[D66] The Angle Grinder of Revolution: Against the Commuter and its World

[René Oudeweg]

anarchistnews.org <https://anarchistnews.org/comment/48801>


  The Angle Grinder of Revolution: Against the Commuter and its World

8-10 minutes
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A new essay and zine published anonymously by Filler PGH.

    /The commuter/ is the modality through which every other identity is
    shaped and borne within this techno-industrial prison. The negation
    of /the commuter/ is the negation of civilization and the /bare
    life/ it has enforced; the negation of /the commuter/ is the
    affirmation of wildness, of freedom, of possibility.

    *We therefore affirm again, our hearts full with insurgent ferocity:
    /every commuter is a target./*

*The Angle Grinder of Revolution: /Against the Commuter and its World/*

"There is a specter haunting the Earth; it haunts the minds of movement
managers, formalists, leftists, and those who otherwise find themselves
aligned with — entrenched within, even — the existent. It waits for no
orders from self-appointed leaders and pays no mind to the hand-wringing
of moralists. In an indomitable fury against the current totality, it
seizes the opportunities that stand before it. Shrouded by the night,
each u-lock is cut away from the bicycles secured by their grasp;
beneath every automobile chassis, quick work is made to liberate the
rare earth minerals trapped within the prison of catalytic converters.

There is a specter haunting the Earth, and it is the angle grinder of
revolution — the glimmer of revolutionary horizons and the setting sun
of the old regime. Without a glimmer of remorse and with an unflinching
resolve, it speaks: /Every commuter is a target./

>From the university student peddling between gentrified neighborhoods,
part-time jobs and classes, to the lowly prole whittling away the waking
hours of their life in grid-lock traffic, every /commuter/ creates the
present nightmare. In every form it takes, /the commuter/ is the
primary, operative role within our present industrial civilization.
Other social categories naturally cannot be ignored — the bourgeoisie,
the proletariat and the precariat among them — but they are secondary to
/the commuter/, for in order for all other identities defined by
socio-economic position and relation to production to be realized, the
individual must initiate /the commute/ — the very activity that defines
/the commuter./

As they travel along this miserable Leviathan’s many economic arteries,
colloquially known as “roads,” this disgusting way of life is animated
and reproduced with the slow lurch of bare life headed towards
annihilation pushed along evermore. For those of us who seek a different
life than the hollow rituals of /the commuter/, there is a clear
approach to cease the functioning of this miserable machine. With only a
bit of courage, the angle grinder’s spite cuts away the regime of
non-life. /The commuter/ takes a multitude of forms, but within the
context of the imperial core we write from, two forms constitute a
significant plurality of /commuter-identities/ above all others: /the
motorist/ and /the cyclist./ While there are nuances in the subversive
methods against each respective /commuter-identity,/ both are readily
sabotaged by the angle-grinder.

/The cyclist/ can be immobilized indefinitely once the false security
provided by their precious u-lock falls away, the facade pierced with a
single cut. From there, the repulsive contraption can be whisked away
into the night. The cyclist who projects some false, pathetic propriety
over this miserable commodity is left empty-handed. Without the material
basis for the abstraction they’ve dissolved themself into — trading the
fullness of life in exchange for the poverty of /commuter-identity/ —
they are left only with themself, naked and bare, alone in the night.
Struck by the convulsive rage of the angle grinder’s insurrection, they
are left no choice but to ponder, on foot, their uniqueness, their place
in the world and the industrialized nightmare that plagues it. Certainly
this constitutes robbery, but within that robbery there is an
/invitation,/ an opening for something else: a glimpse into a world
beyond /the commute./

/The motorist/ and the multi-ton death trap they adore is a somewhat
different prospect. Instead of targeting the locking mechanism that
ensures /the motorist‘s/ false propriety over their
/commodity-identity’s/ material basis, the target is instead the very
functioning of this mechanized monstrosity. Beneath the chassis of the
vehicle, an essential component is seated, exposed and readily
accessible: the catalytic converter. Without it, the vehicle is useless.
A skilled operator can identify, target, and extract the catalytic
converter in a mere matter of minutes, disappearing again well before
anyone would have noticed. In all likelihood, the sabotage would only be
noticed during the following morning. /The motorist,/ intending to step
into their role as /commuter/ via /the commute/ as the necessary
pre-condition to realize all other roles, would find the usual choke of
an engine turn-over missing, instead replaced by a tremendous, startling
roar. In the vacancy created by the catalytic converter’s absence, wild
nature howls and the euphoric laughter of the fallen wild’s spirit fills
the early morning air. /The motorist/ is denied the ritual of /the
commuter‘s/ realization. All other identities that flow from /the
commuter/ are denied, too, aborted before coming to term in /the
commuter‘s/ absence. Like /the cyclist/ before, in the robbery of /the
motorist,/ the gift of possibility is endowed: a life beyond economic
exchange, an escape from the poverty of /bare life/ into the freedom of
self-creation.

Finally, with every subversion of /commuter-identity/ — each stolen
bike, every scrapped catalytic converter — a unique material reward is
found.

The illegalists of generations past were able to fund their subversion
with bank robberies and the burglary of bourgeois households; in our
present condition of technological hyper-surveillance, these methods
have become overwhelmingly more risky. Naturally, cybercrime remains a
possible avenue in the face of this reality, but the foreclosure of this
horizon, too, is well under way as repressive techniques catch up to
subversive ones. In turn, subversive techniques are pushed further and
further into the domain of technical specialization and the tools that
follow, creating a terrain of engagement that is ever more difficult to
penetrate. What we offer here, however, is a subversive technique that
demands very little technical skill and is available to anyone that can
obtain a commonplace tool: the battery-powered angle grinder.

Whether brought into possession through the legitimizing shroud of
commodity exchange, the denial of such through shoplifting, or brought
into temporary possession through a tool-lending library, very few
circumstances would truly prohibit access. Once in hand, every bike and
every catalytic converter that follows sustains our war against society
with a trip to that ever-present ally to the criminal class, the
scrapyard: /cash in hand today./

We can anticipate the critics of our method, those who speak with
corpses in their mouths in defense of the current miserable state of
affairs. They will claim we are too extreme, that our approach is too
indiscriminate, that it is alienating, ineffectual, and criminal. To
them, we have nothing to say; in their moralistic anxieties, they have
made their alignment clear. They have become lost within their
respective /commuter-identities/ and as such, wish to defend /the
commuter/ and the world it demands. Thus, they have positioned
themselves as our enemies, despite whatever other supposed subversive
affinities they declare. /The commuter/ is the modality through which
every other identity is shaped and borne within this techno-industrial
prison. The negation of /the commuter/ is the negation of civilization
and the /bare life/ it has enforced; the negation of /the commuter/ is
the affirmation of wildness, of freedom, of possibility.

*We therefore affirm again, our hearts full with insurgent ferocity:
/every commuter is a target./*

Every /commuter/ will move through every day anxiously wondering when
their time will come, peering through the blinds to check if today was
their bicycle or their car’s last; every night will be spent restless
and sleepless, wondering who might be lurking in their backyard or under
their car, stealing away the material basis of their
/commuter-identity,/ delivering it to some faraway scrapyard. There can
be no compromise with /commuter society/; for the possibilities of life
to unfold before us in the realization of total liberation, every aspect
of this world must be met with total negation, beginning with /the
commuter./"

Imposed PDF
<https://fillerpgh.wordpress.com/2022/10/29/zine-the-angle-grinder-of-revolution-against-the-commuter-and-its-world/>
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