Tag: modern slavery

Paul Z. Simons (May 3rd, 1960 – March 30, 2018)

Our friend and comrade Paul Z. Simons (El Errante) has passed away apparently from a heart attack. He is survived by his 5 children, Nina, Hannah Simons, Max Errickson, and Tristan and Jack Simons.

He was born in Utah. He liked to say he was born an illegal, to an unwed mother, Ginger, in a state where is was a crime to have a child outside of wedlock. He was adopted by Daryl and Irene Simons at birth. He has 4 siblings, Steve and Robert Simons, and James and Elizabeth Ables.

To help his family deal with the financial burden of this death https://www.youcaring.com/thefamilyofpaulsimons-1155173

Nina writes that “Paul was a complex person who was loved by his friends and family, and the dozens of communities he gave voice to through his writings and adventures as a journalist. Paul was a soul searcher to the end, a fearless adventurer, a rebel, a lover, a father to myself, Hannah, Max, Tristian, and Jack. He was a brother, a cousin, an uncle, a son. Paul’s death was very sudden and unexpected, he left very few worldly possessions behind. Because he was far from home when he died, there will be a substantial cost to bring his remains home. It will take the effort and contribution of his community to properly lay him to rest and give his friends and family the opportunity to mourn his loss.”

Paul was co-editor for the Modern Slavery journal where much of his recent journalistic writing can be found, and he contributed to Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from the ’90s up to its move to the SF Bay Area in 2005. His essays are also on The Anarchist Library web site (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/paul-z-simons) and can be found on anarchistnews.org. He was involved in the Lower East Side scene in NYC in the ’80s. Stories and essays from that time are collected in his Black Eye zine anthology published by LBC (https://littleblackcart.com/books/anarchy/black-eye/). In the last few years Paul was intensely involved in letting the world know more about the often anarchistic and revolutionary resistance in Rojava, while also reporting on the anarchist milieu from Paris, Athens and Sao Paulo. We always looked forward to his visits here whenever he traveled through California, which will sadly be no more. The upcoming issue of Modern Slavery will include some of his yet unpublished fiction.

Paul will be missed by many, even by those who had yet to meet him, but who have been touched by his essays, stories, interviews, poetry and fiction. We are proud to have worked with him for the last few decades. It was not always easy, but together we were able to publish much important material during that time. So long, Paul.

EDITORIAL: The Slave Syndrome

In the 1979 robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg – a square in Stockholm, Sweden – several bank employees were held hostage in the bank vault for most of a week during which time they began to increasingly identify with their captors. While their captors were under seige by police, the hostages went on to reject assistance from government agents. And after the captors were themselves captured by police the former hostages defended them. This example of abused victims becoming emotionally attached to their captors has since become widely known as the Stockholm Syndrome. It has been widely reported, studied and theorized to the point where it has nearly become a sociological cliché.

Identification with powerful figures has been a commonplace of life thoughout recorded history. Despite all delusions of modern social progress it is as fundamental to institutional functioning as it has ever been since the dawn of civilization. What is particularly unusual in the situation that unfolded in Stockholm was the rather quick switch from fearful hostages involuntarily cooperating with their captors under duress to fearful hostages voluntarily cooperating with their captors under duress. In a matter of days, a number of hostages went through huge changes – with some of these changes persisting well past the physical crisis of capture and confinement. (Including a later marriage between hostage and captor.) It was the quickness and unity of this conversion of identification that led to the naming of this type of situation. And its occasional, if rare, repetition around the world has kept awareness of the Stockholm Syndrome current.

More interesting – and far more revealing of the nature of modern civilization – than the rare episodic instances of Stockholm Syndrome-style dramas is the near-complete lack of attention paid to the huge importance of identification with powerful figures in the everyday functions of modern institutions, especially all of the institutions of moden enslavement. There may be little overt drama as the vast majority of people in contemporary societies grow in age, but fail to ever mature to the point where they can stand on their own two feet and make their own decisions about their world without feeling obsessively compelled to attach their identities to those of rich and powerful bullies. However, anyone perceptive enough to be concerned has to wonder how this situation can remain, not only unreported, unstudied and untheorized, but even unnamed in the current sensationally media-crazed culture.

[pullquote]In any society in which slavery was a rare or nonexistent institution it would be quite obvious that the Stockhom Syndrome is itself just a more rare and special case of a far more common, though equally perplexing, Slave Syndrome.[/pullquote] In any society in which slavery was a rare or nonexistent institution it would be quite obvious that the Stockhom Syndrome is itself just a more rare and special case of a far more common, though equally perplexing, Slave Syndrome. But in our society of modern slavery – in which this slavery cannot be officially acknowledged or named, recognizing the existence of the Slave Syndrome is also tabu. What is worse, even among those most libertarian of social critics, the anarchists, it can barely be named.

The Stockholm Syndrome is rare (and scandalous) because the situations in which it can occur (tiny prolonged hostage dramas) are also so rare. On the contrary, the Slave Syndrome is everywhere (and entirely unremarkable to its observers and victims) precisely because the situations in which it occurs (prolonged institutional hostage dramas) are ubiquitous and in a society of modern slavery, even those few slaves aware of their condition are not often eager to announce the fact of their enslavement.

What makes the Slave Syndrome even more invisible is the fact that it is far more the institutions of modern slavery than the particular persons who run them, that are now the powerful figures with which people most identify. The nearly unanimous belief in the substantial reality of imaginary, reified entities (like gods, Santa Claus, science, society, the state and laws) means that rather than identifications with actual living persons – although such identifications still remain common – most people now identify more closely with reified abstractions, and the institutions able to operate under the cover provided by mass-belief in these abstractions. Of course, these institutions in reality only consist in the sum of actions pursued by the people participating in the constitution and maintenance of their symbolic “existence.” But this fact is lost on people who have learned to prefer the modern enslavement to abstractions to traditional forms of enslavement to persons.Thus the whole set of modern institutions of enslavement (hiding behind these abstractions) have become the primary contemporary incarnation of traditionally rich and powerful bullies. This is the central fact of modern civilization, the paradigm upon which the entire social world rests: a system of enslaving institutions, in which people have been trained from birth to participate and identify, while also being trained to call the various forms of this slavery “freedom.”

Especially amongst the most depraved slaves to modern bullies – those who sing their praises the most strongly, continuously and publicly, the people who make up the modern mass media, one cannot possibly count the times that identifications with these bullies are repeated over and over and over. For those who haven’t already gotten the message through exposure to parental submission and humiliation, or private and public schooling, the mass media (including social media) insist on telling us ad nauseam that we are beholden to “our government,” “our military,” “our businesses,” “our police,” “our laws” and on and on….

In a world of modern slavery in which slavery is invisible because liberty has been largely reduced to following laws and orders issued, not (for the most part at least) by particular persons, but ever increasingly by abstractions (incarnated by institutions), is modern slavery still slavery when there are fewer and fewer people left able and willing to point it out? That remains to be decided. Where do you stand?

We can each refuse idenfication with our enslavement by rebelling against it here and now at every opportunity. By refusing to let ourselves be encompassed in the silent consent implied whenever “we” or “our” includes the abstractions or institutions of modern slavery. It’s “their” system, not “ours” or “mine.” It’s the system of those who continue to believe in it, not of those who genuinely fight it. If you identify with it, you’re a part of it. The more you refuse identification with it the more its power is reduced by each and every one of us whenever we act on this refusal.

-Jason McQuinn

Free Radical Radio interview with Jason McQuinn

Free Radical Radio:

Jason McQuinn interviewed on Critical Self-Theory

by Bellamy

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Audio interview download here

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Bellamy interviews Jason McQuinn about his essay “Critical Self-Theory,” playing devil’s advocate by voicing some criticisms with which he is familiar but doesn’t share. Later, they discuss free will (42:45); the journal, Modern Slavery (45:05); and what a post-left anarchist praxis might be (54:47). “Critical Self-Theory” appears in Modern Slavery #3. The interview took place on February 26, 2015.

The Final Straw interview with Paul Z Simons on Modern Slavery

Paul Z with a dose of Anarchy

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The Final Straw:

Paul Z. Simons & Modern Slavery:  A Libertarian Critique of Civilization

by William Goodenuff

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Audio interview download here

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William talks with Paul Z. Simons, a contributor to and editor of the journal Modern Slavery; A Libertarian Critique of Civilization. Mr. Simons is also an essayist and former contributor/editor of Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed and Out of Anarchy among other projects. Modern Slavery delves into the conception of a modern slavery through an explicitly radical discussion of the history and present condition of wage economies and wage slavery. In addition, the journal showcases poetry, short stories, book reviews, and art. If you wish to become a contributor, you can do so through the journals website.

Among other topics, William and Paul discuss the inspiration for and inception of the journal, some forms a post collapse society could take, other forms of modern day slavery, and the socially chaotic potential of horror movies.

This episode will stream through 01/05/14 at AFM, airing Monday/Tuesday on KWTF, podcasting at radio4all.net (link pending) and archiving later at thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org. To contact the show’s producers, email us at thefinalstrawradio(a t)riseup(dott)net