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The Anarchist Stuart Christie and His Peculiar Literary ABOUT US CONTACT US DONATE VOLUNTEER Search Articles ... Search HOME PAGE INFOSHOP NEWS INFOSHOP LIBRARY ANARCHIST FAQ SOLIDARITY EVENTS BLOGS PAGES FORUMS Home ›› Pages ›› The Anarchist Stuart Christie and his Peculiar Literary Bedfellow, the Neo-Conservative Stephen Schwartz The Anarchist Stuart Christie and his Peculiar Literary Bedfellow, the Neo-Conservative Stephen Schwartz Submitted by Chuck0 on Sat, 08/01/2015 - 00:21 0 0 0 Like THE ANARCHISTS AND SPAIN: "COULDA, WOULDA, SHOULDA..." In 1964, a courageous young Scottish anarchist named Stuart Christie was arrested in Spain for taking part in an effort to assasinate open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com dictator Francisco Franco. If the attempt on Franco's life had succeeded it would have been one of the most emotionally satisfying political killings of the 20th century. But alas, like many earlier efforts against the Generalissmo this attempt failed, and Christie's role in this failure had several aspects. First, shortly before going to Spain, Christie participated in a television inteview where he made it clear he thought killing Franco would be desirable. Along with the obvious lack of discretion demonstrated by Christie, it later turned out the journalist interviewing Christie, Malcolm Muggeridge, had been involved with British intelligence services during World War Two. This compounded the fact that it was neither the time nor the place for Christie to voice his fiery sentiments. Christie's second bad judgement call was that he tried to transport the explosives to be used in the anti-Franco effort while hitchhiking, and did some of his hitchhiking while wearing a kilt. Under the circumstances, hitchhiking might or might not have been a good way to transport explosives. The problem then becomes a sartorial one, so let's put this one in our live-and-learn file; if you are carrying high explosives to be used in an attempt on the life of a head of state, and you are male, and you decide to hitchhike, you may wish to refrain from wearing a plaid skirt while doing so, especially while crossing the rural regions of a socially reactionary Catholic police state. These events took place in 1964. We all make mistakes. It would be churlish of me to bag on a man who is now in his sixties for mistakes made in a good effort in his long-ago youth. However, Stuart Christie's ability to look before he leaps has not noticibly improved in the years since the failed attempt to take the Generalissimo out of the box, and his lousy judgment-making skills are now on proud display in his choice of contributers for his literary journal 'Arena Two: Noir Fiction,' edited by Stuart Christie, and published by PM Press. "Arena Two: Noir Fiction" features three pieces by a minor league neo-conservative war propagandist named Stephen Schwartz. (three, count 'em, three; Christie's cup runneth over a bit here.) A professional repentant former leftist turned fan of the Nicaraguan Contras, and more recently an apologist for Uzbek's murderous dictator Islam Karimov, Schwartz also styles himself as one of the world's leading authorities on the Spanish Revolution and Civil War. Schwartz's role in 'Arena Two: Noir Fiction" is touted in neutral terms as examining "the relationship between surrealism and anarchism." Indeed, "noir fiction" and "surreal" are words that easily attach themselves to the life and deeds of 'Arena Two: Noir Fiction' contributor Stephen Schwartz. Schwartz was raised in San Francisco as a self-proclaimed "red diaper baby" in the milieu of the pro-Soviet Union Communist Party U.S.A. In his youth he experienced a suspiciously Oedipal-sounding rebellion against the C.P. and became a Trotskyist. Schwartz also styled himself as a later-day surrealist poet, did some heavy-duty hanging out in the late 1970's to early 1980's punk rock scene of San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, and wrote articles in the SF punk newspaper 'Search and Destroy' under the name Nico Ordway. For several years he was also a one-man ultra-left Trotskyist organization with the grandiose name of 'Fomento Obrero Revolucionario Organizing Committee in the US.' In this context he published a sort of fanzine-to-himself called 'The Alarm.' Schwartz wrote in it under the open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com names 'Comrade Sandalio' and 'S.Solsona,' perhaps attempting to cloak himself in a dashing air of mystery and adventure that was otherwise out of reach for an obnoxious, overweight, foul-mouthed cafe habitué who couldn't get dates with hot young punk rock chicks. Schwartz was widely derided by those who encountered him in the flesh. Anarchist writer Bob Black dissed him in a 1982 leaflet as a "tendentious pedant" and "an after hours militant with nothing to say in six languages." After meeting him in person, his ostensible comrades in France and Spain declared that they had "broke all relations" ("...rompemos toda relacion con ellos.") with his one-person "group" in the May 1982 issue of their publication 'Alarma.' (1) Another acquaintance from that time, John Zerzan, has said of Schwartz: "...he always struck me as a pretty ridiculous character. He went from Stalinist to Trot to `Surrealist Trot' to what he called `very close to classical anarchist,' and given his flakiness it didn't seem to matter nor did it seem like it would surprise me whatever turn he would take. Now I know this sounds like a claim to omniscience, but he always struck me as an unstable case who could end up anywhere!...he made himself a joke by trying to recruit San Francisco punks - who all laughed at him while spending his money..." (2) THE POETASTER'S DISHONOR... By the end of Ronald Reagan's first term Schwartz stopped publishing 'The Alarm' and quickly became a neo-conservative. This coincided with a massive improvement in his job prospects. Schwartz went from being a guy who had recently made a living driving a cab to employment as an editor at a San Francisco-based, Reagan Adminstration-affiliated think tank called the Institute for Contemporary Studies. This was a rare charitable indulgence on the part of the Reagan right, since at the time of his hiring Schwartz didn't have an undergraduate degree and had never been involved in anything more politically consequential than sharing his opinions about anarchism, Trotskyism and the Spanish Civil War in a loud voice in bars. ``...ICS (the Institute for Contemporary Studies) was launched in 1974, during the waning days of Governor Ronald Reagan's Administration, by Edwin Meese III and other close Reagan associates...Defending America, a 1977 ICS title with an introduction by former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, built an early case that the Soviets had opened a `window of vulnerability' in U.S. nuclear defenses...ICS, which receives the bulk of its funding from corporations such as Bechtel, Chevron, IBM and Chase Manhattan Bank (also Alcoa, Union Carbide, Coors, Exxon, and the Hearst Corporation, at that time the owner of the San Francisco Examiner) and from key right-wing fundraisers like Richard Mellon Scaife, has been called `Reagan's favorite think tank.''' (3) In his role as an editor at the Institute for Contemporary Studies, the newly-minted-former "Comrade Sandalio" of the 'Fomento Obrero Revolucionario Organizing Committee' worked enthusiastically to help create a favorable public relations climate for US-backed counterinsurgency efforts in Central America. Among tasks he performed in this vein was to help organize materials for a book published open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com by ICS Press titled 'The Grenada Papers.' Published shortly before the 1984 US elections, 'The Grenada Papers' was a collection of internal documents of the 'New Jewel Movement,' the leftist regime that had governed the Carribean island of Grenada and self- destructed shortly before the 1983 American invasion and occupation of Grenada. The documents had been seized and analyzed by the CIA and Air Force Intelligence in the wake of the US invasion and then forwarded to the Institute for Contemporary Studies. Edited by University of California-Berkeley Professors Paul Seabury and Walter McDougall, the book extolled the US invasion as the first time a so- called Communist regime had been overthrown by democratic forces, and the book was structured to justify the invasion of Grenada to an audience mostly made up of the staffers of stupid American congressmen. 'The Grenada Papers' demonized by association the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and leftist guerrilla movements in El Salvador and Guatemala. The editors' key point was that leftist insurgencies in the Caribbean and Central America were pawns of Soviet foreign policy and a dire strategic threat to the United States (we should have been so lucky). Events in Grenada were presented as an argument for increased aggression by the US government in Central America. Schwartz wrote introductions to sections of the book in which the ``Left-wing'' West German Social Democrats were taken to task for not being sufficiently supportive of US defense goals. 'The Grenada Papers' was published in the fall of 1984. In the Fall 1984 issue of the ICS's 'Journal of Contemporary Studies,' Schwartz called attention to his participation in a presentation based on the materials in 'The Grenada Papers' before an "Outreach group on Central America" at the Reagan White House on Oct. 31, 1984. In the same period, in a letter to the contemporary version of the Industrial Workers of the World dated October 24, 1984, Schwartz eulogized a recently deceased Marxist member of the current-day version of the IWW, Ed Spira, saluting Spira as a ``working class warrior.'' Schwartz signed his letter by name and by his IWW membership number, X333361.
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