The new anarchists

"Morality is just another form of social control." —Feral Faun, in the Eugene-based 'zine Revolt!

It is a Friday night in Eugene, Oregon. I'm in a converted warehouse that now houses an organic drink bottler and the epicenter of Eugene's new anarchist movement: a coffeehouse called Out of the Fog.

Contrary to the stereotype of menacing, bomb-toting anarchists, the place is friendly and it's hopping. Out on the patio, a DJ spins records while a young man with dreads dances wildly, oblivious to tables inches away. Inside, with the obligatory caffeine, juice, and pastries, the walls are lined with tributes to our decaying, unjust society: articles on irradiated food and nearby tree sits to stop clear-cut logging; petitions to stop the execution of death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal; a tableau on cooperative coffee growing in rural Mexico; flyers for imprisoned anarchist activist Rob Thaxton and for a community-wide nonviolence training; schedules for an anarchist free school; and much more.

At our table, a young adult—who doesn't want to be identified for fear of reprisal from Eugene's police—animatedly describes working as an alternative media reporter and being arrested in Eugene's now-infamous June 18 riot. A call is put in to three teens who might want to talk—they were among the rock-throwers that day. It turns out two are not home—they're off at a Friday night meeting of a martial arts class at the new anarchist free school that's been organized this summer. Back at the table, we're drawing a crowd; everyone knows someone there, and everyone has a story. To properly describe the anarchist cause, a young man named Exile dashes home to get his copy of the 'zine Black Clad Messenger ("Actualizing industrial collapse!"). Another young man, Kook, offers his own 'zine, a tract ranting about the outrage of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. It's a scene unlike anything in Seattle, a place where societal outcasts are at home, a sort of politicized Cheers for folks with tattoos, dreads, or facial piercings.

Eugene—Oregon's second largest city—has been a countercultural haven for at least the last 30 years. Home of the University of Oregon and a large contingent of resettled ex-hippies from California, it is a sometimes uneasy mix of loggers, southern Willamette Valley hay farmers, university professionals, Hyundai workers, and young idealists of all stripes. And it is a mostly tolerant city that, in the last year, has been polarized by a relatively small group of anarchists advocating intentional, targeted property destruction as a response to gentrification and the ills of modern society.

Seattle, like Eugene and most other cities, has always had at least a few anarchists. Here, there are some visible anarchist institutions: Left Bank Books, Books to Prisoners, Copwatch, the late Black Cat Cafe. Dating back to the early-century heyday of the Wobblies, the Northwest has always been one of the country's strongest bases of anarchism. At its core, anarchism is neither intrinsically violent nor disorganized. It has a relatively simple premise: government, all government, is inherently coercive and violent, and like all institutions will act primarily to expand its own power. Anarchism is, in its purest form, hostile both to the left, with its reliance on government social programs, and the right, with its emphasis on military spending and government social control. All government has got to go. Ambiguity over how, and what it's to be replaced with, is one reason there are so many subsets of anarchism.

In the last year, a new, more militant anarchist strain asserted itself in Eugene. A movement of at least several dozen, mostly young—teenagers and people in their early 20s—activists emerged around John Zerzan, longtime local anarchist writer and theoretician. Zerzan is the author of books that are deeply controversial in anarchist circles: Elements of Refusal, Future Primitive, and others. He is a leading advocate of primitivism, which goes far beyond matters of how the state is or isn't constructed, considering technology and most of what we consider civilization to be deeply pathological and needing to be eliminated. This short-on-details passage from Elements is typical: "Upon the utter destruction of wage-labor and the commodity, a new life will be situated and redefined, by the moment, in countless, unimagined forms. Launched by the abolition of every trace of authority . . . concepts like 'economy,' 'exchange,' [and] 'production' will have no meaning. (What is worth preserving from this lunatic order?)"

Last fall, primitivist anarchists hijacked an antisweatshop demonstration, romping through a downtown Eugene Nike store, breaking windows and overturning displays. A campaign of random minor property destruction—graffiti, broken windows, and the like—plagued new upscale businesses in the lower-income Eugene neighborhood of Whitaker. One of the upscale businesses, the Blair Island Cafe, closed, prompting anarchists to declare victory. And then came the June 18 "riot."

The June 18 disturbance grew out of a scheduled "Reclaim the Streets" protest coinciding with demonstrations around the world against G-7 economic powers meeting in Cologne, Germany. The idea was to occupy a downtown Eugene intersection for a couple of hours with a block party: music, dancing, speeches. What happened was that after a while the crowd got bored and a faction of it took off. Some 200 people started roaming from business to business in downtown Eugene, with rocks being thrown through the windows of particularly reviled businesses (such as a local bank associated with underwriting clear-cutting). In a few cases, cars were jumped on, and one frustrated motorist in the blocked traffic attacked a protester with a wrench. Police essentially followed the crowd but did not interfere until it began to disperse in a park near Whitaker. Then police launched volleys of tear gas and began arresting people—20 arrests in all. The police action prompted another couple of hours of marching and looting before the whole thing played itself out.