Ponytail Picks #48 - Anarchy
Join us upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus of our culture today. We’re ready to break stuff!
LISTEN
This playlist is pure anarchy.
It breaks all the rules. It has classic rock, classical, post-punk, actual punk, R&B, hip hop, hardcore, experimental, alternative, indie folk, free jazz, and two songs in Japanese. Nine tracks are over five minutes long, and the whole things is over 30 tracks long. I spent hours putting it in perfect order, but sure, go ahead and press “shuffle.” See if I care.
SET YOUR MIND FREE!
Listen on TIDAL here. (thx Brett!)
-AK
Like your media recommendations to be rebellious in nature?
Check out these past Ponytail Picks.
WATCH
Anarchy-flavoured films
I’m not gonna pretend to be an expert on anarchy and all its principles as a way of thinking or as a certain way to organize society but I know it involves a certain communal rebellion against the current capitalist control we find ourselves under. Here are a few films that at the very least hint at that sort of thing:
Chicken Run (2000)
“Mr. Rhodes, perhaps I didn’t explain our situation properly. We lay eggs; day in and day out. And when we can’t lay any more, they kill us.”
“It’s a cruel world, dollface. Might as well get used to it.”
Sorry to Bother You (2018)
“I tried to change it. I tried to stop it but it’s just right in front of their faces. They’re turning human beings into monstrosities and nobody gives a fuck.”
… “If you get shown a problem but have no idea how to control it, then you just decide to get used to the problem.”
Office Space (1999)
“I don’t like my job, and, uh, I don’t think I’m gonna go anymore.”
“You’re just not gonna go?”
“Yeah.”
“Won’t you get fired?”
“I don’t know, but I really don’t like it, and, uh, I’m not gonna go.”
“So you’re gonna quit?”
“Nuh-uh. Not really. Uh... I’m just gonna stop going.”
“When did you decide all that?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Oh, really? About an hour ago... so you’re gonna get another job?”
“I don’t think I’d like another job.”
“Well, what are you going to do about money and bills and...”
“You know, I’ve never really liked paying bills. I don’t think I’m gonna do that, either.”
The Matrix (1999)
I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid... you’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.
Mudbound (2017)
What good is a deed? My grandfathers and great uncles, grandmothers and great aunts, father and mother, broke, tilled, thawed, planted, plucked, raised, burned, broke again. Worked this land all they life, this land that never would be theirs. They worked until they sweated. They sweated until they bled. They bled until they died. Died with the dirt of this same 200 acres under their fingernails. Died clawing at the hard, brown back that would never be theirs. All their deeds undone. Yet this man, this place, this law... say you need a deed. Not deeds.
-JB
READ
Noam Chomsky takes anarchy seriously.
There aren’t many living people with names that carry the same amount of weight as Noam Chomsky. The still-kicking 95-year-old instigated major shifts in thinking in an impressively long list of topics over his lifetime. Linguistics, communication and media theory, cognitive psychology, politics—that’s a lot of categories.
Speaking with authority about that many topics might illicit concerns that he’s over-extended himself, but Chomsky always speaks with such clarity that you couldn’t imagine accusing him of such a thing. The last word you’d use to describe Chomsky is “confused.”
Over time, that clarity convinced me to look more seriously at his political affiliation of choice, anarcho-syndicalism1—well, at least seriously enough to buy and read his book on the subject, On Anarchism. What I found in its essays and interview transcripts looked nothing like the image of Heath Ledger hanging out of a cop car that I had in my head.
Chomsky sums it up pretty nicely on pages 32 and 33:
“The basic principle I would like to see communicated to people is the idea that every form of authority and domination and hierarchy, every authoritarian structure, has to prove that it’s justified—it has no prior justification… And if they can’t justify it, it’s illegitimate and should be dismantled. To tell you the truth, I don’t really understand anarchism as being much more than that.”
Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
-AK
Hopefully we’ve justified our place in your inboxes by now and you’ll be happy to join us next time as we look at whether the
kids
really are alright.
Or libertarian socialism—another term that, after reading Chomsky, you’ll likely realize you had confused with something else.