Against His-story, Against Leviathan

Chapter 24
The English speaking Aguirres who spread death, slavery and ever-bleaker misery across the Dis-covered continent speaks eloquently of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Opposites merge, antonyms become synonyms on the Frontier, where all conflicts are reconciled. Zeks fight alongside their keepers, debtors alongside their creditors, borrowers alongside their bankers, suckers alongside their hustlers, in the most fraudulent extravaganza since the First Crusade. Desolation beyond imagination’s grasp is carried to uncountable Jerusalems. In the northern woodlands alone, where General Washington’s orders to General Sullivan are “to destroy totally the villages of the Iroquois,” Anthony Wallace will tell that The roster of destruction is a long one (and it earned Washington the name of Town Destroyer): Three towns on the Chemung River; three towns on the Tioga River; all of the dozen or so Cayuga and Seneca towns... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 23
I’m impatient to end the story of the artificial beast with human entrails. In a different work I will tell some of the details of the resistance to Americanization on the part of some of the world’s last communities. I cannot tell all, either there or here, because the struggle against His-story, against Leviathan, is synonymous with Life; it is part of the Biosphere’s self-defense against the monster rending her asunder. And the struggle is by no means over; it goes on as long as the beast is animated by living beings. It will conclude with His-story by summarizing, ever so briefly, the moments leading to its end. By carrying Leviathan acrss the Ocean, Europeans stretch the beastly integument over the expanse of the entire globe. In the brief span of a few generations, all of Earth falls into the entrails of a single artificial beast. But by encasing all of Earth within one Leviathan, the Europeans do Civilization a disfavor, for they put a term on its... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 22
The idyll is gone now. Nothing is left but the dirty realities. Leviathan is all there is. These very words, written words, are inventions of the Lugal’s scribes. They cannot convey dream time. Every meaning has been inverted. “Central Africa,” “Australia,” “America” are not the names of places where free human beings ever lived. They are names of unprecedented holocausts, of gigantic colonies, of monstrous Leviathanic trophies. They are Leviathan’s “empty continents.” From the vantage point of Death, all Life is an aberration. The languages of the two protagonists are mutually unintelligible. The very vocabularies are untranslatable. Leviathan’s world is a Wilderness to free living beings. The freedom of living beings is a Wilderness to Leviathan. Free human beings were able to encompass Leviathan in their horizon and still remain free. The Leviathanized cannot encompass free... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 21
Potawatomi storytellers of the Great Lakes told of a certain Wiske, an ancient trickster who, long ago, almost became Archon over Nesh-nabe, over free people. This Wiske was not altogether villainous to the Potawatomi. In ceremonies enacting his deeds, he wore the long-eared mask of the Hare totem. It was said that he helped the destitute, the trapped and the lost. His nephews said he gave the people webbed shoes so they could traverse the snow, canoes so they could float on water, as well as spears and arrows so they could feed themselves. Wiske’s nephews thought much of their uncle’s gifts, and they expressed their gratitude by returning gifts of similar magnitude. They pulled Wiske over the snow, paddled him over the water, and fed him all he could eat. Wiske was on the verge of becoming a Potawatomi Lugal. But the land around Kichigami, the lush woodlands, prairies and forest openings surrounding the Great Lakes, was not “the Fertile C... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 20
The Taborite communities that commit slow suicide are contemporaries of communities of Guanches murdered by mercantile Catholics. The Guanches are the last free inhabitants of Atlantic Ocean islands called Canaries, the first non-Europeans exterminated by seekers of Fortunate Isles. The Guanche communities were previously visited by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans and Muslims, yet they survived until a Norman adventurer called Bethencourt settled among them at the time when Rector Jan Hus refused to sell indulgences. By the last Hussite extinguish the unintended consequences of the Rector’s refusal, the Guanches are on their way to extinction. The hospitable Guanches, like the radical Taborites, are not allowed to live in Eden. A millennium of Christianity has taught Europeans that fallen human beings live in Sin. The dictum is not passively accepted by Christian Europeans. It is actively implemented. Those who do not live in Sin shall not live at all. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

We will be able to look at Rome closely. It will be an extremely well-documented Leviathan because it is enamored with its own His-story. We will be able to ask if Latin tribes really did step out of the “darkness” of the Eurasian steppes into the “light” of Mediterranean Civilization because the productive forces were ripe and waiting for them, if the “Barbarians” stormed the gates of Civilization because they were eager to take on the refinements and enjoy the amenities of the Higher Stage. In the case of Rome, we will not have to speculate; the story is set down and preserved. Only the beginnings are shadowy. The Romans say they desended from twins suckled by a wolf. They share this myth with Turks, so... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Phoenician octopus and its later Greek, Venetian and other offspring will come to be seen as something altogether different from the Assyrian worm. There will even be those who will see the octopus as a form of human freedom. I intend to show that this is an optical illusion. There is no doubt that the two Leviathans differ. The artificial worm’s claws and fangs, its armies, are usually attached to the body, whereas the tentacles of the artificial octopus detach themselves from the body and can be said to move about freely, especially if the tentacles are ships. The worm is largely landborne whereas the octopus tends to be seaborne. There is no doubt that two different types are in question. The point is that these are not types o... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Roman Empire continues to decompose rapidly-but not rapidly enough for the resisters. Every year brings new surprises; every season more springs pop, more wheels get jammed. But the artificial worm lingers on, and it keeps on lingering far too long for any resistance movement to remain what it was. It must be remembered that machines have the perverse ability to do the same thing the same way for as long as they operate. The ability is built into machines. But people do not have this ability. They change, they die, they are replaced by others who perceive and behave differently. The early resisters have some clear and powerful conceptions; the generations that follow them eventually invert every one of these conceptions and turn the ini... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

When Byzantine Emperor Justinian dispatched to Persia the army that had devastated Italy, he set more waves in motion than he probably intended to. The besieged Persian ruler Nushiravan, “The Immortal,” was the strongman most responsible for suppressing and massacring the peasants and Manicheans who had risen against Persia’s nobility. Unablte to count on the loyalty of the recently repressed Persian peasants, the Immortal sent recruiters to Arabia and confronted the Byzantines with an army of camel nomads. The nomads fought well, and both Leviathans sent recruiters to Arabia. Then both tried to establish permanent garrisons on the peninsula. Byzantines allied with Christian Abyssinians occupied Yemen and destroyed a Jewis... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Persian King covered himself with the mantle of Light, of Ahura Mazda. The Christian Church will cover itself with the mantle of reborn Osiris. Both have to lie continually to deny that they’ve put the mantles over machinery and to keep the mantles from slipping off. The fire that spews out of Leviathan’s jaws is a stolen fire. It is stolen from those who come to burn the monster. Neither lives nor fire are freely given to the monster; both fall into it as a trap, and once inside they try to find a way out, to burn their way out. The reign of Octavian Augustus the first Emperor of Rome is not a time of first things but of last things, it is not dawn but dusk. It is the time when the fourth beast, the beast with great iron te... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)