Armed Joy, Bonanno’s classic insurrectionist text, is now available in audio form here at Free Radical Radio along with various other interesting recordings mostly influenced by ‘post left’ anarchy, primitivism, and individualism.
Among other things, Armed Joy is a critique of the dull, stagnant and strangulating nature of traditional revolutionary organisations, in favour of joyous, uncontrollable struggle from below. It was written in 1977 in the context of revolutionary activity in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, and should be heard with that in mind.
“People are tired of meetings, the classics, pointless marches, theoretical discussions that split hairs in four; endless distinctions, the monotony and poverty of certain political analyses. They prefer to make love, smoke, listen to music, go for walks, sleep, laugh, play, kill policemen, lame journalists, kill judges, blow up barracks. Anathema! The struggle is only legitimate when it is comprehensible to the leaders of the revolution. Otherwise, there being a risk that the situation might get beyond their control, there must have been a provocation.
Hurry comrade, shoot the policeman, the judge, the boss. Now, before a new police prevent you.
Hurry to say No, before the new repression convinces you that saying no is pointless, mad, and that you should accept the hospitality of the mental asylum.
Hurry to attack capital before a new ideology makes it sacred to you. Hurry to refuse work before some new sophist tells you yet again that “work makes you free”.
Hurry to play. Hurry to arm yourself.”