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= The Anarchist Cookbook = From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigationJump to search For the film, see The Anarchist Cookbook (film).The Anarchist Cookbook, first published in 1971, is a book that contains instructions for the manufacture of explosives, rudimentary telecommunications phreaking devices, and related weapons, as well as instructions for home manufacturing of illicit drugs, including LSD. It was written by William Powell at the apex of the counterculture era to protest against United States involvement in the Vietnam War. Powell converted to Anglicanism in 1976, and later attempted to have the book removed from circulation, but the copyright belonged to the publisher who continued circulation until the company was acquired in 1991. Its legality has been questioned in several jurisdiction.

Creation
The Anarchist Cookbook was written by William Powell as a teenager and first published in 1971 at the apex of the counterculture era to protest against United States involvement in the Vietnam War. '''Powell gained inspration for his text from his experiences with Vietnam vets during his time living in Manhattan. During this time, the peaceniks of the 1960s began to take a more violent turn, resulting in over a hundred politically inspired bombings. Powell began plans to become a writer but decided upon a political course when he was drafted to the Vietnam war. From 1968 to 1970, Powell began researching in the "U.S. Comabt Bookshelf" at the New York Public Library, including external texts such as The Boy Scout Handbook, Fuck the System by Abbie Hoffman, and other popular anarchist texts. The initial manuscript was sent to Lyle Stuart in 1970.'''

'The Anarchist Cookbook'' was initially designed as a book meant to provide education towards the "the silent majority" of American population. Powell described that the book was not intended for extant political fringe organizations, rather it was designed to galvanize a great societal change by inciting the general population. The ultimate goal of the text was to provide the general population with the skills and capabilities to organize against fascist, capitalist, and communist treats that he perceived.'''

Author remorse[edit]
After writing the book as a teenager, Powell converted to Anglicanism in 1976, and later attempted to have the book removed from circulation. '''In 1979, Powell left the United States, traveling to the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia. There he worked as a faculty member for international schools backed by the United Sates. During this time, he began writing about pedagogy and conflict resolution. This led him to renounce his book and instead campaign for its discontinuation'''. He was unable to legally stop publication of The Anarchist's Cookbook because the copyright had been issued to the original publisher (Lyle Stuart), and subsequent publishers that purchased the rights have kept the title in print. Powell publicly renounced his book in both a 2000 statement for the Amazon bookstore and a 2013 piece calling for the book to "quickly and quietly go out of print". William Powell died of cardiac arrest on 11 July 2016.

Publication status[edit]
The copyright of the book never belonged to its author, but to its publisher Lyle Stuart. Stuart kept publishing the book until the company was bought in 1991 by Steven Schragis, who decided to drop it. Out of the 2,000 books published by the company, it was the only one that Schragis decided to stop publishing. Schragis said publishers have a responsibility to the public, and the book had no positive social purpose that could justify keeping it in print. The copyright was bought in 2002 by Delta Press (aka Ozark Press) an Arkansas-based publisher that specializes in controversial books, where the title is their "most-asked-for volume".

Content
'''The Anarchist Cookbook begins with a Forward section, detailing the author's intentions for the text. At the time of writing, Powell believed that the United States was slowly declining towards communism, therefore he found it necessary to pen a book that guided people on revolution against this transition. He championed the idea of "bringing America back to where she was two hundred years ago ", believing his revolutionary ideals to be reactionary, rather than proactive. Powell begins with his vision for the book in how it is intended to educate a galvanize the public to make tangible change in their home countries. Powell states that fringe political organizations, such The Minutemen and The Weathermen, are not the intended audience, rather it is written for "the silent majority". Powell envisioned the United State people rebelling against what he deemed to be oppressive capitalistic ideals, and to a lesser extant against fascist and communist movements.'''

'''Powell begins the content of his book by defining anarchy and anarchist theory. Anarchy, by his definition is a wide scale mass uprising by the people, similar to that of civil disobedience through violence. He believed that anarchy was the innate state of all individuals, and therefore human nature would drive people to participate in such practices. Powell believed that current expressions of politics, arts, music, and education all contained innate principles of anarchist ideals, thereby, equating anarchism to individualism. This principle drives Powell's argumentation as he believed that the current political climate and Vietnam war had undermined human values, therefore revolution based upon his perception of human dignity and freedom was what drove him to write the piece. He ends his introduction by warning of the seriousness that these recipes may have deadly consequences if used improperly. The chapters of The Anarchist Cookbook include descriptions and detailed instructions in hand-to-hand combat, explosives, booby traps, drugs, tear gas, sabotage and demolition, surveillance, improvised weapons and other topics related to anarchism.'''

Reception[edit]
At the time of its publication, one Federal Bureau of Investigation memo described The Anarchist Cookbook as "one of the crudest, low-brow, paranoiac writing efforts ever attempted". '''The book was reviewed by the Department of Justice, the White House, the FBI, and by both John Dean and Mark Felt, Richard Nixon's lawyer and President Hoover's associate director respectively. While having concerns about the text, the FBI concluded that it could not be regulated as it was published through mass media. Since its conception, the FBI has kept records of the book, releasing the bulk if its investigation file in 2010. '''

Anarchism
Advocates of anarchism dispute the association of the book with anarchist political philosophy. The anarchist collective CrimethInc., which published the book Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook in response, denounces the earlier book, saying it was "not composed or released by anarchists, not derived from anarchist practice, not intended to promote freedom and autonomy or challenge repressive power – and was barely a cookbook, as most of the recipes in it are notoriously unreliable".

Internet /Media
Much of the publication was copied and made available as text documents online through Usenet and FTP sites hosted in academic institutions in the early 1990s, and has been made available via web browsers from their inception in the mid-1990s to the present day. The name varies slightly from Anarchist Cookbook to Anarchy Cookbook and the topics have expanded vastly in the intervening decades. Many of the articles were attributed to an anonymous author called The Jolly Roger.

In 2001, British businessman Terrance Brown created the now defunct website anarchist-cookbook.com and sold copies of his derivative work, titled Anarchist Cookbook 2000.

Knowledge of the book, or copied online publications of it, increased along with the increase in public access to the Internet throughout the mid-1990s. Newspapers ran stories about how easy the text was to get hold of, and the influence it may have had with terrorists, criminals and experimental teenagers.

Film
'''The book was a frequent target for challenges to its content throughout the 1990s. It served as a central element of the 2002 romantic comedy The Anarchist Cookbook. Repercussions from the book's publication, and the author's subsequent disavowal of its content, were the subject of the 2016 documentary film American Anarchist by Charlie Siskel. In the film, William Powell explains in depth his thoughts on the book and the consequences it had in his life.'''

Legality
In 1976, police linked the bombing of Grand Central Terminal and hijacking of a TWA flight to Croatian radicals who employed directions from . In 1981, The Anarchists Cookbook was liked to Puerto Rican rebels bombed a FBI headquarters using the book's directions. Thomas Spinks also employed the text which resulted in the bombings of 10 abortion clinics in the United States.

'''In 2002, the Canadian government permitted the book to be imported for the United States. Canada Customs and Revenue Agency concluded the book does not violate either hate nor obscenity laws, therefore the previous ban on the text was revolved. '''

In 2015, the London public-transport bombers were linked to be using this book.

In 2007, a 17-year-old was arrested in the United Kingdom and faced charges under anti-terrorism law in the UK for possession of this book, among other things. He was cleared of all charges in October 2008, after arguing that he was a prankster who just wanted to research fireworks and smoke bombs.

In County Durham, UK in 2010, Ian Davison and his son were imprisoned under anti-terrorism laws for the manufacturing of ricin, and their possession of The Anarchist Cookbook, along with its availability, was noted by the authorities. This led to a London judge and police campaigning to have the book banned in the UK.

In 2013, renewed calls were made in the United States to ban this book, citing links to a school shooting in Colorado, USA by Karl Pierson.

The book was refused classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification upon release, thus making the book banned in Australia. It was classified RC again on 31 October 2016.

In 2017, a 27-year-old was prosecuted in the UK solely for the possession of the book. He was found not guilty.

Despite this, the book is readily available from major online retailers e.g. Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

'''Note: I will also be editing the references section and condensing it. The format does not properly translate to sandbox, therefore I will be making these changes but they will not appear here.'''