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The Individualist Hymn

Sat, 01/26/2013 - 06:04 -- Anonymous (not verified)

From Anarchy in Italy

Before dying in the mud on the streets
we would imitate Bresci and Ravachol;
anyone who extends a hand to you, bourgeoisie,
is a person unworthy of looking at the sun.

Grinding machines tear the beggars to pieces
and their wives are forever pale and weeping,
The fields remain fallow, the miners buried
and the workers crushed forever by murder.

And to those who don’t give in, open the tombs,
prepare the bombs, sharpen the knife,
action is the ideal!

France, on the watch with the guillotine,
chops off the head of anyone who wants to punish her.
Cowardly Spain strangles with a garrote and murderous
Italy guns down those who aren’t accustomed to trembling.

Hanged in America, throats cut in Africa,
forever tortured at Montjuich in Spain,
but the individualist still knows how to strike
the sorry breed of gentleman thugs.1

And to those who don’t give in, open the tombs,
prepare the bombs, sharpen the knife,
action is the ideal!

As long as we are a herd it’s appropriate that there’s
a social gang passing laws;
as long as the sun of anarchy doesn’t shine,
we will always see the slaughtering of the populace.

Be very afraid, coppers, when you hear
the dynamite exploding against the oppressors.
We are enemies of all cops and scoundrels,
And one against all, we will scatter them.

And to those who don’t give in, open the tombs,
prepare the bombs, sharpen the knife,
action is the ideal!

1These lines might also translate as “But the sad race of the gentleman thug,/the individualist still knows how to strike,” but among Italian anarchist the word “signor” (or “signore”) is most often used sarcastically in reference to the ruling class. Taking that into account I chose this translation as what was most likely intended.

Original (italian)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiO6hAOyze4

Punk version (spanish)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiVTTtgtFxw

Category: 

Comments

Submitted by termite (not verified) on

Yay!!!

Submitted by emile on

The authoritarian worldview of the bourgeoisie (=believers in the authoritarian worldview) is a patho-psychological condition, the running amok of the ego, making one believe that one ‘deserves’ to prevail over the rest.

Killing the booj is one thing but killing the process which keeps making more would be the more strategic way to go [undermining the intellectual premises of bourgeois society aka colonialism].

Submitted by You Are An Idiot (not verified) on

This is an idiotic reduction: "bourgeois society aka colonialism" As if bourgeois society was abolished with the end of the colonialist era? Laughable. Tell that to the people in Mali.

Submitted by emile on

colonialism is alive and well. it manifests as the taking over and controlling of the means of production through political structures. like the mafia, it has ‘fronting businesses’ called ‘national governments’ which cooperate through colonizing power alliances like NATO to put newly aspiring fratelli in power . the bourgeoisie are the worker-bee controllers of the means of production within the global colonizing system. the Cheney-Halliburton connection is not an isolated connection, it is the rule; i.e. it is all one system.

Submitted by Bullshit Detector (not verified) on

Stick to academic philosophy, buddy. When it comes to the reality of political economy, you are very ill-formed.

Submitted by emile on

a sliver of specifics in an ad hominem is customary, lest its author appear a total blowhard.

Submitted by Bullshit Detector (not verified) on

A huge amount of empty but apparently specific bullshit is customary for a post by Emile, which makes him such a longwinded bore.

CASE CLOSED.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I do find emile to be basically a mental case but quite bright too and in this case, I happen to agree. Maybe sound even more pompous by calling it "neocolonialism"? It's still alive and well.

Submitted by Dear Doctor (not verified) on

Yes, many mental cases are "quite bright," but that doesn't make them any less mental.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

hey buddy, it's called economic colonialism or neo-colonism. Are you kidding me that you haven't heard those terms? The bourgeoisie obviously depend on colonialism; you can't accumulate the wealth they have now by simply exploiting the masses in your own immediate area (aka feudalism), which is why the aristocracy was absorbed by the bourgeois class....

Submitted by Anti-Leninist (not verified) on

You should just come out of your Leninist closet and call it by the terms he used: imperialism. Your "historical analysis" is identical to his and just as musty.

Submitted by emile on

so what do the terms matter? the world dynamic is one thing. nature is one thing. we divide it up and name-label the parts and processes for our convenience. the problem is, we start believing that the parts we have divided things up into are ‘real’. they are not ‘real’ in a physical sense, they are idealized parts. so how many different ‘things’ must we launch attacks against? against the state authorities, ... against the bourgeoisie, ... against the neocolonialists, ... against the neoliberals, ... against the capitalists, ... against one-eyed jewish bankers, ...

my point was that the nomenclature tends to have us chase symptoms rather than source; e.g. authoritarianism features guys on the top raping people on the bottom, however, colonialism orients to controlling space and making it rape-ready for those with the right credentials. once the space is colonized, the bigshots don’t have to chase after their victims, the brothers of the victims-to-be will bring them to the bigshots and hold them down while he rapes them, for which they earn rape-rights on the graduated rape-rights scale. as thomas mann put it;

“The capacity for self-surrender, he said, for becoming a tool, for the most unconditional and utter self-abnegation, was but the reverse side of that other power to will and to command. Commanding and obeying formed together one single principle, one indissoluble unity; he who knew how to obey knew also how to command, and conversely; the one idea was comprehended in the other, as people and leader were comprehended in one another.”

it’s a ‘relational value system’ that is upstream from a long list of symptoms that we tend to go on the ‘anti-’ attack against (dividing our energies); e.g. anti-political faction, anti-state, anti-capitalist (anti-abusive corporation). sovereigntism, as law historians point out was a device necessary for colonization. globalization is seen as project of the sovereign states, but this is backwards, ... the social darwinist value system is what has gone global via 'westernization' aided by global banking, ... and state governments are like precinct police stations distributed so as to condition space and make it rape-ready on a global basis.

definitions, those you prefer, and/or others, are not the point. it is the overall relational system and relational values that drive it that is the point. if we don't understand the system as a whole, our energies are divided and squandered on a plethora of linguistic idealizations.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

There's another Italian (?) folk hymn that celebrates the molotov. Does anyone know the name or a way to listen to it? The chorus repeats Molotov! Molotov!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

dude thats a madeup crimethinc song

Submitted by drava (not verified) on

no. not the Molotov with big M, but small. Molotov was a sonoffabitch.
molotov coctail it's product of a Finish deffenders in war wih Russia named ironically "molotov"

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I have "si schiudan le tombe, s'affili il pugnal" on the inside of my welding hood, in case the fact that I'm wearing a welding hood isn't enough of a reminder of who I hate.

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