#title Post-conspiracy #subtitle Notes from an Egoist Criminologist, 1979 #author Itjang Djoedibarie #date 1979 #source Retrieved on June 7th 2025 from https://libcom.org/article/post-conspiracy-notes-egoist-criminologist #lang en #pubdate 2025-06-09T01:14:10.328Z #topics conspiration theory, post-conspiracy, tactic, illegalism, terrorism, egoism #notes Text in the original Indonesian: https://libcom.org/article/pascakonspirasi-catatan-seorang-kriminolog-egois-1979 For years, I’ve wallowed in the mire of criminology—a discipline taught as if it were God’s own truth: neutral, sterile, objective. They speak of victims with false empathy, as if crime were an anomaly born of a vacuum. It makes me puke. Science that pretends to be impartial is the most despicable intellectual whore. Criminality, my friend, is never born of nothing. It is the logical consequence of an oppressive social mechanism, of the system’s teeth grinding the bones of those below. And if the system itself is a structured lie, then what they call “crime” is often the starkest honesty, the purest rebellion of the Ego refusing to be subdued. My father, for instance, didn’t die by fate, but from the exploitative practices of that bastard Dutch rubber company. His illness was the legacy of cheap wage labor. My paper on it, an academic attempt to prove his death a structural crime, ended up in the faculty’s trash can. They wouldn’t hear it. So, to hell with official channels. To hell with the morality of the bourgeoisie who cloak their rottenness in the robes of law. In this year, 1979, after observing and engaging in various affairs in the dark alleys of Jakarta (from Rawamangun to Salemba), to the narrow gangs of Cikeruh, I’ve begun to formulate something that transcends the obsolete terms: organization, network, federation, weekly meetings, consensus, and all that rubbish. The labels may change, but the principle remains: structure. And every structure, I insist, harbors the seeds of its own death. From structure grows administration. From administration, betrayal is born. We’ve had our fill of that. I’ve adapted the concept of “chain conspiracy”—a term I borrowed from those antiquated criminology textbooks—which distinguishes it from a wheel conspiracy (with a central hub) or a single conspiracy. However, I see it not merely as a criminal scheme as understood by those enforcers of the law. For me, this is the embryo of something wilder, more fundamental. The Black Committee, our discussion circle more akin to a den of moles than a respectable forum, began to adopt and practice it in various modes: the dissemination of books and notes, agitation, even in attempts at subsistence economies that refuse to bow to the market, and, of course, what that cowardly state calls terrorism. Yet, the term “chain conspiracy” itself is still too tame, too tethered to the legalistic logic I wish to transcend. Thus, I propose a new term, a concept perhaps more capable of capturing the essence of what I witness and, frankly, practice: Post-conspiracy. Post-conspiracy is not a form of organization. It is not even a network in the common sense. There are no nodes to be mapped, no control center to be tapped, no coordination mechanism to be infiltrated. It lives precisely because it is nameless, undocumented, and cannot be prescriptively replicated. It cannot be duplicated like a cake recipe—it can only be transmitted like a plague, from one ignited Ego to another. What I see in the streets, at the book festival my comrades and I once held, in the distribution of illegal stencils in Cikeruh in the late 70s, shows a pattern: small actions, each seemingly separate, yet forming an unexpected series of connections. One step provokes another. But no one directs. No one knows where it ends, or even what the “common goal” is. If there is a goal, it is the goal of each individual who happens to meet in a single moment, a single need to act. This is the most honest form of collectivity: collectivity without community. A gathering of Egos acting, not out of false solidarity, but out of their own internal drives. In post-conspiracy, no single individual or group orchestrates the whole. The term “vertical operation” often found in classic chain conspiracy analysis needs to be dissected. I prefer to call it Distributed Functional Progression or a Non-Hierarchical Sequential Action Series. Participants are indeed sequentially connected, with each individual or small cell performing a specific task in a series of steps. One person types a manuscript, another prints it, another smuggles it, another sells it on the sidewalk. They don’t have to know each other. They don’t need weekly meetings. Then, how do they know what to do? Herein lies what I call Latent Cohesion or Implicit Understanding. The nature of this functional progression allows the inference that each participant, to some extent, is aware of—or rather, infers—the actions of others in the chain, or at least the need for the next action. None of us have to know each other. But we know we connect. One link doesn’t need to understand the entire scheme; it’s enough to understand that what it does will be received or continued by the next. And the next will do the same. Mutual trust, not born of love or grand ideology, but because there’s no other way if the Ego is to satisfy its desires, if ideas are to keep flowing. Inference is the unspoken conversation. Goals? The legal experts would say that all conspirators work towards a common unlawful objective. I say, the goal might not just be to defy the law, but to transcend the very logic of law, or even, the goal itself is fluid, emerging later, or perhaps never explicitly existing at all. What makes the chain work is merely sufficient intensity from each individual. If enough people are fed up, they will move. And if they move without speaking to each other but remain aligned in their disorder, that’s enough to be called post-conspiracy. We reject all authority, even the authority of a predetermined goal. And herein lies the beauty and brutality of post-conspiracy: intentions are disregarded. An individual might join a link in the chain because they want to profit from selling pirated books. Another might be driven by a deep-seated vengeance against the authorities who once tortured him, thus gladly sabotaging their facilities. An artist might disseminate their subversive work purely for the aesthetic satisfaction of their rebellion. A student might help distribute pamphlets to look radical in the eyes of a lover. These intentions, my friend, can be as base as mud or as lofty as imaginary heavens, purely selfish, or wrapped in a veneer of idealism. To hell with intentions! What matters is that their actions connect in the functional sequence. As long as the profit-seeker’s actions create a book that can be read, as long as the avenger’s sabotage creates chaos that opens space, as long as the artist’s work inspires unease, as long as the student’s pamphlet reaches the right hands—they all, unknowingly and without needing to agree on intent, have become part of the post-conspiracy. They are drawn in and connect the chain because a previous action created an opportunity or a need for a subsequent action that aligns with the drives of their respective Egos. The ultimate end that binds them is not a shared manifesto, but the cumulative effect of these individual actions: disruption, chaos, the transgression of boundaries set by the system. And in that chaos, the Ego finds its widest room to maneuver. In the drug trafficking chain conspiracy often used as an example 1, one conspirator might be responsible for production, another for transport, and another for sales. Each individual plays a different sequential role, yet all are part of a larger scheme. The difference from a “wheel conspiracy” is clear: a wheel conspiracy involves a center (a leader) directly connected to several spokes (other conspirators). In post-conspiracy, there is no center; the relationship between conspirators is more sequential and, crucially, opportunistic. I’ve read some ideas from Continental philosophers, just beginning to circulate in limited fashion, about a structure they call a ‘rhizome’—a root-like network, acentered, where any point can connect to any other, can break in one place and regrow elsewhere. It’s as if it gives language to what I’ve long observed: an order emerging from disorder, coordination without a coordinator. Each individual act creates a trace, modifies the environment—be it a pile of bootlegged books in a flea market, or graffiti on a wall—and this trace becomes the stimulus for the next act by another individual. This isn’t command; it’s resonance. A wild stigmergy where Egos indirectly provoke one another. Almost all discourse on collectivity in illegal action—or in any form of social guerrilla warfare unwilling to submit—keeps returning to the same worn-out formulas: organization, network, federation, and all that. I’m sick of it. Every structure harbors the seeds of its own death. From structure grows administration. From administration, betrayal. I have a friend I’ve known since I first entered the Criminology department (he’s a dropout now), Ahmad Bagja; he introduced me to the Black Committee and greatly influenced my worldview. He’s my friend, but his greedy calculations are an eternal reminder of the fragility of structures that rely on “trust” or “common goals.” Once, we collaborated and successfully stole a typewriter I’d spotted in a lecturer’s office. Afterwards, he sold it without my knowledge. There, I thought, my theory of instrumental rationality met harsh reality. But precisely because of that, post-conspiracy becomes even more relevant: it doesn’t depend on such morality or loyalty. Bagja’s betrayal, only confirms that reliance on “good intentions” or “group solidarity” is an illusion. Post-conspiracy, in fact, accommodates the opportunistic nature of the Ego. If Bagja’s act of selling the typewriter (after I stole it) indirectly financed the printing of other illegal pamphlets by a third party who bought it from him, then he, in his unawareness, still became part of the chain, even if his intention was purely personal gain. The destruction of old structures, including the structure of trust between individuals, is “productive” because it forces us to seek forms of connection that are more fluid, more functional, and more aligned with the fundamental nature of the Ego, which always seeks its own interests. Post-conspiracy doesn’t submit proposals. It doesn’t await ideological blessings. It doesn’t even need moral justification. Because morality is a tool of the state, and the state has no right to judge what is born outside its apparatus. That the law calls this a “criminal agreement” is merely the dominant language always seeking to classify. For the state, one person printing an illegal book, one person selling it, one person slipping it into a student’s bag, and one person reading it in a small forum—all are called “conspirators.” But for me, it’s just one method: ensuring that ideas don’t stop at a single mind, ensuring the Ego finds its path. In legal logic, a chain structure is called “vertical” because one stage leads to the next. But for us, the individuals moving within a post-conspiracy, “vertical” is not about hierarchical levels, but functional progression without hierarchy. We are not building a ladder to the heaven of revolution. We are arranging interconnected explosives. Each part of the post-conspiracy is a small detonator—it will explode in its own time, triggered by its own internal intensity, and perhaps, just perhaps, trigger the next explosion. Each of these “explosions” is an affirmation of the Ego, a rejection of limitation. Whether it’s the small act of scrawling an anarchist slogan on a wall, or a larger act like the sabotage my Black Committee comrades and I sometimes undertake, all are sparks with the potential to ignite a larger fire. Not because there’s a command, but because one spark shows that resistance is possible, and another Ego that sees it, that feels its resonance, will be driven to create its own spark. Field examples? In the bank robbery case I once studied for that unfinished paper: one planner determines the target (perhaps because he needs money, or simply wants to prove he can), one scout maps the security patterns (perhaps he enjoys the thrill of outsmarting the system), several perpetrators enter and take the money (an adrenaline rush, economic need, or hatred for financial institutions), one driver evacuates the team (perhaps just needing the pay). None of them need to know who will receive the money at the end, or even the names of their teammates beyond their momentary function. Their roles proceed due to situational needs and individual interests converging at a point of action. The same in the distribution of illegal books: a writer types a manuscript (perhaps under a pseudonym, driven by intellectual passion or the need to incite), a printer duplicates it (without knowing the writer, perhaps for wages or a vague sympathy for forbidden ideas), a field agent disseminates it (without knowing the printer, perhaps because he believes in the content or simply enjoys the risk), a street vendor hawks it (without knowing the agent, for a mouthful of rice). No one calls themselves “comrades-in-arms,” no one considers themselves part of an “organization.” But the material still arrives. Ideas still spread. The Ego finds its expression. The admirers of structure will say: this is too chaotic, inefficient, undirected. But chaos, my friend, is the only state in which surveillance cannot effectively operate. And if your enemy is a neatly structured system, then chaos is not the enemy: it is our battlefield, the Ego’s battlefield. In chaos, the state’s nets of control become loose, the law becomes blurred, and that hypocritical public morality loses its grip. There, the Ego can breathe freely, move without restraint, dance upon the ruins of the old order. Chaos is the blank canvas for the wildest individual expression. Post-conspiracy is an unregistered logic. It needs no signatures, no meetings, no stamps, and will never have a spokesperson. This is not an alternative form of organization. It is a form that rejects the entire notion of formal organization. The only truly reliable protection in illegal resistance is ignorance—or rather, segmented knowledge. In post-conspiracy, everyone knows enough to act according to their own drives and interests, but not enough to betray the entire network they are not even fully aware of. Anonymity is not merely a protective tactic; it is liberation from the identity imposed by the system, from the citizen identification number, from criminal records, from all the labels the state wants to brand on our foreheads. In the darkness of anonymity, the Ego becomes pure potential, pure action. The state system demands openness, identity, registration. We must answer it with darkness, with tactical anonymity, by becoming ghosts in their machine. This isn’t about building a new, better world. That’s the illusion of moralists, the utopian dreamers who always end up building new prisons with prettier bars. This is about how the Ego, the individual aware of its own power, can move, act, and destroy—or merely transcend—the structures that try to shackle it, here and now. Post-conspiracy is about that: a wild dance of individuals upon the rubble of an order they helped to demolish, with no promise of a new dawn, only the momentary satisfaction of the act itself, of the absolute affirmation of the Ego. And for me, a criminologist who has seen the rot behind the facade of law and morality, who has felt how the system crushed his father and tried to crush him, that satisfaction, however brief, is more than enough. This is the permanent rebellion of the individual against all that seeks to homogenize it. This is illegalism as a philosophy of life. Written in Cikeruh-Rawamangun, late 1979.