THE WEST'S DARKEST HOUR

When to shoot

Talk of weapons aside, this has to do with shooting the enemy. You don’t need an arsenal for that. All you need is a zip gun and, most of all, the balls to use it. As I said earlier, if you’re thinking about going on the war path in the literal sense, you’d better take the time and planning to quietly drop underground first. Get yourself as comfortable and secure as you can and only then start taking your actions against the System. Your chances of success and survival will go way up as opposed to those who shoot first and try to think afterward.
But now we’re talking future tense. Our revolution will depend on someone or something else kicking events off the edge and into general chaos so as to loosen up some elbow room for the rest of us. It could be the Blacks, it could be anything from a sudden depression to an earthquake. Just anything to get the Pigs of the Big Brother System tied down and off balance. But just as we can’t expect to accept the full brunt of a System counter-attack starting things off by ourselves, neither can we expect, as avowed revolutionaries, to be left alone by the System once somebody else has started the ball rolling. We must assume they are going to take certain measures to guard their rear.
Those already underground or in prison will find this one to be a moot issue, but the rest of us still at liberty and particularly those maintaining homes, etc., will probably have a unique set of difficulties to face when the time comes for general action. It’s a matter best given a lot of thought now, as there’ll be no time for thought when it presents itself.
Three contingencies we can look for will be the following: (a) once major and widespread revolutionary violence starts—no matter from what quarter—the System can be expected to detain all known revolutionists as a matter of precaution; (b) once the economy starts to fall rapidly, the System can be expected to begin mass foreclosures and confiscations while it feels it still can; (c) just like what’s predicted to happen when the sun itself is about to burn out, the System, when it senses its time is about up, can be expected to begin taking a great many extraordinary steps and, in general to really begin overstepping its bounds as they are vaguely defined today. Or hadn’t you thought of any of this?
The whole point to our being constrained to taking a backseat to someone else’s opening gambit with regard to violent revolution is that we simply cannot stand to take on the full weight of the System’s Pigs, now or in the foreseeable future. It will be rather a judgment call for the individual, once large-scale actions have begun, as to whether he thinks he can get away with his own line of extraordinary measures when confronted by the System in a threatening manner. How much you think you’re worth to them or just how many back-ups they have to send after you will be something that each in his own area will have to decide, and decide intelligently, before he acts.
You must remember that they are still used to having people—especially Whites “drop over dead” at their mere approach. Unfortunately—but quite likely—they’ll still be thinking that way when they come after us once someone else has started the shooting. Otherwise, they’d either not come at all or else come with a small army behind them. This unquestionably would then leave the ball in our half of the court as to how to react when only a few of them show up for what they expect to be a routine “roust”.
Your choice will be either to let them take you into custody, away from your family, and possibly take your home and possessions too, or to take a chance on stopping them at that point and burying their bodies in the hills or being killed yourself. As I said, it’ll be a judgment call but one that takes some consideration, if not a considerable bit of preparation, in the present.

Vol. XV, #2 – February, 1986

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Why we are reproducing articles from Siege can be surmised: here.

Fury unfelt

Through a former associate’s job contacts, I once wound up invited to a meeting of the Revolutionary Communist Party. This particular cell was organized in a major factory here in Ohio and this special meeting was being called as a result of one RCP member having been shot after the RCP had abandoned labor union discipline in fighting management rip-offs. They wanted to try and decide “what to do” and they broke down and invited us, two known Nazis, to their gathering.
It was convened in the home of the local organizer, Seth Goldberg. Included were Goldberg’s Jewish girlfriend—showing plenty of thigh throughout—plus a handful of Blacks and a handful of washed-out Whites. The history leading up to the shooting as well as the details of the shooting itself were duly gone over for the sake of newcomers. My partner at the time, an old Right Wing organizer who worked at the same plant, gave the young Reds some sound advice on how to get their act together but nothing was actually resolved.
Flabbergasted, I had to speak up and tell Goldberg that, were Trotsky present at this meeting, he’d puke his guts out. A general strike would go for openers. Then the bosses would be shot and the plant itself blown up. Seth had no comment. (Ironically, and by accident, within the week my partner, who had been illicitly using the company Xerox [photocopy machine], left an original copy of Joseph Tommasi’s famous Political Terror leaflet in the machine. The next day there were double armed guards at all factory gates.)
Point being that everybody is just blowing smoke, just pussy-footing around— even the Communists! The riots of the Sixties barely scratched the surface in the amount of direct coordinated violence and terror that’s going to be required to intimidate and melt the System.

Vol. XV, #1 – January, 1986

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Why we are reproducing articles from Siege can be surmised: here.

In reverse, again

Not long ago I took a close look at the way the Movement has been in the habit of doing things, everything, from the lowliest task to the most critical one, and discovered that they tended to do it in a “bass ackwards” way every time. As I said, this can be applied to just about all aspects of activity but it is still necessary to take a look at each one, individually, in order to see the significance of this.
One of the areas is that of the overtly illegal, violent attacks against the System. “Hit and run”, so to speak. Wouldn’t it make better sense to turn that concept around to “run and hit”? It only means that you should first drop out of sight, go underground, and stay that way for however long is required for you to learn to exist comfortably at it. At that point you can go ahead and do—and probably get away with—any damned thing you’d choose to pull.
Striking in hot passion and then running blindly is no more than glorified suicide.

Vol. XV, #1 – January, 1986

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Why we are reproducing articles from Siege can be surmised: here.