Anarchist Cookbook

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Title page

The Anarchist Cookbook was written in 1969 by 19-year-old high school graduate William Powell as a protest against the then US government and the Vietnam War . It contains instructions on how to make explosives , drugs , a number of now obsolete devices for exploiting telecommunications vulnerabilities, and text on other controversial topics.

Overview

The instructions and chemical compounds described in the Anarchist Cookbook are sometimes out of date, incorrect and dangerous. The value of this book, however, lies in the documentation of the political diction of the 1960s and its cult status as a booklet.

According to William Powell (1949-2016), the contents of the book come from freely accessible military and police handbooks from public libraries. The texts collected from it were published in 1970 by the publisher Lyle Stuart Inc. without editorial revision .

Powell himself distanced himself from his work in 2009. He is now a married father and an Anglican Christian. Since he had sold the rights to the text, he could not prevent its further distribution. He also stressed that he had never belonged to any radical group. Rather, his intention is directed exclusively against the Vietnam War. Verbatim he wrote: “The central idea of ​​the book was that violence is an acceptable form of bringing about political change. I don't agree with that anymore. "

The Anarchist Cookbook is legally available in the USA , Switzerland and Germany . There are many portals with the name Anarchist Cookbook on the Internet . These almost never contain Powell's original and complete manuscript, but works with the same title, which were published under various pseudonyms such as The Jolly Roger , Exodus , BHU or RFLAGG .

Possession of the Anarchist Cookbook was used in 2007 in the UK and 2010 in the US as an evidence of charges of terrorist activities. In 2010 the FBI published a dossier on the Anarchist Cookbook .

In 2016, director Charlie Siskel produced a documentary entitled American Anarchist about the book and its author, who was confronted with the effects of his work on events in contemporary history .

Relationship to anarchism

Many anarchists deny that the book is related to the political philosophy of anarchism . The anarchist collective CrimethInc. , who published the book Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook , criticizes the earlier work for being “ not compiled and published by anarchists, not derived from anarchist practice, and not intended to promote freedom and autonomy , and question oppressive power to ask - and was hardly a cookbook as the recipes are obviously unreliable. "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Sandomir: William Powell, 'Anarchist Cookbook' Writer, Dies at 66 . In: The New York Times . March 29, 2017, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed March 30, 2017]).
  2. ↑ Boy in Court on Terror Charges. A British teenager who is accused of possessing material for terrorist purposes has appeared in court , BBC News . October 5, 2007. 
  3. ↑ County Durham terror plot father and son are jailed , BBC News . May 14, 2010. 
  4. ↑ FBI Files on the Anarchist Cookbook (pdf; 9.6 MB), accessed November 11, 2010
  5. ↑ Recipes for Disaster , Crimeth Inc., September 2004, accessed March 30, 2008 (Eng.)