Let’s start with the assumption that you want to be free. That’s a good assumption, because if you didn’t want to be free, you wouldn’t be reading my drivel; you’d be watching cute kitten videos on YouTube. So, you want to be free. You want to live in a world where you have authority over yourself, where you make your own choices and guide your own destiny. That’s what freedom is, after all, isn’t it?
And I think we all know that isn’t what we have so long as we answer to kings and presidents, to zoning boards and traffic cops– perfect strangers empowered by other perfect strangers to exert control over you. Whatever that is, it isn’t freedom. Nation states are not spaces for exercising freedom, but are, rather, systems of control. And more and more, I think, people are awakening to the idea that these antiquated control systems have
never really worked as advertised.
So, if we accept that nation states are nonfreedom, and if we seek freedom, then we have to find some practical way to get from Point A to Point B, from nonfreedom to freedom, from nation state control to collective liberation. We have to essentially abolish the system of control exerting itself over us.
Now, to be clear, I’m not trying to inspire you to run out and tip over a cop car and burn it… or to walk out and tip over all of the cop cars and burn them. Although, just an observation here, if you did in fact tip over and burn the cop cars, that would be at least one small step toward our collective liberation. But please finish reading this first. The cop cars will still be the when you get finished.
As I was saying, nation states are an obstacle to our collective freedom, and so, to be free, we must remove the barrier. To that end, we logically brainstorm all the ways we can make nation states go extinct, bring them down in their own footprints, as it were, like the demolition of a condemned building.
We know there are a handful of things that nation states must do in order to remain nation states. They must tax, for example. They must defend their territorial integrity. They must have the capacity to punish. So, it stands to reason that if we take away one of those components, say, the capacity to punish, we would, by extension, abolish the nation state itself. Nation states rely on prisons; take away prisons, and the nation state ceases to function.
Just a quick side note here, but I’ve always been somewhat confused by self-professed socialists who advocate for prison abolition; you’ve never seen a socialist state that didn’t have prisons. Not to discourage socialists from abolishing prisons, but if you abolish prisons, you also abolish the socialist program.
Show me a socialist state without a prison and I’ll show you a failed socialist state.
At any rate, given that prison abolition is state abolition, you normally see the prison abolition ranks filled with those from the extremely cranky anti-state crowd– the machete wielding, ski mask clad, dumpster burning, savage cannibal maniacs who read diatribes like this one… and maybe some confused socialists who don’t know that prison abolition is the death of the socialist program. Whatever you do, don’t tell them.
So, to show the math on this, it’s like a series of anti-state cow-tippings; you topple the prisons, you topple the state that relies on prisons. Then, when you’ve toppled the state, you open a vast liberatory space where the state used to be, a vast liberatory space where everyone can engage in experiments in direct freedom.
See how that all goes together nicely?
Unfortunately, the fascist fuckweasels who run our world (and do it badly) see it too. They’ve done the math. They know state longevity demands that they defend the prison complex at all costs. That requires them to tame, crush, and destroy anyone who thinks about prison abolition– both inside and outside the prison complex.
As a prisoner who knows the state has never worked as advertised, I’ve been a target of that repression. Because I don’t have the sense to shut up about the state terrorists holding me hostage (still don’t), I’ve been subjected to a long train of tortures and torments. I’ve had communications shut down for more than a year at a time– not for what I said, but in anticipation of what I could say; I’ve been railroaded through weaponized disciplinary processes; I’ve been supermaxed and illegally renditioned; I’ve been tortured and dismembered.
Now, I’m not sniveling here. Please don’t think I’m sniveling. My point is that states don’t let you confront them effectively for free. In fact, you can test the validity of any insurrectionary hypothesis by simply measuring the state’s retributive response. If the state responds with no violence at all, whatever you did was totally harmless to their objectives. But if they respond with overwhelming brutality to crush and destroy you, you know you’re onto something.
Some cases in point. If you were a prisoner and you urged all your fellow captives to write informal complaints, the prison complex would respond with an eye roll and a chuckle. Same for lawsuits or letters to senators. None of those things disrupt their aims.
But imagine you said, for instance, “We can collectively sabotage the prison complex from the inside and make it unmanageable, bringing about its utter collapse,” the state would call in the FBI and put you on a terrorist watch list as a gang leader and haul you off to the supermax. Their irrational violence tells you that you had a good idea.
If, perhaps, you say to outside support, “You can create an online database that posts all of the state torturers’ home addresses, which would be totally demoralizing for the torture complex, and would lead potentially to attacks on their homes and to work force attrition,” they’d black site you in place, subjecting you to imaginative terrors, and even torment your loved ones. Their irrational violence tells you that you had a great idea.
You might say, for instance, “You can use drones to drop crates of guns into prisons,” and they’ll illegally rendition you to other states, and maybe even chop your finger off in the process. Their irrational violence tells you that you had a fantastic idea.
But prisons don’t just have concern for what prisoners are doing. Really, they care more about the thoughts and feelings of folks in the free world. The fascist fuckweasels don’t see themselves as servants to the people or as stewards of the common good; they see the people as the potential enemy, an opposing camp, a population of subjects to be feared, suspected, and controlled. And that means you. Especially you.
It turns out, the Ohio prison complex has a secret intelligence unit.
I know. Not surprising. Given what they demonstrate publicly and openly, we know that any “intelligence” they have would have to be secret. But what I mean is, they have a shady black ops unit that doesn’t just target and neutralize prisoners; their black ops unit monitors and targets and neutralizes free world people, too.
I found this out in pending litigation. I’ve been vigorously suing the Ohio prison system, and the Attorney General’s office has had to turn over hundreds and hundreds of pages of information– including piles of staff internal emails. Some of those emails reveal conversations and reports between administrators and “intelligence analysts” who were not just monitoring my activities and published work, but were monitoring free world people.
All of those emails will soon be published online on all of my social media platforms so you can read them for yourselves and learn the identities and email addresses, and phone numbers of the secret fartgoblins on the black ops unit, but, in the meantime, some highlights I’ve gleaned from a quick perusal:
–On one occasion, all of my communications were suspended in advance of a peaceful protest planned at ODRC Central Office; not because I had promoted the protest, but to stop me from finding out about it and talking about it on the radio…
–On another occasion, an “intelligence analyst” submitted a report detailing the activities of IWOC and a food justice group at the University of Cincinnati because of those groups’ political affinities…
–The secret intelligence unit monitored all posts at itsgoingdown.org and discussed the political affinities of some of its known, associated contributors, reporting on the number of “likes” and “shares” on social media and assessing the level of political threat those outside criticisms posed to the prison fascists’ political program
It’s pretty creepy shit. Pretty scary. So, after this is published, if I disappear, you’ll know they tried to kill me again like they botched it in 2018… or they renditioned me like they botched it in 2022… or Elon Musk duct taped me to his next abysmal rocket launch failure.
Hard to say what these creeps will do next, or to whom.
No better argument for taking power from them.
About Sean Swain…
Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain has been held hostage since 1991 by an illegitimate rogue state called Ohio. You can follow his struggle for freedom on Instagram (@realswainiac1969); X (@swainsean1969); FaceBook (sean.swain.1969); on YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest (@seanswain1969); and online at seanswain.noblogs.org
