Who are the Edelweiss Pirates?
We are a loose band of dropouts, lumpenproles, eggheads, hooligans, rogue scholars, amateur graffiti writers, queers, and party randos found spread throughout the social nightmare that is the US pacific northwest and points beyond. We are each an amazing goddamn specimen of that sadly, inexplicably rare species of anarchist wingnut who is against both civilization AND fascism.
We take our nom de plume from the little-known story of youth crews and street kids in nazi germany who loved Black music, who camped out in the woods in order to subvert the creeping regimentation of their lives, dodging service in the social programs and initiatives of the regime, and who would violently fuck up the Hitler Youth so bad (eventually killing a Gestapo chief in Cologne) that the problem of “the Edelweiss Pirates” was taken up in the internal documents of the government, Himmler himself dictating policy to his underlings in the disciplining of these recalcitrant bodies.
Broadly speaking, our critique/attack tends to face in two directions: against fascism, reaction, and patriarchy, and against the false opposition to these enemies found in the ensemble of democratic discourse and governance, the (allegedly) kinder, gentler civilized disaster of the Left. On one hand, as anti-civ discourse and space is more and more beset by the Spectacle-obsessed, ressentiment-fueled shock tactics of confused reactionaries, a drawing of lines and cleaning of house is long past due. Simultaneously, the neo-colonial dreams of the pro-industry “anarchists” must be dashed upon the rocks of reality at the earliest opportunity. Any substantial foray into the matter yields the knowledge that civilization is state-based society. That is, the existence of the State and its caste organization is what differentiates civilized societies from uncivilized ones. Any coherent waging of class war would mean the end of all this. To the defenders of the existent order and to the false critics thereof, we say: a plague on both your houses.
In the so-called Age of Trump– a time of incredible precarity, exploitation, brutality, and ecological apocalypse, but also of renewed social ferment, insurrection, and the gathering embers of revolutionary ambition– many people are newly entering the fray of action and ideas, rummaging through the wreckage of the last century for a talisman, a movement, a leader, or a clue for escaping our current straits. Many on the Left are opportunistic authoritarians seeking to exploit this burgeoning interest, make new recruits, and revive some of the worst ideas and projects from the dustbin of this rancid, corpse-filled His-Story. Meanwhile, the Right are similarly hoping to capitalize on the inertia of centuries, counting on people to turn a blind eye, make the trains run on time, and believe that work makes them free. More and more, the Left-Right spectrum is an inadequate tool for making sense of the world we have inherited.
Most of us have stood against these enemies for a long time. In the ETERNAL WAR ON THE HITLER YOUTH, we don’t have to start from scratch, and neither do you.
If you would fight against fascism and the civilization that has spawned it, you are an Edelweiss Pirate.
Find each other.
(contact: )
On the Original Edelweiss Pirates:
For more on the original Edelweiss Pirates, those “more violent groups” who “daubed anti-Nazi slogans, sheltered deserters and beat up Nazi officials,” some of whom were later hanged by the Hitler regime and later still sentenced to decades in prison by Soviet conquerors, check out the following links:
http://www.anti-politics.org/distro/text/hitleryouth.html