Title: Nihilistic Anarchy!
Author: Douglas Truman
Date: August 20, 1966
Notes: Printed in Freedom August 20 1966, Vol 27 No 26

REALLY, it isn’t so terrifying as it sounds. In a way it is almost religious. Nihilistic anarchy is in fact the negation of all the factional arguments that split up present day anarchists, from the individualists to Kropotkinites. I think that, if people could understand the futility of sectionalism it would do one whole lot of good in the propaganda field. You all know what I’m talking about, you see it every week in FREEDOM! Individualists knocking the workers, beats smiling sarcastically at. the intellectuals. syndicalists sneering at the catholics, and so on. To an interested sympathizer this whole incoherent squabbling mass is one hell of a bewilderment. It is really no wonder that people are apathetic. When faced with such a myriad and argumentative political set-up, who. can honestly blame people for drowning their confusion in the boozer, in front of the telly, or in the bookies? (Not only between the anarchists—the whole of politics is one right mess.) Now, obviously, I am not suggesting that everybody try to agree one set point—this just would not be anarchy. But what I am attempting to explain, with your help, is the understanding of why there are all these separate little groups in the first place. we what we axe because we all want to be what we axe? I doubt it with sincerity. If this was the case then I would be the first to jack it all in and try to become a rich bastard. Surely not! We are all here today with the kind permission of that ravaging beast, the past. it nags away at our minds merry hell. It makes Charles an Individualist-Stirnerite and Rodney an anarcho-syndicalist, so therefore co-operation between the two is impossible. You, because you believe in the freedom of the individual, are an individualist—and you, because you believe in social communal existence, are a communist! Belief! Aye, there’s the rub—belief! Throughout the whole of mankind’s history belief has been the ruination of co-operative living. Up and down, sideways and diagonally belief has split mankind up into little blood-sodden segments. And today we look around us at the world situation and we can see what belief has done, and is making! And you all must agree that it is not a very appetizing sight. To the people who say that you have got to believe in something, otherwise what the hell are we going to talk about—I will reply precisely this: nothing! Practical discussion, naturally otherwise nobody would get any bread to eat—but discussions based on belief are surely such dangerous rubbish. To me, ideals and beliefs are all a load of terrible nonsense. Plain and harsh words? Perhaps, but maybe you can get a glimmering of what I am getting at. If we can cut out our ideals from our minds and get down to reality, what do we find; a miracle! We find that underneath we are actually real people who can actually co-operate truly together. I do pot think that this could be possibly frowned on by anybody as—‘it’s just not anarchy’. This is it! This is our ideals working today, spreading out and encompassing the public at large. Instead of meaningless little arguing beliefs we have a big negation which upholds all the beautiful essences of anarchy. This is nihilistic anarchy, which as it explains itself is sweet, sweet non-belief in anything—not even (naturally) nihilistic anarchy!

DOUGLAS TRUMAN.