let us take an outrage upon – say a church. Horrible enough at
first sight, no doubt, and yet not so effective as a person of an
ordinary mind might think. No matter how revolutionary and
anarchist in inception, there would be fools enough to give such an
outrage the character of a religious manifestation. And that would
detract from the especial alarming significance we wish to give to
the act. A murderous attempt on a restaurant or a theatre would
suffer in the same way from the suggestion of non-political
passion: the exasperation of a hungry man, an act of social
revenge. All this is used up; it is no longer instructive as an
object lesson in revolutionary anarchism. Every newspaper has
ready-made phrases to explain such manifestations away. I am about
to give you the philosophy of bomb throwing from my point of view;
from the point of view you pretend to have been serving for the
last eleven years. I will try not to talk above your head. The
sensibilities of the class you are attacking are soon blunted.
Property seems to them an indestructible thing. You can’t count
upon their emotions either of pity or fear for very long. A bomb
outrage to have any influence on public opinion now must go beyond
the intention of vengeance or terrorism. It must be purely
destructive. It must be that, and only that, beyond the faintest
suspicion of any other object. You anarchists should make it clear
that you are perfectly determined to make a clean sweep of the
whole social creation. But how to get that appallingly absurd
notion into the heads of the middle classes so that there should be
no mistake? That’s the question. By directing your blows at
something outside the ordinary passions of humanity is the answer.
Of course, there is art. A bomb in the National Gallery would make
some noise. But it would not be serious enough. Art has never
been their fetish. It’s like breaking a few back windows in a
man’s house; whereas, if you want to make him really sit up, you
must try at least to raise the roof. There would be some screaming
of course, but from whom? Artists – art critics and such like –
people of no account. Nobody minds what they say. But there is
learning – science. Any imbecile that has got an income believes
in that. He does not know why, but he believes it matters somehow.
It is the sacrosanct fetish. All the damned professors are
radicals at heart. Let them know that their great panjandrum has
got to go too, to make room for the Future of the Proletariat. A
howl from all these intellectual idiots is bound to help forward
the labours of the Milan Conference. They will be writing to the
papers. Their indignation would be above suspicion, no material
interests being openly at stake, and it will alarm every
selfishness of the class which should be impressed. They believe
that in some mysterious way science is at the source of their
material prosperity. They do. And the absurd ferocity of such a
demonstration will affect them more profoundly than the mangling of
a whole street – or theatre – full of their own kind. To that last
they can always say: `Oh! it’s mere class hate.’ But what is one
to say to an act of destructive ferocity so absurd as to be
incomprehensible, inexplicable, almost unthinkable; in fact, mad?
Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate
it either by threats, persuasion, or bribes. Moreover, I am a
civilised man. I would never dream of directing you to organise a
mere butchery, even if I expected the best results from it. But I
wouldn’t expect from a butchery the result I want. Murder is
always with us. It is almost an institution. The demonstration
must be against learning – science. But not every science will
do. The attack must have all the shocking senselessness of
gratuitous blasphemy. Since bombs are your means of expression, it
would be really telling if one could throw a bomb into pure
mathematics. But that is impossible. I have been trying to