Introduction

A first message to any readers out there

I have two muses driving the idea behind this blog. The first one is the obvious one and my main theme, Anarchy, and specifically the lives of the anarchists, focusing on but not limited to the ones that lived in my land, Argentina, in the beginning of the 20th century. These stories have inspired me profoundly, and got to me just before becoming an adult. These little pearls showed me the true potential of a human being driven by an Idea. They showed me that, before anything else, Anarchism is about how the only possible agent of change is the will and the action of the individual.

My second muse is the Reddit crowd. I have witnessed and participated in the blossoming potential of the Internet, of anonimity, of instant communications, and I have pondered about its true potential for social change. Many things kept dissapointing me, as I saw this untapped power spawning from the earth beneath me, but driven in such poor or superficial manner. I won’t go deeply into the problems with Facebook, no need to that here. 4chan never took itself seriously engouh to mean anything more than a headline every now and then (in a sense, and I’m rambling here, be warned, these are some sort of “Titans” like in the greek mythology of the internet, these senseless, dumb all-mighty behemots who every once in a while clash or defecate or something and give birth to more refined forms of internets). Then I met Reddit, and even though I didn’t think “THIS IS IT!”, I did think, while exploring some venues of it (like /askscience, or /iama, or the random acts of pizza things, or /atheism, or /anarchism) that made me think: “Hey, this is producing something!”. Reddit has inspired me to really dominate the english language so I can be up to par with you Grammar Nazis. To check my sources before blurting out something that deep down I’m not quite sure of, and thus has made me realize how much I actually do know. I feel belonging, and, most importantly, I feel a need to share.

And I choose to share these stories about my land, and about the people that first pointed in the right direction when I asked “Where does injustice come from?”. The last true romantics, the last adventurers, the last renaissance men. People committed to an idea so elevated that was doomed from the start to be shot in the back of the head in a dark alley in History, while staring in disbelief at how both sides of the world engaged in what could only be described as perfect complementary opposites of wrongness. The ones who fought, died. Died in Madrid, in Barcelona, in the US, in the Patagonia. The only thing they could do is leave with a bang, making noise. And they did.

I want to point at one specific fact: the Sacco and Vanzetti excecutions to gauge what true Libertarianism, or Anarchy or Socialism meant at one point in our history, before all these ideological barriers were built. Sacco and Vanzetti were two anarchist italian immigrants to the US who were sentenced to death in a very very shady process (You can read more details in the link above). Just two guys, immigrants, on death row. At those times (even today), that would not be such a big deal. These guys raised a level of international protest that was never seen before. I don’t have a source for this, but I have read estimations that a total of 2 million people were mobilized in protest to the Sacco and Vanzetti excecutions world-wide. Before the Internet. Before the phone. Before TV and Radio. Two. Million. People. Even if this number is not true, you just need to look at the people that came out to talk for Sacco and Vanzetti, which include the likes of Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein and H. G. Wells. You just need to look at the percentages of adherence that the strikes originated by this raised. This was all pushed forward by an organization that was profoundly anarchical in its conception and nature, the Industrial Workers of the World. And it was amazing for the time. It was a light of hope, a beacon, a standard in a world wide fight for freedom and true Democracy.

We have a lot to learn from these people, from the message they died trying to pass on to us. And, in my particular case, I want to share with you the sometimes amazing and cinematographic things that happened in that time that may not be shared in this language (or in this community) if I don’t. I hope to spark your interest and hopefully that you will be as amazed and as appalled as I was when I first learned these stories.

And I will leave you for now with my favorite quote, from a character that we will get to in time:

“To live in monotony the rotting hours of tame, resigned, comfortable people is not living life, it is just to vegetate, to transport a mass of flesh and bones. Life needs the exquisite rebellion of the fist and the mind to be lived.“