Tuesday, April 07, 2009

The book of Shibboleth.

Everyone who's ever attended a gun show knows that you are guaranteed to find at least one table (and probably several) of genuine whackos: Neo-Nazis, conspiranoiacs, people who think space aliens assassinated Elvis with fluoridated water, that sort of thing. It's just the eddies in the stream where the First and Second Amendments flow together. Frankly, a gun show without Nazis to mock would be like a gun show without beef jerky.

Every now and again, some lefty discovers this and recoils in horror, completely ignoring the fact that their side of the political fence has its own equally charming equivalents (It ain't bible-thumping conservatives smashing store windows and playing slap-tickle with the riot cops every time the WTO comes to town...)

Something that I got a giggle out of in the latest bout of the vapors over Knob Creek is the mention of The Anarchist's Cookbook as a (and I quote) "soldier of fortune training manual":
highly secret “soldier of fortune” training manuals (”Militiaman’s Handbook”, “How to Change Your Identity and Erase Bad Credit”, “The Anarchist’s Cookbook”, “The Hit Man’s Guide to Assassination” . . .)
I am going to go out on a limb and state that these correspondents have never read said Cookbook. I can state this with reasonable certainty, because if there is a less right-wing, "soldier of fortune" book than The Anarchist's Cookbook, I am not aware of it. The book in question is a charming counterculture relic from the days when Baby Boomers sat around crash pads with flat stomachs and full heads of hair (or heads full of Hair) and planned The Revolution. For heaven's sake, it has recipes for hallucinogenic drugs (which you shouldn't follow, by the way) and instructions on how The People can rise up against The Man to stop the Vietnam War. By "Anarchist", it means Kropotkin, not Kazynski.


(H/T again to Unc.)

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

it's also funny becuase, iirc, the hitman's guide to assassination was written by some housewife for a few bucks as fiction. But loons take it seriously thereby resulting in other loons thinking these loons are the looniest.

-SayUncle

Jay G said...

"Frankly, a gun show without Nazis to mock would be like a gun show without beef jerky."

True, dat...

Anonymous said...

Then they go to the Sci fi convention and find the three hundred pound Sailor Moon and her 85 pound boyfriend Thor.

Don said...

Tom, don't try to equate the two. YOUR hobby is sad and weird. I saw it on the news!

Dr. StrangeGun said...

tom-the-impaler,

Sailer Moon's boyfriend should be Thor, with that disparity. How Thilly....

Anonymous said...

A gun show without Nazi crap?

That would be like a gun show without fat guys in smelly Carharts who point guns at me.

I cannot envision such a world!

:-)

Shootin' Buddy

Brian J. said...

Yeah, those guys are nuts.

Aliens got Elvis with irradiated groceries. Any reasonable person knows that.

TOTWTYTR said...

When I was college, back in the early 1970s, The Anarchists Cookbook was held up as an example of leftist/commie mischief. Along with George Hayduke's "Get Even: The Complete Book of Dirty Tricks".

Odd how these are now right wing loonie toons manuals.

Ken said...

No direct experience here, but isn't The Anarchist's Cookbook secretly a product of Doc Darwin's Gene Pool Cleaning Service (a subsidiary of the Grace L. Fullerton Airline and Storm Door Company)?

David said...

The aliens did NOT get Elvis.

Elvis is resting comfortably in an East Texas Rest Home where he passes the time eating fried peanut butter and bananna sandwiches and hunting vampires and mummies.

Don't you people pay attention?

Somerled said...

It's amazing how the MSM obsesses about gun control and the gun-show loophole yet overlooks issues such as the sale of Social Security numbers at county fairs along the border and how easy it is to for illegals to obtain a U.S. drivers license.

With a bogus SS number and DL, any criminal no matter their race, can travel anywhere in this country and buy products even more lethal than "The Anarchist's Cookbook" or a pistol or rifle.

RevGreg said...

Eh...that guy was too late to alert me to the "Obama/Biden 2012 Fourth Reich" T-shirt, in one of my buddy's pics he sent from KCR his son was wearing one. The good thing is he said who was selling them, it ain't my cup of tea but I know about half-dozen guys who wanted them immediately when I showed them the photo...and now in protesting these shirts the guys probably just expanded the market for the exponentially. Moron. I'm sure the ACLU will be standing up for them just like the wearers of various shirts denigrating Bush over the past few years that the lefties made such a stink about when people objected. Or not.

Arcadia Iris said...

"it has recipes for hallucinogenic drugs (which you shouldn't follow, by the way)"

You mean the banana peel thing would just be a waste of time?

Honestly, I think there's a new crop of idjits every year who find out about the banana peel thing, yet somehow fail to find out it's been disproven eleventy times.

B.S. philosopher said...

what gets me is the sheer literal-mindedness of some of the lefty commenters.

Several of the commenters talking about the "Hitler gave great speeches too" T-shirt assumed that it meant that the "wingnuts" liked Hitler's speeches.

closed said...

These reporters are taking seriously a book that suggests smoking toad skins to get high?

An Unsheltered Life said...

Hah. I remember reading that cookbook online when I was a teenager. Had all of eight brain cells working properly at the time, being in my teens and all (adolescence is tough, you know) but I could tell that it was a bunch of drivel not to be taken seriously. Smoking banana skins, indeed.

Sigivald said...

What's "secret" about the crap that Paladin Press pushes?

It's not like they don't have a website and catalogs and distributors (I recall Loompanics carried their stuff back when I got their catalog).

I recall people with better chemistry than I've got saying that the Cookbook recipes were for the most part if not entirely either simply wrong or actively sabotaged.

The panties sure get in a twist easy, don't they?

Anonymous said...

I read the Anarchists Cookbook back in the early '70s. Speaking as a chemist, I can tell you that some of the recipes are ~almost~ right. They're just close enough to kill anyone who tries them.

BTW the Improvised Munitions black books aren't much better. Several of the recipes will work and leave you with explosives that are impure, toxic and potentially very dangerous to be around.

Like everything else in life, buyer beware.

As to the members of the National Socialist Workers Party, I just consider them comic relief.

Mikael said...

As a 12 year old, I got my hands on a floppy disc for amiga with a copy of a far more dangerous chemistry book on it. I have forgotten the name, but it was in a similar vein.

This however was filled with recepies for explosives, and I believe, some poisons and other nasties, like how to make chlorine gas, and probably mustard gas as well.

I never used any recepies in there, though I did check up on availability of some of the ingredients for explosives. Particularly nitric acid, sulphuric acid, glycerine, ammonia and iodine.

I ended up deciding that nitroglycerine would be too dangerous to make, and tri-iodine crystals too expensive for the fun they'd bring.

I did however make lots of low-grade blackpowder, of which I used for fizzy-type home-made fireworks(rather than the go-boom type). Some were quite pretty, especially when adding a bit of rust to the mix.

NotClauswitz said...

I can verify that the dried banana skins don't get you high - unless you wrap them up with Acapulco Gold.

But if they're talking about Nazi's and all, then the cookbook must be a Vegetarian one with a lot of New-Age Holistic spiritualism crap in it.

B Smith said...

Elvis is in Las Vegas, making a KILLING as an Elvis impersonator.
This is true!!! My sister's boyfriend's aunt SAW him...:-D

Tommy Paine IX said...

Yeah, hallucenagens and explosives in the same book. Can't imagine a worse combination... "Dude, check out the pink vapors coming from the homemade nitro!"

Firehand said...

"But-but- but it HAS to be true! Because if it's true it means all the crap I yell about nazi gunowners is true! And if it's NOT true, it means I'm full of shit!"

og said...

Same people are often confused when you tell them "Nazi" means "National Socialist". Because socialisim MUST be good. And Nazism MUST be bad. You're wrong, they CANNOT be the same thing. And there's NO Z in Socialist!!! See!???

Anonymous said...

as I've said elsewhere, the Anarchist's Cookbook must have been written by the FBI to darwin award anarchists everywhere.

If one needs low rent ordnance just pick up the DOD approved tm 31-201-1 or 31-210 .

I'm an average chemist (with the grades to prove it) and followed to the letter the tm's work.

the stuff in the cookbook is put mildly an elaborate form of suicide.

bannana skins and toad skins?, Garscon, double scotch neat I must get that thought out of my head.

woerm

Hunter said...

And on another note, I've got a copy of "Steal This Book" by a.hoffman somewhere around here. Held together by real 100mph tape, not duct tape.

Hunter
Alaska

Chris M said...

I've remembered for years the last sentence in the Cookbook's recipe for making nitroglycering... "If the temperature of the solution rises above 30 degrees Centigrade, run like hell." The thought of outrunning the blast wave of one's home-made nitro still gives me giggles almost forty years later.

Phelps said...

Then they go to the Sci fi convention and find the three hundred pound Sailor Moon and her 85 pound boyfriend Thor.

As the Great Luke Ski says, "You might be a Trekkie if... you've ever convinced your girlfriend to dress up like Xena or your boyfriend like Gabrielle!"

NotClauswitz said...

I stole "Steal this Book" - but only from the School library. For a good book about hallucinogens and explosives in the same story, they're featured in some early work by P.J. O'Rourke (Age & Guile).

Anonymous said...

In case anyone was curious:

ANARCHY COOKBOOK VERSION 2000
Pictures and Reformatting for Word6 by Louis Helm
Table of Contents
1.Counterfeiting Money
2.Credit Card Fraud
3.Making Plastic Explosives
4.Picking Master Locks
5.The Arts of Lockpicking I
6.The Arts of Lockpicking II
7.Solidox Bombs
8.High Tech Revenge: The Beigebox
9.COĆ½ Bombs
10.Thermite II Bombs
11.Touch Explosives
12.Letter Bombs
13.Paint Bombs
14.Ways to send a car to HELL
15.Do you hate school?
16.Phone related vandalism
17.Highway police radar jamming
18.Smoke Bombs
19.Mail Box Bombs
20.Hot-wiring cars
21.Napalm
22.Fertilizer Bomb
23.Tennis Ball Bomb
24.Diskette Bombs
25.Unlisted Phone Numbers
26.Fuses
27.How to make Potassium Nitrate
28.Exploding Lightbulbs
29.Under water igniters
30.Home-brew blast cannon
31.Chemical Equivalency List
32.Phone Taps
33.Landmines
34.A different Molitov Cocktail
35.Phone Systems Tutorial I
36.Phone Systems Tutorial II
37.Basic Alliance Teleconferencing
38.Aqua Box Plans
39.Hindenberg Bomb
40.How to Kill Someone
41.Phone Systems Tutorial III
42.Black Box Plans
43.The Blotto Box
44.Blowgun
45.Brown Box Plans
46.Calcium Carbide Bomb
47.More Ways to Send a Car to Hell
48.Ripping off Change Machines
49.Clear Box Plans
50.CNA Number Listing
51.Electronic Terrorism
52.Start a Conf. w/o 2600hz or MF
53.Dynamite
54.Auto Exhaust Flame Thrower
55.How to Break into BBs Express
56.Firebomb
57.Fuse Bomb
58.Generic Bomb
59.Green Box Plans
60.Portable Grenade Launcher
61.Basic Hacking Tutorial I
62.Basic Hacking Tutorial II
63.Hacking DEC's
64.Harmless Bombs
65.Breaking into Houses
66.Hypnotism
67.Remote Informer Issue #1
68.Jackpotting ATM Machines
69.Jug Bomb
70.Fun at K-Mart
71.Mace Substitute
72.How to Grow Marijuana
73.Match Head Bomb
74.Terrorizing McDonalds
75."Mentor's" Last Words
76.The Myth of the 2600hz Detector
77.Blue Box Plans
78.Napalm II
79.Nitroglycerin Recipe
80.Operation: Fuckup
81.Stealing Calls from Payphones
82.Pool Fun
83.Free Postage
84.Unstable Explosives
85.Weird Drugs
86.The Art of Carding
87.Recognizing Credit Cards
88.How to Get a New Identity
89.Remote Informer Issue #2
90.Remote Informer Issue #3
91.Remote Informer Issue #4
92.Remote Informer Issue #5
93.Phreaker's Guide to Loop Lines
94.Ma-Bell Tutorial
95.Getting Money out of Pay Phones
96.Computer-based PBX
97.PC-Pursuit Port Statistics
98.Pearl Box Plans
99.The Phreak File
100.Red Box Plans
101.RemObS
102.Scarlet Box Plans
103.Silver Box Plans
104.Bell Trashing
105.Canadian WATS Phonebook
106.Hacking TRW
107.Hacking VAX & UNIX
108.Verification Circuits
109.White Box Plans
110.The BLAST Box
111.Dealing with the R&R Operator
112.Cellular Phone Phreaking
113.Cheesebox Plans
114.Start Your Own Conferences
115.Gold Box Plans
116.The History of ESS
117.The Lunch Box
118.Olive Box Plans
119.The Tron Box
120.More TRW Info
121."Phreaker's Phunhouse"
122.Phrack Magazine-Vol. 3, Issue 27
123.Phrack Magazine-Vol. 3, Issue 27
124.Phrack Magazine-Vol. 3, Issue 28
125.Phrack Magazine-Vol. 3, Issue 28
126.Phrack Magazine-Vol. 3, Issue 28
127.Phrack Magazine-Vol. 3, Issue 30
128.Phrack Magazine-Vol. 3, Issue 30
129.Phrack Magazine-Vol. 3, Issue 30
130.Sodium Chlorate
131.Mercury Fulminate
132.Improvised Black Powder
133.Nitric Acid
134.Dust Bomb Instructions
135.Carbon-Tet Explosive
136.Making Picric Acid from Aspirin
137.Reclamation of RDX from C-4
138.Egg-based Gelled Flame Fuels
139.Clothespin Switch
140.Flexible Plate Switch
141.Low Signature System [Silencers]
142.Delay Igniter From Cigarette
143.Nicotine
144.Dried Seed Timer
145.Nail Grenade
146.Bell Glossary
147.Phone Dial Locks -- Beat'em
148.Exchange Scanning
149.A Short History of Phreaking
150."Secrets of the Little Blue Box"
151.The History of British Phreaking
152."Bad as Shit"
153.Telenet
154.Fucking with the Operator
155.Phrack Magazine-Vol. 1, Issue 1
156.International Country Codes List
157.Infinity Transmitter Plans
158.LSD
159.Bananas
160.Yummy Marihuana Recipes
161.Peanuts
162.Chemical Fire Bottle
163.Igniter from Book Matches
164."Red or White Powder" Propellant
165.Pipe Hand Grenade
166.European Credit Card Fraud
Potassium Bomb
Your Legal Rights
Juvenile Offenders' Rights
Down The Road Missle
Fun With Shotgun Shells
Surveillance Equipment
Drip Timer
Stealing
Miscellaneous
Shaving cream bomb
Ripping off change machines II
Lockpicking the EASY way
Anarchy 'N' Explosives Prelude
-Diamondback