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Comment by mingus88 | Hacker News Reader

The prevailing theory when I was in high school was that this AC was a honeypot.

Anybody trying to order the misspelled chemical names in the AC to cook homemade explosives would get a visit from the FBI

Even the size of it suggests that it’s not an actual revolutionary manual. The thing was huge, and couldn’t fit in a bookshelf. Not exactly something you could hand out and conceal if it wanted to do covert ops outlined in it like blowing bridges and sabatoge.

It’s like the only purpose it served was to be found and tip off who was interested in that stuff.

And it also served to indoctrinate a generation of us that Anarchism as a social movement was nothing more than blowing up shit; illegal and violent by definition.

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That’s probably true. There’s a program down to the county level where law enforcement establishes relationships with places that sell certain materials.

If you show up and buy a big bag of ammonium nitrate or order a few hundred pounds of sugar and aren’t known to the seller, you’ll be looked into or talked to.

It is true now. Fifty years ago, not so much. The first crackdown on chemicals was - I think but could be wrong - the precursors for quaalude manufacturing…it came even before the US got serious about drunk driving…around 1982.

Oklahoma City made explosive precursors an area of concern, but meth precursors are a 21st century prohibition/restriction.

Anyway, your local police are likely to have live access to security cameras in area businesses in addition to real time license plate readers in cruisers.

The term "bomb throwing anarchist" has been around a lot longer than the cookbook.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

Yes the AC didn't start that bit of indoctrination, but renewed it for a new generation. It was published in the 70s when the counter culture was at it's strongest.

Maybe it's time for a re-brand with a new name. This worked for Joe Camel. Also, Christianity.

Well, there exists "libertaire" in French (and other languages as well I guess) as a synonym, but nowadays people would hear "libertarian".

As a Portland resident, I haven’t seen anything evidence against that.

Noam Chomsky identifies as an anarchist, and he is not violent and blows things up, so evidence exists that it is possible.

Chomsky seems to be pretty cool with the appeasement of a genocidal terrorist regime though.

He’s not one of the good guys.

https://www.e-flux.com/notes/470005/open-letter-to-noam-chom...

who decides who the good guys are? if you get a good anthropology book, you'll find plenty of societies that value violence (to varying degrees). in fact, you don't even need an anthropology book, just open the old testament.

Apparently a blog post by 3 economists and a professor of finance decides.

They probably don't include Pol Pot, who Chomsky defended on the usual anti-imperialist basis that anything American is bad and anything not American is good.

who decides who the good guys are?

Simple. Look at the guards at the border. Are they employed because people keep trying to sneak into the country, or out of it?

It’s hard not to invoke Godwin’s Law at this point.

To me it seems self evident and non-controversial to all but the sneeriest of intellectuals, that some people are just bad.

Thanks, that was an interesting letter. I was unaware of it. In any case, there are things to learn from Chomsky, without agreeing on everything with him.

> Even the size of it suggests that it’s not an actual revolutionary manual. The thing was huge, and couldn’t fit in a bookshelf. Not exactly something you could hand out and conceal if it wanted to do covert ops outlined in it like blowing bridges and sabatoge.

What are you talking about, it’s 160 pages. I remember carrying around a binder in my school backpack, it’s fairly slim actually.

My copy was a very tall book, black cover. I think this is what OP meant - not book length.

Oh I see. I’ve only ever seen printed copies of it on regular sized paper.

> And it also served to indoctrinate a generation of us that Anarchism as a social movement was nothing more than blowing up shit; illegal and violent by definition.

This is somewhat more productive than what anarchism is actually about (holding so many meetings about everything you never actually do it).

But I think people got a better picture from watching Life of Brian.

> It’s like the only purpose it served was to be found and tip off who was interested in that stuff.

it'd be a shame then because the FBI must have spent several years worth of man-hours investigating 13 year old edgelords instead of concerning themselves with actual threats.

In secondary school, I remember some people buying this book. You could not buy it off the shelf, but you could order it just fine. They were more interested in the drug recipes, but I don't think any of the recipes worked out or were practical.

> And it also served to indoctrinate a generation of us that Anarchism as a social movement was nothing more than blowing up shit; illegal and violent by definition.

Anarchism has earned this reputation for a reason, and it's definitely not a conspiracy.

There are different movements/leanings of Anarchism, and some of them are outright mainstream in multiple countries (e.g. Anarcho-Capitalism is very popular in the US).

Those folks also believe in blowing things up and burning down government buildings. They just believe that capitalism will be sustainable in the absence of a dominant power.

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