anarchist fashion role model: ben reitman

Excerpt from Emma Goldman’s Living My Life:

He arrived in the afternoon, an exotic, picturesque figure with a large black cowboy hat, flowing silk tie, and huge cane. “So this is the little lady, Emma Goldman,” he greeted me; “I have always wanted to know you.” His voice was deep, soft, and ingratiating. I replied that I also wanted to meet the curiosity who believed enough in free speech to help Emma Goldman. My visitor was a tall man with a finely shaped head, covered with a mass of black curly hair, which evidently had not been washed for some time. His eyes were brown, large, and dreamy. His lips, disclosing beautiful teeth when he smiled, were full and passionate. He looked a handsome brute. His hands, narrow and white, exerted a peculiar fascination. His finger-nails, like his hair, seemed to be on strike against soap and brush. I could not take my eyes off his hands. A strange charm seemed to emanate from them, caressing and stirring…

 

These o.g. anarchists sort of depress me, now take this fellow: here’s a mansy that besides being a snappy dresser was * l i t e r a l l y * a hobo doctor (wtf!), went around curing prostitutes of the clap, wrote Boxcar Betty, helped start the Dil Pickle Club (anarchist cabaret in Chicago), traveled around the country as an anarchist agitator at times being tarred and feathered, and was Emma Goldman’s lover to boot, and that’s a very short list.  Really? It’s too much.  I can’t stand reading Living My Life for that exact reason, every page is a plethora of unbelievable actions in the face of intense violence from the state, lynch mobs etc etc.  It really puts things into perspective I have to say!  But it was definitely a different time.  I guess that the reason anarchy was so hot in the late 1800′s to 1930′s was that people hadn’t become so accustomed to the nation and advanced capitalism, it was such a new idea in those days that people at the very start saw it for what it was, a system bound to fail.  I mean, at this point we anarchists have trouble even explaining how alienated we are and how much we’ve lost just in terms of our imagination, having been born in a prison, to quote Yoko.  Try to elucidate a more complex anarchist idea, about cultural appropriation, patriarchy, heterosexism, or any other the tools of nationalism and capitalism, and it’s like you’re from another planet.  Oh well, the beat goes on.  Yay, Ben Reitman!

About these ads