The Anarchist Cookbook

The Anarchist Cookbook, first published in 1971,[1] is a book that contains instructions for the manufacture of explosives, rudimentary telecommunications phreaking devices, and related weapons, as well as instructions for home manufacturing of illicit drugs, including LSD. It was written by William Powell at the apex of the counterculture era to protest against United States involvement in the Vietnam War.[2] Powell converted to Anglicanism in 1976, and later attempted to have the book removed from circulation, but the copyright belonged to the publisher who continued circulation until the company was acquired in 1991. Its legality has been questioned in several jurisdictions.

For the film, see The Anarchist Cookbook (film).
The Anarchist Cookbook
AuthorWilliam Powell
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
PublisherLyle Stuart
Publication date
1971

History

Creation

The Anarchist Cookbook was written by William Powell as a teenager and first published in 1971 at the apex of the counterculture era to protest against United States involvement in the Vietnam War.[1][2] Powell gained inspiration for his text from his experiences with Vietnam veterans during his time living in New York City. During this time, the pacifist movements of the 1960s began to take a more violent turn, having been responsible for over 100 politically inspired bombings. Powell began plans to become a writer but decided upon a political course when he was drafted to the Vietnam war, which inspired him to write "recipes" and later compile them into a "cookbook".[3] The initial vision of The Anarchist Cookbook was to post instructional flyers in New York City, including how to properly throw a Molotov cocktail and how to make LSD. These "recipes" were eventually adapted to make up an entire book.[4] From 1968 to 1970, Powell began researching in the "U.S. Combat Bookshelf" at the New York Public Library, including external texts such as The Boy Scout Handbook, Fuck the System by Abbie Hoffman, and other popular anarchist texts. The initial manuscript was sent to Lyle Stuart in 1970.[3]

Powell stated The Anarchist Cookbook was initially designed as a book meant to provide education towards "the silent majority" of the American population. He described that the book was not intended for extant political fringe organizations, rather it was designed to galvanize a great societal change by inciting the general population. The ultimate goal of the text was to provide the general population with the skills and capabilities to organize against fascist, capitalist, and communist threats that he perceived. Powell stated "The central idea to the book was that violence is an acceptable means to bring about political change," a sentiment he would renounce later in life.[5][3]

Author remorse

After writing the book as a teenager, Powell converted to Anglicanism in 1976, and later attempted to have the book removed from circulation.[6][2] In 1979, Powell left the United States, traveling to the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia. There he worked as a faculty member for international schools backed by the United States. During this time, he began writing about pedagogy and conflict resolution. This led him to renounce his book and instead campaign for its discontinuation.[3] He was unable to legally stop publication of The Anarchist's Cookbook because the copyright had been issued to the original publisher (Lyle Stuart), and subsequent publishers that purchased the rights have kept the title in print. Powell publicly renounced his book in a 2013 piece calling for the book to "quickly and quietly go out of print".[7] Having written the book, Powell had difficulty finding employment throughout his life, having described the book as "a youthful indiscretion or mistake that can haunt someone during their early years or even longer."[8] In 2011, Powell and his wife, Ochan Kusuma-Powell, founded Next Frontier: Inclusion, a nonprofit serving children with developmental and learning disabilities, describing it as a means to atone for writing the text.[8] William Powell died of cardiac arrest on 11 July 2016.[9]

Publication status

Powell originally sent the manuscript to over 30 publishers until Lyle Stuart bought the book and its copyright. Powell received royalties for the book, approximately $35,000, until he split with the company in 1976.[10] Despite Powell's protest against the continued publication of the text, the copyright of the book never belonged to its author, but to its publisher Lyle Stuart.[2] The publisher Lyle Stuart Inc agreed to publish the text as an attempt to defy the CIA and FBI's efforts to obtain lists of people who checked out books that were deemed subversive.[11] Stuart kept publishing the book until the company was bought in 1991 by Steven Schragis, who decided to drop it. Out of the 2,000 books published by the company, it was the only one that Schragis decided to stop publishing. Schragis said publishers have a responsibility to the public, and the book had no positive social purpose that could justify keeping it in print.[12] The copyright was bought in 2002 by Delta Press (aka Ozark Press[13][14]) an Arkansas-based publisher that specializes in controversial books, where the title is their "most-asked-for volume".[15] As of 2016, over two million copies of the book have been sold.[16]

Content summary

Foreword

The Anarchist Cookbook begins with a Foreword section, detailing the author's intentions for the text. At the time of writing, Powell believed that the United States was slowly declining towards communism, thus he found it necessary to pen a book that guided people on revolution against this transition. He championed the idea of "bringing America back to where she was two hundred years ago", believing his revolutionary ideals to be reactionary, rather than proactive.[5] Powell begins with his vision for the book in how it is intended to educate and galvanize the public to make tangible change in their home countries. Powell states that fringe political organizations, such The Minutemen and The Weathermen, are not the intended audience, rather it is written for "the silent majority". Powell envisioned the United State people rebelling against what he deemed to be oppressive capitalistic ideals, and to a lesser extent, against fascist and communist movements.[5]

Content

Powell begins the content of his book discussing anarchy and anarchist theory. Anarchy, by his definition, is a wide scale mass uprising by the people, similar to that of civil disobedience through violence.[5] He believed that anarchy was the innate state of all individuals, and therefore human nature would drive people to participate in such practices. Powell believed that current expressions of politics, arts, music, and education all contained innate principles of anarchist ideals, thereby equating anarchism to individualism. This principle drives Powell's argumentation as he believed that the current political climate and Vietnam war had undermined human values, therefore revolution based upon his perception of human dignity and freedom was what drove him to write the piece. He ends his introduction by warning of the seriousness that these recipes may have deadly consequences if used improperly.[5] The chapters of The Anarchist Cookbook include descriptions and detailed instructions in hand-to-hand combat, explosives, booby traps, drugs, tear gas, sabotage and demolition, surveillance, improvised weapons and other topics related to anarchism.[3][5]

Reception

At the time of its publication, one Federal Bureau of Investigation memo described The Anarchist Cookbook as "one of the crudest, low-brow, paranoiac writing efforts ever attempted".[17] The book was reviewed by the Department of Justice, the White House, the FBI, and by both John Dean and Mark Felt, Richard Nixon's lawyer and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's associate director respectively. While having concerns about the text, the FBI concluded that it could not be regulated as it was published through mass media.[3] Furthermore, the FBI ruled that the Anarchist Cookbook does not incite "forcible resistance to any law of the United States" and is therefore protected under the First Amendment.[10] While much of the text was deemed to be inaccurate, the FBI concluded that the chapter on explosives "appears to be accurate in most respects".[10] Since its conception, the FBI has kept records of the book, releasing the bulk of its investigation file in 2010.[18][19]

Anarchism

Advocates of anarchism dispute the association of the book with anarchist political philosophy. The anarchist collective CrimethInc., which published the book Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook in response, denounces the earlier book, saying it was "not composed or released by anarchists, not derived from anarchist practice, not intended to promote freedom and autonomy or challenge repressive power – and was barely a cookbook, as most of the recipes in it are notoriously unreliable".[20]

Media presence

Internet/Media

Much of the publication was copied and made available as text documents online[21] through Usenet and FTP sites hosted in academic institutions in the early 1990s, and has been made available via web browsers from their inception in the mid-1990s to the present day. The name varies slightly from Anarchist Cookbook to Anarchy Cookbook and the topics have expanded vastly in the intervening decades. Many of the articles were attributed to an anonymous author called "The Jolly Roger".

In 2001, British businessman Terrance Brown created the now defunct website anarchist-cookbook.com and sold copies of his derivative work, titled Anarchist Cookbook 2000.

Knowledge of the book, or copied online publications of it, increased along with the increase in public access to the Internet throughout the mid-1990s. Newspapers ran stories about how easy the text was to get hold of, and the influence it may have had with terrorists, criminals, and experimental teenagers.[21]

Film
See also: American Anarchist

The book was a frequent target for censorship throughout the 1990s.[22] It served as a central element of the 2002 romantic comedy The Anarchist Cookbook.[23] Repercussions from the book's publication, and the author's subsequent disavowal of its content, were the subject of the 2016 documentary film American Anarchist by Charlie Siskel. In the film, William Powell explains in depth his thoughts on the book and the consequences it had in his life.[24] It further explores the themes of responsibility and repercussions that decision can have on one's life.[25] Powell's passing in 2016 received little media coverage until the release of American Anarchist, which was released a few months after his death.[16]

People who have used the book
  • 1976: police linked the bombing of Grand Central Terminal and hijacking of a TWA flight to Croatian radicals who employed directions from The Anarchist Cookbook.[3]
  • 1981: The Anarchist Cookbook was linked to Puerto Rican rebels who bombed an FBI headquarters using the book's directions.  Thomas Spinks also employed the text during the bombings of 10 abortion clinics in the United States.[3]
  • 1995: the perpetrators of the Oklahoma City bombing were alleged to have used directions from this book.[4]
  • 1999: police found The Anarchist Cookbook in possession of the Columbine High School shooting perpetrators, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, in Littleton, Colorado. It is believed Harris and Klebold drew inspiration from the text.[4]
  • 1999: imitations of The Anarchist Cookbook were used by the London Nail Bomber, David Copeland, who killed three people. These imitations included The Terrorists' Handbook and How to Make Bombs.[11]
  • 2002: the Canadian government permitted the book to be imported from the United States. Canada Customs and Revenue Agency concluded the book does not violate either hate or obscenity laws, therefore the previous ban on the text was resolved.[26]
  • 2007: a 17-year-old was arrested in the United Kingdom and faced charges under anti-terrorism law in the UK for possession of this book, among other things.[27] He was cleared of all charges in October 2008, after arguing that he was a prankster who just wanted to research fireworks and smoke bombs.[28]
  • 2010: in County Durham, UK, Ian Davison and his son were imprisoned under anti-terrorism laws for the manufacturing of ricin. Their possession of The Anarchist Cookbook, along with its availability, was noted by the authorities.[29] This led to a London judge and police campaigning to have the book banned in the UK.[3]
  • 2012, The Anarchist Cookbook was found to have been in the possession of the perpetrator of the Aurora theater shooting.[4]
  • 2013, renewed calls were made in the United States to ban this book, citing links to a school shooting in Colorado, USA by Karl Pierson.[15]
  • 2015, the London public-transport bombers were linked to having used this book.[3]
  • 2015, United States Senator Dianne Feinstein (D- Calif) pushed to have the book removed from online databases.[16]
  • 2016: The book was refused classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification upon release, thus making the book banned in Australia. It was classified RC again on 31 October 2016.[30][31]
  • 2017: a 27-year-old was prosecuted in the UK solely for the possession of the book. He was found not guilty.[32]
  • 2020: a 23-year old mathematics graduate of the University of Cambridge was charged in the UK for the possession of the book, and for allegedly sending a grossly offensive message.[33]
gollark: > Seeing as abby isn't on, the beginners mistake is starting using it.That is heresy. Rust good.
gollark: I'm *technically* a contributor too! Although only on relatively meaningless small changes to the ROM!
gollark: > Probably you need Phillips screwdrivers for Phillips screws, all these "standards" are made to take share of market.Aren't Philips heads just a + or something? Screwdrivers for those are very cheap and widely available.
gollark: Why would you convert stuff with *newer* codecs to H.264?
gollark: Isn't GPU-based encoding somewhat low quality?

See also

References
  1. The Anarchist Cookbook LoC entry. LCCN 71127797.
  2. Mieszkowski, Katharine (September 18, 2000). "Blowing up The Anarchist Cookbook". Salon.com. Retrieved July 2, 2016.
  3. Dokoupil, Tony (February 28, 2011). "Sorry About All the Bombs: William Powell wrote a terrorist bible. Forty Years Later, he revisits his work". Newsweek. 157 (9). ISSN 0028-9604. ProQuest 854940252.
  4. Thompson, Tony (June 11, 2000). "Ban my bombers' guide, says author". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712.
  5. "'Power Must Be Taken': Excerpts From 'The Anarchist Cookbook'". The New York Times. December 22, 2017. ISSN 0362-4331.
  6. Saner, Emine. "Why the author of The Anarchist Cookbook wants it taken off the shelves". The Guardian. Retrieved May 12, 2014.
  7. "I wrote the Anarchist Cookbook in 1969. Now I see its premise as flawed". The Guardian. December 19, 2013. Retrieved December 19, 2013.
  8. Langer, Emily (March 30, 2017). "William Powell, author who later renounced his notorious volume 'The Anarchist Cookbook,' dies at 66". Washington Post. Retrieved April 30, 2019.
  9. Richard Sandomir (March 29, 2017). "William Powell, Anarchist Cookbook writer, Dies at 66". The New York Times. Retrieved March 30, 2017.
  10. "William Powell: Angry young man who inspired terrorists, hijackers and crackpots before he became a teacher of children with special needs". ProQuest 1892920338. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  11. "Ban my bombers' guide, says author The man whose 'Anarchist Cookbook' helped fuel three decades of terrorism admits: I was misguided". ProQuest 250474767. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. Smith, Dinitia (January 6, 1992). "The Happy Hawker: Tyro Publisher Steven Schragis's Genius for Promoting Schlock". New York Magazine. 25 (1). p. 46. ISSN 0028-7369.
  13. Arkansas publisher keeping controversial book on the shelves (2015 April 21)
  14. The Anarchist Cookbook Turns 40 (2011 January 31)
  15. Dokoupil, Tony (December 17, 2013). "After latest shooting, murder manual author calls for book to be taken 'immediately' out of print". NBC News. Retrieved December 19, 2013.
  16. "William Powell, author who later renounced his notorious volume 'The Anarchist Cookbook,' dies at 66: His 1971 guide to drugs, booby traps, sabotage, hand-to-hand combat and explosives sold more than 2 million copies". ProQuest 1882356577. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  17. Walker, Jesse (2011-02-16) The FBI on The Anarchist Cookbook, Reason
  18. FBI Files on the Anarchist Cookbook Retrieved on February 14, 2011
  19. Mirror of "FBI Files on the Anarchist Cookbook" Archived July 8, 2015, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved on July 24, 2013
  20. The Guardian, September 2004, as quoted at CWC Books : Recipes For Disaster Retrieved on November 22, 2007
  21. Sankin, Aaron (March 22, 2015). "The Kernel". Kernelmag.dailydot.com. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
  22. American Library Association: 100 most frequently challenged books: 1990–1999
  23. "The Anarchist Cookbook Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
  24. "American Anarchist Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
  25. "The long-lasting effects of revolutionary rhetoric explored in doc 'American Anarchist'". ProQuest 1882781392. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  26. "Anarchist book legal". Edmonton Journal. December 15, 2002. p. A5. ProQuest 252946714. ...the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency says there is nothing to prevent [the book's] legal sale in Canada because it violates neither the hate law nor obscenity law.
  27. "Boy in court on terror charges". BBC News. October 5, 2007.
  28. "Teenage bomb plot accused cleared". BBC News. October 23, 2008.
  29. "County Durham terror plot father and son are jailed". BBC News. May 14, 2010.
  30. "Banned Books in Australia: A Selection". University of Melbourne. Archived from the original on February 3, 2016.
  31. "THE ANARCHIST COOKBOOK". Classification Board. Australian Government. October 31, 2016. Retrieved November 5, 2016.
  32. Gallagher, Ryan (October 28, 2017). "How the U.K. Prosecuted a Student on Terrorism Charges for Downloading a Book".
  33. "Former Cambridge University student in court after calling for 'extermination of Jews'".

Further reading
  • Larabee, Ann (2015). The Wrong Hands: Popular Weapons Manuals and Their Historic Challenges to a Democratic Society. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-020117-3. OCLC 927145132.
  • Thompson, Gabriel (February 27, 2015). "Burn After Reading". Harper's. Browsings (blog). Retrieved March 3, 2015.
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