I post this article in full because I think, with clarity, it puts into words what so many of us think and feel, but can't quite put it together. Also as the writer says, the audacity of linking those two words, Auschwitz and Disneyland will create a shock among those conditioned minds.
It is an anonymous article taken from The Anarchist Library, a wonderful Aladdin's Cave of anarchist texts.
Auschwitz-Disneyland
I live in Auschwitz-Disneyland. I make sure that all my papers are in order,
I document my existence on social networks,
I apply for grants and loans. I wear clothes that express who I am, I am a walking billboard, a name tag, I pick a style. I take a train, a subway, my car, un Bixi[1], it's so convenient. I take a shower, I smell good, according to the ads this foaming gel makes me irresistible. Auschwitz-Disneyland is the countryside in the city, the city in the suburb, and the suburb in the countryside. Auschwitz-Disneyland is naked life in one's Sunday best, the hegemony giving itself the answer. In Auschwitz-Disneyland, “holidays make you free.” In Auschwitz-Disneyland, we order at the drive-through, we studying by distance learning, and we shop online.
In Auschwitz-Disneyland, “water comes from the tap and food comes from the supermarket”, food found in the skip also comes from the supermarket. Spectacular capital of Biopower and the bio-political Spectacle: Auschwitz-Disneyland is the name of the metropolis and that of the empire. Auschwitz-Disneyland is not synonymous with the Spectacle, but rather, that which the Spectacle prevents us from keeping our distance from. Auschwitz-Disneyland is not civil war, but the denial of civil war to such a degree that it becomes a weapon. Auschwitz-Disneyland does not call itself Auschwitz-Disneyland, it is called: Montréal, Burlington, Club Med, the Univerisity of Québec in Montréal, Athens, Amiens, Dix-Trente, Bagram, Oakland, Bois-des-Fillions, and I'm skipping some. The inhabitants of Auschwitz-Disneyland are citizens. In the aftermath of a riot, the citizens come out of their condominiums armed with brooms. Living in Auschwitz-Disneyland is an anaesthetic experience, which deprives us of the beauty and possibility of sensory experience.
I wouldn't know how to say exactly how this all started, if it was domestication, patriarchy, agriculture, the State, cities, symbolic culture. There is also this god from the desert, jealous and terrible liar whose promise is no stranger to the hegemony of Auschwitz-Disneyland. This god, who could not have been so hideously jealous and a horrible liar if he had really been alone, managed to convince his disciples that he was the only god and that nothing that links us to the here-and-now is of importance, that what mattered was elsewhere and he held the key for it. Although we are no longer as loyal to this tyrannical buffoon, we continue to diligently follow his terrible promise. Auschwitz-Disneyland is the objective incarnation of this promise, the absolute negation of the possibility of being here, now. Here-and-now, is no longer here-and-now, it is just next door, out of reach, fenced off, it is a no-man's land that crosses the empire, it is subject to police surveillance at all times. When I try to escape Auschwitz-Disneyland is not to go elsewhere, it is to rediscover the here-and-now. I do not dig a tunnel, but a hiding place, a shelter.
Auschwitz-Disneyland subjects the world to its empire through use of powerful tools such as reason, technique and grammar. In a world whose ins and outs are contained in symbolic mediations, do not underestimate the power of grammar. Grammar shapes minds and stories, it also brings many prohibitions, of course it is not permissible to join the words “Auschwitz” and “Disneyland” with a hyphen, to try to give them one and the same meaning. In Auschwitz-Disneyland, resistance, like all counter-cultures, has developed a vocabulary of its own, but fails to overcome the enemy grammar; the word “ecocide” will never hold weight against the concept of “economic growth”. The combination of a counter-cultural vocabulary with the authoritarian grammar of mass society can only lead to ridicule, we must see how easily the “New World Order”, “Bilderberg” and “chemtrails” conspirators put an end to any political conversation. Facing the risk of being confined to jargon, it is beneficial to talk through the force of rocks, paving stones, poles...
Auschwitz-Disneyland is less the Apocalypse in motion, than the negation of this Apocalypse in the service of its expansion. The task falls on the best agents of the Apocalypse of denying the slightest trace of the latter, and to wipe out the unfortunates who had the audacity and recklessness to pronounce its name. It is perhaps no coincidence that Saint Peter became the head of the church by denying Christ three times. If this negation of the Apocalypse returns in the sphere of the spectacular, to specialists, in the private sphere we become all subcontractors. We prefer, most of the time, to deny our desire to end the domination, in favour of a trans-historical oppositional perspective and of 'counter-power'. In doing so, we deny the possibility of abolishing Auschwitz-Disneyland, by contenting ourselves with a space for demonstrations, a zone for free expression, a protest pen. We let go of the gun to better cling to the barricade.
This mutilated negativity first results in our inability to sustain ourselves without precarity, which also feeds our servitude. This constant management of subsistence denies the possibility of note-worthy experience, of bearing a relationship to the world which is not that of domination.
A century of industrialisation, continental genocide and four years of trench warfare eradicated everything up until the “possibility of experience.” Then after that, it was relayed by the most horrible images, rats shown alternating with a hated minority; and during that time on other screens, a mouse wearing trousers, going to the restaurant with his girlfriend, driving a car. Since scrapping experience, progress, basing itself on images, has free reign, hiding the cost of what little is given to us, cultivating our dependence, promising us anything. In Auschwitz-Disneyland, progress maintains itself by combining its best gadgets, which form so many layers which capture us like cellophane. Auschwitz-Disneyland merges telecommunications, cybernetics and pornography, and gives us the internet.
Auschwitz-Disneyland is also the triumph of sustainable development, humanitarian intervention and green capitalism. Divided thought has multiplied to the point of constituting an inseparable heap. New animal torturers are the “finest minds” of cognitive science, and wise European scholars, well-intentioned, try to prove the innocuousness of new molecules that surround us. Where does the baby start and the bathwater finish? The “banality of evil” is also the evil of banality. The dreams of citizens reproduce sadness and the banality of their existence, their interaction is limited to an interface. Another world is possible, you want to laugh. This world is impossible, its end is desirable, that will suffice. Jokers put forward superficial slogans: ecosocialism or barbarism. If it's a matter of choice the answer is too easy, we are not fooled, the 250 known species which have become extinct today are not fooled. If it's a threat, we will respond with a roar, a fierce and wild roar, we will roar with all our strength, we will roar for the 250 known species which became extinct today.
Auschwitz-Disneyland can provide free education, cover itself with windfarms, eat organic and drive electric cars, the “Princesses' Castle” and her thousands of hideous copies could be made of recycled cardboard, the horror would remain whole. To maintain itself, this world must keep us out of the here, far from the now, outside nature and alien to each other.
Auschwitz-Disneyland only maintains itself by cultivating this estrangement within us towards others. We share a subway car, without letting it show; we don't look at anyone, we are voluntarily absorbed by some gadgets, some books, some music. When empty-handed, we pretend to be alone, to be somewhere else; we are in the habit. We are mobilised against the presence of the body and against the possibility that it carries. Sometimes this mobilisation fails and the decorations get torn. There are all these cities and suburbs ablaze when the cops execute the “baddies”. There is Sobibor[2] where a dozen prisoners got the camp to revolt: killing the guards, destroying the cells, fleeing into the woods. There's also Woodstock '99[3], Seattle[4] and there is Oka[5].
A drone flies over a piece of desert, preparing to launch a missile at a truck; we will say that it was carrying some “militants”. A landlord's association decides to analyse the DNA of dog shit that stains their lawns to find and punish those “guilty”. A counterfeit Mickey Mouse gets on stage with a neophyte dictator for the greatest “joy” of children. An Italian atomic energy official gets kneecapped[6]. The war is already here, we know which side to choose. All that's left is to “desert with arms”, to desert with a friend, with at least one friend, a friend, a stranger, a stranger who became a friend, with two friends, five friends. Deserting doesn't necessarily imply going elsewhere, “arms” are not just useful for fighting; deserting implies creating a new relationship to the world, exploring “here” and experimenting “now”, noting the location of enemy devices, making a plan, plans, finding yourself, finding a friend, two friends, five friends. Together we will survive, heal, and of course fight, we will also experiment with this new grammar, better yet this language without grammar, which will put an end once and for all to “Auschwitz-Disneyland.”
[1] ed. – Similar to the 'Boris Bikes' cycle hire scheme.
[2] ed. – Sobibór was a Nazi German extermination camp in Poland.
[3] ed. – The 1999 Woodstock festival near New York ended with rioting.
[4] ed. – Seattle hosted the 1999 World Trade Organisation summit, with big protests and much property damage.
[5] ed. – The 1990 'Oka Crisis' was a 78-day armed stand-off between the Canadian military and Kanesatake indigenous protectors of traditional habitat to be turned into a golf course. Other tribes set up blockades and downed power-lines in solidarity.
[6] ed. – See Rebels Behind Bars; 'We Refuse to Reduce Our Desires...'
