You are all Eichmanns. We are free.
Letter to all the prison guards, other prison workers and all the cops. Partly written in a London police cell during the Stop G8 week, where police repression was at its highest.
To all the prison guards, other prison workers and all the cops.
Since I'm trying not to talk to you, I'll write you this letter 'to have a chat'. I've seen several of you uniforms walking around here, all pretending to be busy with 'making London a safer place', or whatever your propaganda slogan might be. Some of you pretend to be nice, others pretend to be not. I don't really care. You're all wearing the same uniform, you're all working on the same project: oppressing those who do not meet up white heterosexual European male standards. So whether you do it in a nice looking way or not, you're all bastards for making yourself compliance to the crimes of the state and the capital you're protecting. I look at each of you in the same way. But there is one thing that keeps floating through my mind. And that is a question I would love to ask each one of you personally, if I didn't have anything better to do: do you actually like your job? Are you happy with what you're doing – that is, do you morally agree with the state paying you to protect the murderers, polluters and slave traders and to beat up those who rise against the machine? I mean, you are the arms and the shield of the machine – do you like taking up that role?
I know they don't only put uniforms on your body. They also uniformise your mind, so it might be hard for you to be able to think for yourself for a second. So if these questions seem weird or new to you – doesn't matter. I'm confident that one day you will make a start in understanding what I'm saying If I say to you: you are all Eichmanns.
Eichmann is the kind of person that does his job without thinking. Following orders without questions. Killing people without feeling bad or guilty or whatever. Now I'm not sure if I can personally blame you for being an Eichmann – but I'm definitely blaming you for doing what you do. I understand that it's the normal and safe thing to do just as you're told and accept misery and exploitation without questions or resistance. You being born in that position and maybe never have been challenged to question that or maybe never have been in the luxury position that you had much choice, that is something I don't blame you for. But denying your responsibility, ignoring your freedom and thus making yourself a part of the Killing Machine that's called the capitalist modern nation state – that I cannot forgive anyone. Although it's not your brain that says you have to oppress people, those are your hands doing it and therefore you play a crucial role in destroying this planet. You are personally responsible for the things you do or don't do. And you are accountable for it. Maybe not accountable or responsible by law, but for sure by you morale. (Your morale probably says it's bad to kill, steal or something, but when powers do it – by means of controlling and ordering people like you – you do not only seem to not care at all, you are even protecting them from those who raise their voices and fists against this complete colonization of our minds and bodies.)
But I know morale has got nothing to do with it. It's this fetish for power that makes you want to wear a uniform. This obsession works in two ways. On the one hand, you enjoy following orders. That way you won't have to think for yourself so life is easy. What could possibly be better than spending your whole life with your head in the sand? On the other hand, you love giving orders to and denying requests of the people who have been placed under your authority – by law. It gives you a form of power you normally wouldn't have because you are a victim of capitalism as much as we are. But this uniform gives you power and this law is your Eichmann-back up: state says it, so it is like that. This Eichmann-back up provides you with an excuse not to question anything that you or your colleagues do. Because if you do question authority, you will be punished. If you don't, you will be rewarded or nothing happens (and that's safe). That punishment-reward mechanism is something you hand down to the arrested/imprisoned people. If they obey, you reward them by “granting” them an extra cup of coffee, a book or an extra phone call. If they are a pain in the ass, you don't give them anything and if you really want to punish them, you throw them in isolation. It's a childish game of “re-educating” the outlaws – and those who know that and know how to maintain the little bit of dignity and autonomy they have left, will never lose ground on this Battle of Normalisation. It's quite revealing, in this light, to look at what prison is considered to be according to the authorities: a place for rehabilitation, a place where you “learn” how to fit into society again. What does it say about society if the practices in prison are role model for the way a society has to be organized? The mechanism of “directing peoples' behaviour” is the same both in prison and in society, only in prison repression and the forcing of what you call “good” behaviour are somewhat more explicit and direct. But in the same way “the autonomous” are hard to break in prison, they are also hard to normalise in society. They know your game and that is enough not to be defeated. And by not losing, they have already freed themselves. They create autonomous spaces for themselves in denying or ignoring the orders you give them – no matter how small those spaces may be, no matter how hard you will hit them with your convictions and punishments. No matter how long you will jail them, you will never really lock them up.
They are the only ones whose behaviour has not been enforced upon them from above by threat of punishment and thus their “behaviours” are the only ones that could be considered free. This goes for both prison as in society, as their organisational structures are basically the same.
Now I want you to know that I'm one of those persons. I'm one of the autonomous who are hard to break by threat of punishment. And as long as you wear that uniform, you'll probably never understand that, you'll probably only be annoyed by it and you probably only will punish me more. But I know that your punishments come forth from a huge invisible power vacuum. There is one big thing you don't have power over and that is my mind. And by giving people like me a hard time, you're only showing your weakness. You only show that you don't have control over us.
Authority tries to enslave us and they use certain people to accomplish that and they put uniforms on them. The uniforms are meant to robotize you, to ensure you do exactly as you're told. In that way, you are even more enslaved than the rest of us. You have to follow orders and hand them down to the mobs. You can't even make the rules. You execute them and you make sure they are executed. I know you go out of your league a lot of the time, but that's part of the law enforcement logic that makes mind and mentality revolve around only one thing: power maintainance. It results in your minds being completely drained from any capability to think or judge for yourself. That's why the question 'do you like your job?' may even be a really our of place question. In order for you to answer it, you'd have to be able to understand it first and for that to happen you'd have to take off the uniform, permanently. In order for you to feel any emotions at all about such things as your job, you will have to break free your thoughts and reclaim your own autonomy. There is no such thing as “liking” or “not liking” when you have that uniform on your body: you just do as your told and you really don't care what it is what you're doing. You'd even go as far as killing people, as long as state says you have to do it. Eichmann knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Don't be an Eichmann. Quit your job and become human again. Break free from the prison in your mind. Burn the Suit of Repression. Unslave yourselves, o, miserables.
I'm confident that one day you'll understand what I mean. Until then: fear us.
I do not greet you.
A jailed activist.