“The Anarchist Cookbook” by William Powell
There’s a unique museum in Tallinn, Estonia, called the Museum of Banned Books. The museum displays all sorts of banned books from around the world, a lot of which are available for purchase in the museum’s shop.
But there’s 1 book that even the museum is not displaying, but they rather put it behind the counter, because it is too dangerous. So dangerous that even the writer himself years later after publication (1971) was trying to make the book banned. Can you guess what the book is? That’s right it’s this book, The Anarchist Cookbook.
The book has the best possible beginning in “A prefatory note on Anarchism today” chapter (in the 1989 version that I read), which describes what anarchy is all about, using an impressive range of literatures and ideas from figures as diverse as Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and Henry David Thoreau. It provides the incredible historical context of the rise of anarchism that made my heart pounded and eyebrows raised (because most of what it said are still the problems in today’s unequal world), not to mention an excellent [1970s] geopolitical map that shows the justification of anarchic point of view towards the tainted governments (with the book written at the back of a protest against the Vietnam war and Nixon’s chaotic administration).
Which raises an important question, is anarchism the appropriate response to the corrupted status quo? That was certainly what the Puerto Rican rebels were thinking when they bombed an FBI headquarter, and the thinking behind the bombers of 10 abortion clinics in the US, among many other incidents, all of whom use this book as their guide.
Indeed, the book contains a lot of detailed guide about anarchism, including teaching us how to sabotage electronics, surveillance, and bugging devices. It also shows the manuals of different types of lethal and non-lethal weapons, from hand-to-hand combat, to knives, cattle prod, garrote, bows and arrows, to different types of guns and rifles, all of which shows how to use them properly (grip, timing, etc) and where they can inflict the most damages in the oppositions. And then the big one, how to make different variations of bombs, from chemicals and gasses, to explosives and booby traps, with variations from home-made hand grenade, to Molotov cocktail, and to bombs with timers or remote detonators.
One chapter that honestly baffles me is the one right after the introduction, on drugs, where the book shows the most detailed how-to guide to make them: seeding, cultivating, caring, harvesting, or for some drugs cooking and mixing chemicals. It covers drugs from weed, hashish, LSD, cocaine, heroin, psilocybin, to names I’ve never heard of like Peyote, DMT, Barbiturate, to as elementary as cough syrup, glue, and weirdly enough, banana. Why on Earth would the author, William Powell, begin the guide with how to make drugs? Is it perhaps to show an act of rebellious in the context of early 1970s hippie culture? Or is it to create a drugged up armies like the drugged Nazi soldiers before they went on a blitzkrieg? Now that’s scary.
The book closes with a very practical guide on demonstration, how to behave around the cops, what to do when you get arrested, as well as the phone numbers to call for a legal help, and closing it with the very last sentence “Freedom is based on respect, and respect must be earned by the spilling of blood.”
These practical knowledge have since made the book the go-to guide to rebel against the government and cause mayhem, just like what the Puerto Ricans did. This is what prompted Powell himself to eventually declare: “I want to state categorically that I am not in agreement with the contents of “The Anarchist Cookbook” and I would be very pleased (and relieved) to see its publication discontinued. I consider it to be a misguided and potentially dangerous publication which should be taken out of print.”
I mean, I get it. I understand why its own author was trying to ban it and even the Museum of Banned Books is hiding it. Because anyone who reads it can really start a chaos from scratch, which is bad news for any government or any controlling status quo. Hence, the difficulty to find this book anywhere today.
However, what about the balancing role over the corrupted? What can us the ordinary people do to stop those in high positions from abusing their power and constantly violating the laws with impunity? Well, whether you have an unexpressed rage against the machine or want to go as extreme as self immolating yourself like Thich Quang Duc, whether you want to start a low-risk peaceful protest or conduct a high-risk revolution, the first small step that you can take in any of the actions is simple: to remember this book.
Click here for the PDF version of the book.
THE CHAOS THEORY 