King Mob, The Motherfuckers & Revolutionary Art

From Fifth Estate, #416, Spring 2025

New York City, 1967. Roaming the streets in debate on the merits of the then-peak vogue art movement, Abstract Expressionism, are Ben Morea, part of a local affinity group, Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, and David Wise and Anne Ryder of the English group of cultural subversives known as King Mob.

Crazy Wisdom in an imaginary Fez: Knowing Peter Lamborn Wilson

From Fifth Estate, # 416, Spring 2025
by Jason Rodgers

Hakim Bey: Real and Unreal is the newest entry in a growing genre of literature, books about having met anarchist author and poet Peter Lamborn Wilson/Hakim Bey (1945-2022) and how it changed the author’s life.

Zines as Means for Change

From Fifth Estate # 416, Spring 2025

a review of War of Dreams: A Field Guide to DIY Psy-Ops by Jason Rodgers. PM Press, 2024

At the height of the zine movement in the 1990s, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands—what could be thought of as armies of people—would march off to their post office boxes every day to engage in an ongoing assault on mainstream culture using low-circulation publications as their weapons of choice.

A Russian village where the Revolution went to die

From Fifth Estate, #415, Summer 2024, by Lawton Browning.

a review of Chevengur by Andrei Platonov. NYRB 2023 (Originally published 1929)

In his 1920 essay, “Anarchists and Communists,” journalist, engineer and author Andrei Platonov wrote “True Anarchy is the understanding that all power and authority on Earth is unnecessary and harmful, that people do not need to be led.”

Change the World: Have Fun, be Creative

From Fifth Estate, # 415, Summer 2024
by Norman Nawrocki

Imagine if more people believed in the power and the magic of collective creativity, what a crazy wonderful new anarchist world we could build. Under capitalism, any form of creativity is usually seen as an individual pursuit, the domain of the rich, the elite and artistes. It’s something to be commodified, re-packaged, and sold back to others as pop culture to be consumed.

Lindsann on In the Digital Age: Poetic Reason as an Alternative

From Fifth Estate #415, Summer 2024

a review of Poetic Reason in the Age of Digital Control by Jesús Sepúlveda. Bad Idea Publishing, 2023

Jesús Sepúlveda’s Poetic Reason in the Age of Digital Control addresses some of today’s most pressing threats and sketches out some promising ideas of a strategy in response, which will hopefully be elaborated in future works.

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