Anyone gets to be a supernatural entity these days

Some gloating jackal-like parasites are fond of saying that the resonance of Ché Guevara has become nothing since his face is now a meaningless icon of "cool", useful only to sell T-shirts to idiots. Think again.

By night in the main square of the dusty town of Vallegrande, the only sound is the buzz of prayer coming from the church. Inside, devoted Catholics sit and stand around the image of Our Lord of Malta - the only black Christ in Latin America, brought to this Bolivian town during the Spanish conquest.

But this is not the only foreign element of devotion. Father Agustin, the Polish priest, reads out prayers written down by local people: "For my mother who is sick, I pray to the Lord and ... ", hesitantly, "to Saint Ernesto, to the soul of Che Guevara."

"Saint Ernesto," the parishioners murmur in response.

It was here in Vallegrande, 40 years ago, that the corpse of Ernesto "Che" Guevara lay on display, eyes open, in the hospital laundry. And it is here that his unofficial sainthood is becoming firmly established.

"For them, he is just like any other saint," Agustin says ruefully.

On a bench in the square, Freddy Vallejos, 27, says: "We have a faith, a confidence in Che. When I go to bed and when I wake up, I first pray to God and then I pray to Che - and then, everything is all right."

Chaos Marxism still thinks it was bloody stupid for Che to go to the peasants rather than the tin miners in Bolivia, but that's irrelevant to the issue at hand. The historical Jesus of Nazareth is only tangentially related to Christ the Lord - I'm not sure how much Ernesto Guevara has to do with Saint Che. I'm not going to argue with someone who answers prayers and performs miracles. Especially since his mate Fidel is in good with the Santería spirits, by all accounts.

Sectarian Cat Is Sectarian

The most parasitic “Satanic” newsletters invariably contain a liberal dose of LaVey-baiting. Their editors’ masochistic requirements are exercised as “lively exchange.” Their mainstay is often the reprinting of any letter, pro or con, from anyone capable of grasping a writing implement or poking at a computer or typewriter key. When responding to such transparent tactics, it’s our policy to preface rebuttals with two acknowledgments:

A) “I know you’re a masochist and delight in hostile banter,” and

B) “Anything I write or say to you will keep you going for another six months.” The Satanic Bible advises to “question all things”—but it helps to be able to think, first.

The Church of Satan tells dimwits where to get off. The funny thing is that - substituting a few words - Marxist sectarians often act in precisely the way described above. (*cough*) Note also that Uncle Karl said "Question Everything" long before Uncle Anton the Lion-Tamer did.

If there is hope, it lies in weightless music

Your last release ´The Futurist´ talked about leaving rock and roll behind, yet ironically any ground that techno gained over rock in the mid 1990s has now been dramatically beaten back by the stadium emotion of bands like Coldplay. How do you feel about this, do you think there is any hope of an electronic or experimental backlash?

The end of the 90's was so wild, this almost had to happen. George Bush, Blair, the return of garage rock and retro. I interprete the last years in that way that people were scared. 9-11, the war, everything suddenly changed. That’s perhaps why the music scene, especially in the UK has gone so conservative. But I already see the signs of that ending. Evolution is on our side, that’s the good thing. I mean we can watch films on our mobile phones, but we listen to music which sounds like it was done 30 years ago? This is stupid and boring. We witness the death of the music industry like it existed for the last fifty years. Pop music in the British sense is dying. And that’s no provocative statement, it’s a fact. Globalisation plays a huge part in that. The identity of the 'people' of a nation will slowly fade away. And with that goes pop music. The underground has the right model in place. It has created a worldwide network already and only the good music can survive within that system. 'Good’ meaning, truly chosen by the crowd and not being financed by corporations or religious organisations.

Alec Empire from Atari Teenage Riot reassures us that the Ghost Point hasn't actually happened yet. Although note a comment posted to this interview:

Alec's politics are alright with me... just a shame his music is awful. I found it as aurally appealing as putting a steel rubbish bin over my head and having several people smash the bin with hammers. Maybe some people enjoy that attack on the senses but I cant stand it. All of the ATR/DHR stuff never seemed to mature beyond that sound, which is a shame because as mentioned in the interview, the ease of making music with software meant that a lot more people could pick it up - which they did, witness the continuing mutant children of all forms of electronic(ally produced + arranged) music ranging from the bass weight of dubstep to the cut+paste/sample-happy bastard pop.

Alec is just as uncomprimising with his views as he is with his music, this means of course while other (apolitical) people went out and made fun, engaging, soulful music, he was still banging it out ear-blistering style, while people got bored of it and went elsewhere for their kicks. I didnt even know he was still around.

[...]

Music that is constantly out and out political all the time (by that I mean artists who only ever write political lyrics) gets fairly tedious + childish too... count the number of lame punk bands screaming the same shit repeatedly about the system, the cops, the man.. it might not have even been so bad if you could actually hear what they were saying. But I doubt it.

A timely warning against musical as well as political sectarianism, there.

Closer now, to seeing the revelation

I have a recurring dream where I have finally been accepted into the S00per-Sekrit Society of Cool People Who Are The Only Hope For The World. Their headquarters is up a set of clammy and portentous stone steps, and they have the damndest best parties up there. Everyone is extremely pretty and wants to have sex with me once we get back from our vital, world-changing missions.

And then I wake up and say "...stupid reality."

And that's what most really popular fiction is, it's lying to the target audience, it's coming up with whatever they need to hear to make them feel good about themselves. It's about reassuring them that they're the centre of the universe. I know I'm well-known for ranting, but I think that's the thing which unites everything I've ever ranted against. Sandman and The Matrix and Harry Potter all have it in common, they're all incredibly cynical that way, they're all about the self-satisfaction of the audience. They're about making people in the target demographic group feel as if they're the chosen ones, or potential chosen ones.

- Mad Larry. In "This Town", Larry also says something along the lines of "the only true witch is someone who understands that there are no cosmic forces". Well, the 15 year old me who read The Mists of Avalon and believed it for a while might be happy to hear that.

Cultural revolutionaries - then and now

"History will absolve me" - Fidel Castro



"History will prove us right" - Sigue Sigue Sputnik

Seriously. Both of the above screwed up in spectacular fashion, but at least proved what is possible. Read Tony James' own account of what SSS was all about, and gasp at the amateurish but quite impressive grasp of memetic engineering. (DISCLAIMER: Chaos Marxism does not endorse wearing fishnets over your face.)

Incidentally - everyone out there interested in revolutionary politics, magick or the future of humanity in any way must immediately purchase and read This Town Will Never Let Us Go. It has precisely the same top-of-the-head-unscrewing effect that James Curcio's Join My Cult!, and yet Mad Larry has never used any drug more intense than alcohol.

Here's a more recent attempt at cultural revolution - the Weightless Music manifesto.

Hello, new friend

A sympathetic but not uncritical review of what we do here. Thanks for your feedback - it makes it more likely that I'll update more frequently.

I should point out that I went precisely the opposite way from the cliché - I was an anarchist ten years ago, but got fed up with the lifestyle "politics", the tyranny of structurelessness and the endless posing, so went towards Leninism. You see, love him or hate him, you must admit that Lenin caused a ruckus on a worldwide level. The day an anarchist political figure manages that, call me back.

I still maintain that Lenin - like Crowley - gets a bad rap because (a) the majority of his "followers" were and still are idiots, and even contain a minority of sociopathic assholes; (b) because he was more interested in getting results than getting warm fuzzies. I am tempted to say that if you're in the business of revolution, if you're not hated by a large group of people when you die, you didn't do it right.

Also - I'm still sad about the SubGenius response to my comments. The responses were pretty unanimously the standard liberal auto-smears of Marxism, which didn't explain why, if it was "a doctrine for bees, not primates" (Stang), they had written something that looked extremely like it in their holy book.