Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination: An Authentic and Official Memorial Edition, Containing Every Incident in the Career of the Immortal Statesman, Soldier, Orator and PatriotEverett, Marshall
History
Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination: An Authentic and Official Memorial Edition, Containing Every Incident in the Career of the Immortal Statesman, Soldier, Orator and Patriot
Its principles, as voiced by the manifesto of the Geneva conference in
1882, stand in great measure for the propaganda of action of to-day:
“Our ruler is our enemy. We anarchists are men without any rulers,
fighting against all those who have usurped any power or who wish to
usurp it.
“Our enemy is the owner of the land who keeps it for himself and makes
the peasant work for his advantage.
“Our enemy is the manufacturer who fills his factory with wage slaves;
our enemy is the state, whether monarchical, oligarchical, or
democratic, with its officials and staff officers, magistrates, and
police spies.
“Our enemy is every thought of authority, whether men call it God or
devil, in whose name the priests have so long ruled honest people.
“Our enemy is the law which always oppresses the weak by the strong to
the justification and apotheosis of crime.
“But if the landowners, the manufacturers, the heads of the state, the
priests, and the law are our enemies, we are also theirs, and we boldly
oppose them. We intend to reconquer the land and the factory from the
landowner and the manufacturer; we mean to annihilate the state under
whatever name it may be concealed; and we mean to get our freedom back
again in spite of priest or law.
“According to our strength we will work for the humiliation of all legal
institutions, and are in accord with every one who defies the law by a
revolutionary act. We despise all legal means because they are the
negation of our rights; we do not want so-called universal suffrage
since we cannot get away from our own personal sovereignty and cannot
make ourselves accomplices in the crimes committed by our so-called
representatives.
“Between us anarchists and all political parties, whether conservatives
or moderates, whether they fight for freedom or recognize it by their
admissions, a deep gulf is fixed. We wish to remain our own masters, and
he among us who strives to become a chief or leader is a traitor to our
cause. Of course we know that individual freedom cannot exist without a
union with other free associates. We all live by the support of one
another; that is the social life which has created us; that it is the
work of all which gives to each the consciousness of his rights and the
power to defend them. Every social product is the work of the whole
community, to which all have a claim in equal manner.
“For we are all communists. It is ours to conquer and defend common
property and to overthrow governments by whatever name they may be
called.”
Johann Most followed Kropotkin, and in pamphlets and papers urged death
to rulers and leaders of the people. He published explicit directions
for making bombs, placing them in public places; a dictionary of poisons
and the means of getting them into the food of Ministers and other
government officials. “Extirpate the miserable brood,” he said,
“extirpate the wretches.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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