has a long and complex history. Certainly one of its most interesting chapters in France is the development of two competing anarchist discourses about art’s libertarian possibilities during the years leading up to the ill-fated Paris Commune of …
The juxtaposing of anti-sexual statements on this page by the Vatican and certain leftist leaders and groups is not meant as an exercise in cynicism, but rather to illustrate in graphic terms the role sexual repression plays within all authoritarian …
(in Cooperation with Detroit Adventure) THURS. OCT. 2 OLD WORLD MARKET. Here’s your opportunity to travel the world by stepping through the portals of the International Institute. Exotic national arts, crafts and cuisine are available for purchase. Noon until 10 …
Thirty years ago, the most powerful military colossus ever assembled, its triumphant legions spread throughout the world, committed an expeditionary force of its best troops to the Asian mainland. “The American Army of 1965,” wrote an admiring historian, “was headstrong …
Fifth Estate Letters Policy We welcome letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in your area. We don’t guarantee to print everything received, but all letters are read by our staff and considered for publication.
Editors’ Note: The following events, now described as the Berkeley Rebellion, occurred between June 28 and July 2. Subsequently, the citizens of Berkeley won a complete victory when the city council lifted the curfew and allowed Telegraph Avenue to be …
UNCLASSIFIEDS cost 50 cents per line per issue. Figure four words per line. (A word is a word including one and two letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible. DISCOUNT RATES: …
a review of Israel’s Global Role: Weapons for Repression. Israel Shakak. Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., Belmont MA, 61 pp., 1982, $2.95.
Note to Web version: In the print edition this article is erroneously attributed to Coquilles St. Jacques. The invasion by technological civilization of indigenous societies, be it through massive industrialization or through seemingly innocuous “microtechnologies” in the form of commodities, …
Fifth Estate Letters Policy The Fifth Estate always welcomes letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in local areas. We don’t guarantee we will print everything we receive, but all letters are read by our …
Fifth Estate Letters Policy We welcome letters commenting on our articles or other topics, but can’t print every one we receive. Each, however, is read and considered for publication.
Joy To Read The following writer is one of the Vancouver Five. See our coverage of the start of their trials elsewhere in this issue.
This article was originally written for our 30th anniversary edition which appeared in 1996. It has been updated and expanded for this issue.
(for Federico Arcos) In 1937, at the opening of the London exhibition, “Surrealist Objects and Poems,” anarchist art critic Herbert Read delivered a short talk proclaiming the movement’s artists as “angels of anarchy.” The show’s catalogue cover also featured a …
Jim & Sid Bon Jours Cinque Etate: Allors!—as France’s leading Anarchist & Public Enemy Number One, I wish to offer my congratulations on your fine paper. As a revenue generating device, may I suggest an idea for a t-shirt: on …
Dear FE: After reading your articles in FE #345, Winter 1995 on the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of historical and moral context was needed to balance the distortion contained …
Imagine an alternate dimension where dervishes are roaming around America sects of Swedenborgian hobos, etc. You’re there camping in the cemetery long black hair in tangles ghostwhite face
Dear FE, I was glad to see your discussion of my pamphlet, Misinformation and Manipulation: An Anarchist Critique of the Politics of AIDS, in your Spring 1992 issue (see “AIDS: Sex in the Safe: Repression & Treatment,” FE #339, Spring, …
At 6:46 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on January 16, 1991, George Bush, Commander-in-Chief of the Empire’s armed forces, announced in Washington DC, “The liberation of Kuwait has begun.” And, at that moment half a world away in Iraq, the most …
This article, which began as a review of Frederick Turner’s inspiring work of intuitive history, Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness, is now the introductory section of a book in progress treating similar and related questions—the origins of …
The following letter was sent to an International Conference on Elisee Reclus, the 19th century anarchist geographer and political theorist. The conference, which was held in Milan on October 12-13, was one of several planned for 2005 to celebrate the …
Under the dull security and passive spectacle characterizing the total routine of everyday life in modern society lies the unmistakable framework of a withered and decayed social structure evading the grave in frantic pursuit of an eternal market of subservient: …
Peter Kropotkin, called the “anarchist prince” because of his origins in the Russian nobility, stands out among the many classic anarchist writers for his breadth of subject matter and his concern with the problems of daily life. The following essay …
We welcome letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in your area. We don’t guarantee to print everything received, but all letters are read by our staff and considered for publication. Typed letters or ones …
As President Clinton delivered his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) talking about “a bridge to the 21st century,” a half a mile away Chicago police were raiding a building housing anarchists from the Active Resistance Counter-Convention …
About this Section On Gogol Boulevard is produced for the Fifth Estate by New York City/Neither East Nor West, which links alternative oppositions in the East and West, and prints news and documents unavailable in the corporate or left media. …
Unruh Lee: In 1994, we started the Gardeners Against the Work Ethic Association (or GAWE) together. I later wrote in a ‘zine with this name, that this project was an “anti-work experiment in self-sufficiency, creating a new way of life …
Free feasts, erotic play and the eruption of the marvelous Read More »
War! Uh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! –Edwin Starr, “War” The Motown great Edwin Starr asked and answered this question in his 1970 song that became a best-selling record and the anthem of another in a series of …
Dolgoff & Cuba Saludos Companeros: Your review of the Dolgoff book on Cuba (FE #286, Sept. 1977) left a lot to be desired. As anarchist propaganda that book is a disaster. At the least, it’s sloppy work and may be …
1. Nuclearism is inherently totalitarian. The apparent controversy over nuclear power is not really a matter for debate: it mirrors the underlying question of social power. Its history makes this clear.
Hanging above the entrance way to the Town Hall of Brno, the capital of Moravia, is a Dragon. The famous Dragon of Brno. The Monster, which stares down through glassy eyes upon all who enter this seat of political power, …
Number surpasses all other ideas for its combination of impact and implication. Counting means imposing a definition and a control, assigning a number value.
“I know one or 2 who have this year, for the first time, read a president’s message, but they do not see that this implies a fall in themselves rather than a rise in the president. Blessed are the young …
Here in the heart of imperial North America, it’s (s)election year, and whether we like it or not, public discourse over the next several months will be dominated by campaign shenanigans.
Ironically, Iraqi Shi’ite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is currently disrupting US plans to democratize Iraq by demanding that the upcoming election process be more democratic. The Coalition Provisional Authority has balked at al-Sistani’s proposals, as it prefers the process for …
“‘You just have to turn on a television to see that those people need help, and no one else is going to help them but us,’ said Todd Schuppert, a truck driver from Pekin, Ind.” —New York Times, Dec. 1992
Just as today’s most obsessive notion is that of the material reality of time, self-existent time was the first lie of social life. As with nature, time did not exist before the individual became separate from it. Reification of this …
Correcting Yippies! The following is in response to an item which appeared in the Fall 1983 Fifth Estate which listed the Columbia (Mo.) Anarchist League as one of the sponsors of a Yippie! coordinated demonstration to be held at the …
a review of After the Fall: Communiques from Occupied California by Aragorn! Edited by Little Black Cart Books, Berkeley, 2010. This free newsprint publication is presently out of print, but can be downloaded at afterthefallcommuniques.info.
Eat The Rich Dear Fifth Estate, “Meat as Murder” in last issue’s letters [FE #317, Summer 1984], should have been titled “Vegetarian Fascism.” Vegetables are also living and to eat them is also murder. We suggest sucking on rocks …