Over at Amazon there is this page for The Anarchist Cookbook which has this long tirade from the author about how he basically wants it to “go away” and says he’s changed his view on things, and other such crap…
I say “crap” because I used to own this book, and as someone who believes in free speech, freedom of the press, the internet, the power of the people to take over media, and all those other things, I can’t help but feel like he missed the point. The point is not that The Anarchist Cookbook exists to show you how to blow things up, the point is that we (supposedly) live in a country (we in the US anyway) where you can publish such things, and not be afraid of disappearing in the night, or having the Secret Service visit you at work and it’s ok to change your mind and change your views but you can’t wave a magic wand and making things go away.
Those of us who use the internet know that nowadays once you put it out there, it’s out there. It’s indexed, and filed, and stamped, and collated, and archived. You can try to make it disappear, but don’t count on it. The best you can do, oddly enough, is pretty much what he did. Write about what you currently think, state your case for the record, let be known your current viewpoint, but in all this realize that you can’t control the world. You can try, but you’ll fail every time…