American Anarchist Page #2

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At one point,

I watched a girl

having to run the gauntlet

of police with batons.

I don't remember how many

were arrested,

but it was over 100,

and a lot of people were beaten.

But it was

a classic police riot.

I was sickened by it.

I was angry, I was frightened.

I felt very strongly

that change needed to happen.

I thought the government

was out of control.

I was going to write.

I was going to turn my hand at

writing "The Anarchist Cookbook."

I had become very insular.

It was a project

that I was engaged in

entirely by myself.

I didn't talk about writing

the book with anyone.

Nobody knew.

I started out by locating

the section of the library

that had military manuals.

Army, Marine Corps,

special forces.

The shelf wasn't locked.

I mean, it wasn't

a rare book room

where you had to get

the librarian to unlock it.

They were just there on

the shelf, and I took them down.

The information

about explosives

came primarily from

"Explosives" and "Boobytraps."

One was called

"Escape and Evasion."

Things on sabotage.

The diagrams in the book,

some of them came from manuals.

Others, I drew myself.

I took about three and a half,

maybe four months to write it.

I wrote it in solitude.

No one read the manuscript

before it went to the publisher.

So your goal was what?

To take what the military had,

and what other

radical groups had,

and put it into

the common domain

so that it was

accessible to everyone.

Violent groups...

the Weathermen being one,

the government being another...

have access

to this information.

And are using it.

Therefore, why shouldn't

the rest of us

also have that information?

And I still

sort of question that.

That paradox.

Who controls the information?

I mean, whose hands

should it be in?

I mean, I'm told

that the book has a million, half,

two million copies in print.

I have no idea, really,

what the vast majority of those

people have done with the book.

I suspect very, very few

have read it cover to cover.

And I suspect even fewer

have actually

read these passages.

I think people are

drawn to the recipes.

Really, you don't

think people are drawn in

by your perspective

and your voice and inspired?

Um... I guess,

other people would be better

judges of that than I am.

I'm not inspired by it.

"I feel very strongly that

every person should be armed

"and that he or she should

be prepared for the worst.

"There's no justice

left in the system.

"The only real justice is

"that which the individual

creates themself,

"and the individual

is helpless without a gun.

"This may sound like

the dogma expounded

"by radical right-wing groups

like the Minutemen, it is.

"The time has passed

for demonstrations

"and pseudo revolutionaries and

students to occupy the political scene.

"The time is

for a mass uprising,

"armed with single-minded

deadly intolerance."

Yeah, well, it's, um...

it's over-the-top

exaggerated rhetoric.

Um...

Yeah.

"This chapter is going to kill and maim

more people than all the rest put together

"because people just refuse

to take things seriously."

"Explosives, if used with care

"and all

the necessary precautions,

"are one of the greatest tools

"any liberation

movement can have.

"It will confuse the enemy,

cause destruction and death

"with power and

the technology of the people."

But language

about maiming people does seem

that you are aware

that the book will be used

to commit acts of violence?

I think...

Um...

I think I'm aware

that there is certainly

that possibility.

I think that's in...

That's inherent

in the three paragraphs

that I've just read.

Um...

"Allow the fear, and the

loneliness, and the hatred

"to build up inside you,

"allow your

passions to fertilize

"the seeds of

constructive revolution.

"Allow your love of freedom

"to overcome the false values

placed on human life.

"Freedom is based on respect,

"and respect must be earned

by the spilling of blood."

I can remember writing that.

And I remember thinking

that is a cool turn of phrase.

I was pleased with that

at the time.

Now I think it's

absolute rubbish.

But at the time it sounded

really good to me.

I can see that people might

read portions

of this book and...

find justification

for doing very destructive

and evil things.

And that fills me with remorse.

Which is different than regret.

What... how would

you explain that difference?

I think maybe

we're at that point

now we're playing with words.

I'll just let it stand.

That if that has been the case,

and I think it probably has,

it fills me with remorse.

We're back, and we're talking

about censorship,

and pornography,

and all kinds of fun things.

And with us is Lyle Stuart,

he's president of the Lyle

Stuart Publishing Company.

How did you go

about finding a publisher?

Wrote a query letter,

which I sent out

to over 30

different publishers.

Lyle came back,

simple, one line,

"Let's see the manuscript."

I knew Lyle Stuart's books.

He had a reputation

for publishing

books that were

kind of on the edge.

I was awed by him.

Here was this

sort of wild man

that would publish

anything at all.

Of course, the thing about

so-called pornography

and obscenity laws is that

our standards are dynamic.

They're always changing.

The thing that would have

shocked us tens years ago

we don't even look at today.

He wasn't

intimidated by anybody.

I'd had 30-plus rejections

and I was really quite excited

that the book

was going to be published.

Once it was published,

there was just an explosion

of publicity.

There was also a barrage

of negative commentary.

I'd recognized that it would

create controversy.

I grossly underestimated

the controversy

it would provoke.

The gist was that it should

not have been published

because it was dangerous.

They called it the most

irresponsible publishing event

of the decade or century,

I don't know what.

Got a couple of anonymous

letters threatening to kill me.

It worried me.

It was almost like something

that was getting out of hand.

And what did you do?

Bought a gun.

You didn't show

the note to the police or...

No. I thought

it would be ironic

for the author of

"The Anarchist Cookbook"

to go to the police

with a death threat.

So, I didn't...

No, I didn't go to the police.

That was that sort of

pseudo-celebrity period.

Everybody wanted

to interview me.

And Lyle had organized

a press conference

at the Hotel Americana,

invited all sorts of reporters

and television stations.

About midway through

the press conference

someone threw a smoke bomb.

And it was spluttering

and smoking,

and everybody dived for cover,

including myself.

But what was interesting

was that when the smoke cleared,

the people that

hadn't dived for cover

were Lyle Stuart

and his secretary.

Lyle said afterwards

that he thought it was

a rival anarchist

protesting the commercialization

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