Against the Struggle of the Coward: A Note of Strength for the Underdogs

The following editorial looks at the risks people involved in contemporary movements face and what that says about them.

Struggle is a trajectory that functions with or without hope of victory. Struggle pertains to the maintaining of a position, the preservation of a conviction, and the refusal to forfeit integrity. Struggle is a risky endeavor; emotionally, psychologically, and in many cases physically.

The anarchist position is by far the most controversial of all political struggles. We can never turn to any border for asylum, nor any official for protection. We function without faith in society’s flaunted matrix of so-called rights. We function without an expectation of victory, and we fall in line with an affinity of organic desire and passion; rather than a prescribed ideology or organization.

Our anger is that of the excluded; so we can expect to be underfunded. We work towards the impossible, so we can expect the relentless wrath of capitalism’s rationality; degrading our hope. We can expect the full repressive force of the existent, as we call for the most radical of change.

The police are cowards. All fascists are cowards. The beneficiaries and defenders of this post-colonial tragedy known as the western world are cowards. They both function to re-enforce and preserve the existent. They are supported by the status quo, and can find comfort in cogs of the current system that maintains it. They do not dream, and reside solely in the superficial. More then anything we want to stress that they do not take risk. They do not engage in struggle, they are only obstacles to the struggle for freedom; cowardly treading on every revolutionary and sincere gesture of self-preservation, self-determination, and self-defense against conditions of despotism.

There are many definitions of a coward. For ourselves, we see the most pathetic of cowards as the ones who take pride in riskless behavior. We are not deeply impressed by a sanctioned street mural painted with the permission of authorities, but we always find a deep appreciation for a vandal’s art that flowers in the shadows of risk. Ask yourself; are you impressed by a group of cops who beat a man, or by the man risking death and prison to defend himself against those same cops?

The pride of police, and the praxis of fascists is embarrassing. When we take to the streets, we are risking everything. We are risking prison, and death. We are risking everything without anything. We function and struggle against all the odds, and amidst all the risks. Our pride and praxis is one the police and fascists could never understand. A lack of comprehension that manifests deeply in their daily disgrace; the only reason such scum can sleep at night.

Have you ever seen someone strip a screw while drilling? Drilling into an already fastened screw for no other reason then an obsession to reassure themselves of what already is? It is a volatile noise paired to an embarrassing action. An anthem to the heartless goals of the fascist. This fool who tries to drill the screw further and further is the mascot of the cop, patriot, and fascist.

In light of the terrifying times we live in, and the methods used to enforce them, we want to take a moment to encourage an appreciation for standing strong, and finding victory in this held ground alone.

Anarchists take the inconvenient route, or the road less travelled per se. We choose prison over snitching. We choose risk over comfort. We choose possibilities over coercive realities.

We find ourselves within a common love and solidarity among the excluded, the repressed, the oppressed, the discontent, the hungry, and the miserable. We fight side by side with strangers of a common enemy, whether in the streets or in the night. We suffer disappointment, but never give in to the easy judgments capitalism encourages us to have in order to divide us (For example: blaming other poor people for stealing your job, while ignoring the rich whose position depends on your precarity; we have the subtle empowerment of always knowing where to appropriately place blame.).

We are always challenging ourselves to grow; fighting the conditioning of our minds by the existent. No true struggle is pure and clean, it is a never-ending battle towards a dream guided by desire and conviction. We have never known true freedom before the coercive reality of this daily life, but we seek what our hearts tell us, not our masters.

The state, its beneficiaries, and all those who defend it will never understand what it means to not be a coward. They will reappropriate our rhetoric to appease the rebellious nature of every human; but it is just another embarrassing act. They are not worthy of respect.

While maintaining hope is a struggle in itself, we take pride in the continued refusal to ever give in to hopelessness. We take pride in dreaming and refusing to accept this stratified and terrible world enforced upon the earth and our humanity. Whether or not we win, we must remember, we are not cowards. They are.