Candlelit Reflections: Volume 1
A collection of four essays: “Cut From a Different Cloth”, “Why Defunding Isn’t Enough”, “Theft”, and “The Golden Age of Mass Shootings”
Cut From a Different Cloth
Many anarchists are quite content to live in the shadows. To don the mask for a joyous occasion, perhaps a traditional protest or the more spectacular black bloc demonstration. These types live a luxurious lie, no doubt. A double life, precariously balancing upon the hope none will unearth their anarchist inclinations.
For some, this becomes an impossibility without publicly disparaging the cause. You are captured at an event, thrust into the public eye. A fascist obtains your personal information, possibly contacting your family or employer. I know you are afraid, comrade, and that should not be. For us to have our masks stripped, or even to do so voluntarily, we must grasp the power we each individually posses to form an anarchistic existence in our immediate present. To try and will things as they once were will only end in grief.
Why must we hide? Do the moralists offend you? Are you burdened with the attacks of respectability and posturing demanded? Have the terroristic threats from the fascist cause dealt their mark?
I have found far more joy with the mask pulled off my face, a true test of my drive and devotion. Every authority figure wants to put their words in my mouth, instead I get to embarrass them (at times, show their sympathies). I can be blunt, and I am afforded infinite more opportunities for propaganda. Sometimes merely by existing. The state will not kill me. Instead I will show you all how scared the state is of us seeing through the veil.
Nihilism has been my liberator – nothing truthfully matters. Why did I not yet live – I saw. When you have a foot in what is, when you feel you have something to lose: does propagating the conditions of capitalism ad nauseum, does existing merely to at one moment behold an aesthetical anarchist spectacle, really speak truth to your life? You should die by the sword, not bow to it. You should live as an anarchist, not merely aspire for anarchy to be.
A mask is a tool, as I see it its use is not mere social – do not take my words as opposition to crime. One is often emboldened by the comfort of anonymity, how it allows a daring voice to lead a boring life. Don’t let capitalist comforts rock you to sleep, with the lullaby of a revolution to come. Anarchy is not an apple to be taken from a tree when ripe. It is not an aesthetic to be donned for spectacular photography. Then again, maybe to you it is.
Are you committed to the Anarchist cause? Lets confront the causes of your fright. We should not be forced to hide. Must every newcomer to the cause hide in the shadows? I assure you, the state is likely already privy to your inclinations – why not make a better existence for those to come? I’d like for you to not cower in fear, as many are told to do.
I am as in the open as one could hope to be. Sure, I’ve lost my freedom, and I can not yet speak of life. Why does that matter? I can still speak of my principles, my ideals, with fervor – I will not blame myself for the state’s icy wrath. The state will not see its end by cowering in the shadows. If you will not be proudly anarchist, then know that here I lie.
No lie creepeth from my lips – I am an anarchist.
Why Defunding Isn’t Enough
The saying goes, very literally, to vote with one’s wallet. Really? As if I deny something funding, it ceases to exist? The police would still exist, they would be able to acquire resources, capital as it were, in other ways. Do we want policing to devolve, perhaps more so, into producing profit? We want total abolition. How is defunding, accomplishing this goal?
What of the terror and harm police are able to cause with minimal funding? Would a defunded police have murdered Jayland Walker with fewer bullets? WAs funding the cause, the allowing factor, in Derek Chauvin’s serial brutality, in George Floyd’s death? Do I need to list each-and-every police murder? Their goal, purpose, is to enact violence on the civilian populace, to coerce the poor into complacency, to kill those who defy the State’s will.
Its never about stopping crime – its about instilling fear, obedience. Maintaining a police means authority is taken as truth; authority existing at all, having power, institutional or social, affirms their seat, their position, gives authoritative control. You want a badge and the orders, demands, lack of consent that come with it; just that it not be as reprehensible as the star-spangled slavemasters. I desire the complete abolition of rule, ergo law. I want freedom, not just defunded tyrants that can still threaten me – no tyrants. An end to tyranny means an end to policing in any form.
Say I took away the horses and swords of a King’s loyal soldiers, as example. Would he not still posses a group of loyal servants who command his authority, his law? Even weakened, even lessened in numbers, police defunded exist.
If you are insistent on the need to defund rather than abolish, if your calls to defund aren’t part of a project of abolition, you assert a need for authority, a need for state-sanctioned violence. Those the police label bad, evil, unjust, will be faced with the righteous violence of the court.
Must we kill Socrates all over again? Have we learned nothing of being ruled by majority and morality at all? The most liberal, democratic, impoverished police are still police.
Theft
Theft is Good
I love to take what ought to be mine
To rob and loot from capitalist swine
Death to all of bourgeois society
Vive l’Anarchie!
Gimme. You’ve got such excess, babe – you want me to trade my being for your food? Oh, for paper. Same fucking shit. I’m here to take what I need. You don’t get to order that I starve, you won’t get to deny me life.
You sit upon your piles of accumulated wealth. Of course its fucking joyous, you damn near all to suffer. I’m here to take what’s mine, through deception or force. You commit acts of violence everyday by deceiving folks on what you own. Even acquiring what you claim has amounted to mere chance or sheer sociopathic greed. Oh, but you’re smart? You’ll still bleed.
It must be terrible to order others labor to your benefit. So terrible that I take what I need. I’ll still do it. I don’t give a shit about you. You reap what you sow; I have no empathy for tyrants. Give it to me babe, i’m not here for you to say no. The capitalistic hellscape you cater to, reproduce, doesn’t really ask politely. I’m here to take “your” shit. It’s mine.
You expect me to suffer without, so you may live in excess? Can you repeat that with a knife to your throat, or are you aware of what you demand? Don’t talk, just hand it over. I’ll take what you’ve tried to declare as yours, and all of mine you’ve tried to take for it. Well I need only to take yours, but I’m alluding to something here.
You’d rob me of any life, and make me call it honest, were I not to rob you of what’s mine. An honest day’s robbery – mine. Your property is mine.
You’re not as powerful as you look, is that why you cower under the apron of the state? You’re in for a rude awakening when our civilization collapses, when the state crumbles. If all you know how to do is exploit others, do you expect things to continue as they’ve been without your strong arm? I’m already tired of it.
I want what is within my power to take. I want my own. I want the whole world, I’m not going to have it handed to me.
I am a thief.
The Golden Age of Mass Shootings
Welcome to the golden age of mass shootings.
American heroes like Robert Crimo pursue the American Dream in the end stage of the commodification of human life- God’s not dead!
Law is failing to halt this rise in civilian slaughter. The state is opportunistically pushing to militarize schools or impose gun legislation. Will anything halt the carnage? Clearly for 77 minutes, the police won’t.
For next to nothing, a drop in the bucket, the disenfranchised, radicalized white youth can take life into their hands. Rather than be a nobody, a cog in the terrible existence they’ve beholden, a few magazines, a firearm, and the lack of empathy bred by capitalism are all one needs: week up week of news coverage await, and a much more fun time than wage slavery, school.
The glory of a mass shooter; a school shooter. Ramos will be remembered, even if only as a the Uvalde shooter, gunman, for time eternal. Mass shootings, to a very particular group, are glorified – the motivation is there. Can you not say you’ve seen mass, school shooting fetishism? Its online, mostly, sure. The results aren’t. Mass shooters will be remembered; you can try to rescind their names, but they’ll be remembered. We are in the golden age of mass shootings, where a cult fanbase keeps score and memorializes their fallen success stories, the shooters themselves.
We’ve reached a point where even just being “The Parkland Shooter” or “The Robb Elementary Shooter” sure beats being “The Janitor”, “The Chef”, or worse yet, “The Student.”
Your life, your creed, is in your hands – you know there’ll be others just like you. You are a mass shooter, knowing the normies will hate you; you have fans.
One of the most easily observable trends in mass shooting? – They’ve continued. Another? They’re defining moments in local history, sometimes national or global.
What marks this as the golden age for this niche breed of serial killer? Beyond the following, the notoriety, the culture, hell – the mass shooter pipeline? Well, I think two recent shootings, perhaps three if we are willing to accept mass shootings are inherently acts of fascism, paint the picture well.
Peyton slaughtered black civilians in an almost distinctly American fashion – right wing militancy. His act was designed to maximize harm to the black community, to the last detail. An everyday place was his target, it was all livestreamed, and most importantly, he targeted a predominantly black community. His attack, in closing tops exasperated the availability of food in the area. Basically until he took his plunge into the mass shooter hall of fame, he kept in close contact with an online group. He is the result of the mass shooter, or perhaps the alt-right, pipeline; PogChamp?
What can we take away from this? Well, a few things, but as there is overlap, lets get a larger picture.
Ramos hada cold disdain for life, he took his act as good, using it to flirt with girls prior to his murders. The specifics of his killing spree, that he murdered his family, took the family car, targeted a school, parallel the most notoriously “meme worthy” shooting – “Don’t go to the cafeteria today”. He’s been one of the younger modern school shooters, really showing the sheer speed at which the pipeline can scoop up kids, making them into weapons for the cause. His kill count, the length of time his shooting lasted. You will hear about Uvalde for a while, maybe forever, and, in whatever capacity you do – it’ll be because of him.
Robert Crimo the 3rd, the July 4th shooting. This shooting really epitomizes mass shootings, his rap career stocked with school scenery, his god-fearing art, and most importantly: he escaped the scene. His murder spree nearly extended from one event to the next, only halting due to his own willingness. I’m coming out of the closet and into the street, Robert showed just how much of a cat-and-mouse game being a serial killer is. Should his successor know how to steal a new car, to act with more speed and determination?
Killing sprees are not new, though the state is the only entity able to do it, justly, time and time again.
God has made – the school shooter –a plan, to work in His own, unique way. God loves his children: some are slaughtered like poultry, by his design, at their must vulnerable, and others go on to a life of serial killer stardom, infamy. God Bless America.
Mass shootings are a cornerstone of American culture, American life, American capitalism.
All is in place for one to be nurtured into a new serial killer, a mass shooter, by online sociopaths. Every mass shooting has evolved the mass shooting culture: more carnage, more planning, self-referential. Disregarding human life?
Happy July 4th.
To read more of her works visit
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/comrade-candle