By Jake Bellone

And rather despair than surrender.
—Friedrich Nietzsche

Things do seem irreparably fucked up.  From any objective perspective that these guys would have had, we’re done.  But we can’t agree with that.  That’s foresight being crippled by hindsight.  We have to live.
—John Allen

One does well to remember that what we are fighting is big, bigger than us, seemingly outside of us—not something that’s alienated from us so much as we are alienated from it.  We are fighting a large overarching system, something that is at one and the same time economic, political, social, and even more difficult, psychological. 

Forces of order never seem to hesitate to let out their most violent forces against that which ultimately has the power to challenge their reign.  There is always a boiling point, there is always a point that can be pushed.  One can go on and on endlessly about democracy, but even the most democratic country will unleash its military might against its own citizens if they pose a true threat to the way things are presently done.  There is all outward appearances of a democratic country, and then there is the underside.  Let’s not forget to what extent governments go to in order to erase their own tracks, even kidnapping politicians in order to shame the left (like the assassination of Aldo Moro), and how many infiltrations have occurred thanks to the CIA and other statist organizations.  Let us not forget that the Black Panthers were nearly massacred by the police, even its youngest member, Bobby Hutton, not to mention Fred Hampton (who had the most promise out of all of them). 
           
Abbie Hoffman spent the later years of his life fighting the organization COINTELPRO.  Having been burglarized by citizens, FBI offices, and Hoover specifically stated that COINTELPRO was finished, and that such organizations would cease to exist in the United States.  Of course, that was a comfortable place to speak from considering that through all of their methods (including the use of crack/cocaine to suppress revolutionary groupuscules), the entire “New Left” moment had already died a violent death.  It’s easy to say you’re no longer killing someone when that person is already dead.  What will happen when the radical Left rises again?  Then the tactics of this revolutionary Left have to shift as well.  And naturally we will see a rise of repression, outside any guidelines of “legality.”  Since the Law never mattered before, it certainly won’t matter again.
           
Hoffman’s suicide isn’t surprising.  Having witnessed the radical potential of change, only to see it degenerate into violence in drugs could easily drive someone to suicide, even if certain others managed to age past Hoffman.  It’s better in that situation to have died than to decay into a conservative.  As far as I’m concerned, even though I have no belief in karma, Jerry Rubin got exactly what he deserved.  The struggle has aged now, and while it has become even more necessary, it has become even more violent, even more repressive, and overall the task has become radically more difficult.  If viewed from the past, the task seems impossible.  However the fact of its impossibility only makes me want to achieve it that much more.  It’s a good fight, and what doesn’t kill us can only make us stronger—but you know that already. 

When has such a revolutionary emancipatory project succeeded in the past?  Never, the answer is never.  But we are utterly indifferent towards such a past.

“We have to live."