Big Bang Theories

The Earth trembled. An edifice of the State shattered. And an individual’s sovereign life ceased.

The moment was filled with the elements of low drama; tragedy, irony, fatal error, cloak and dagger, terror in the dark of the night, Maquis sabotage, of the oppressive police state or a despicable act of evil by a band of crazed criminals, depending on your viewpoint.

The truck with the bomb was heisted from a professor known to be sympathetic to student revolution; it was totally demolished by the blast. The call to the pigs of warning, at 3:4O AM, was only two minutes before the premature explosion, but, even if it had been longer, The City pigs admitted, they would not be able to warn the late-working Graduate Students in the physics building Sterling Hall, which is affixed to the primary target, the Army Math Research Center. Only the University police could warn them by jurisdiction, and they had to be contacted first. The alleged bombers, it turned out, were assisted by the same State jealousy as the Canadian Mounties who had them under surveillance were unable to hold them because the Federal warrants were for non-extraditable crimes, and Wisconsin State warrants were needed.

The Army Math Research Center (AMRC) was supposedly attacked as a tool of oppression of the Vietnamese people. The connection was extremely Tenuous, as the AMRC published its work openly, and it was almost pure research. One last irony: Robert Fassnacht, the fatal victim, was known as an opponent of American intervention in Viet Nam.

There was dancing in the streets in the “hippie” Mifflin Street area, followed by hot, guilty, denials of it when the death was learned. The rest of the reactions were horrifyingly predictable. The State’s rulers screamed over the slap in the face—destruction of the State’s sacred “property” & incidentally, the murder of an innocent student. Conservatives rejoiced in the imminent gain in votes as the September primary approached; Liberals talked law and order defensively, or charged the Right with blowing up the Center to gain from the BACKLASH. Objectivist-oriented students wailed over the loss of research papers (which they expected, were to be safe under the State’s protection) and over the loss of life. The underground paper, Kaleidoscope, printed a statement by the “New Year’s Gang” giving their reasons for the attack—assuming such a gang existed. The Editor went to jail rather than even verify the authenticity of his article before a Grand Jury, let alone “compromise his source of information” as he claimed.

The RLA-symps at the University of Wisconsin had, as usual, the radical dissenting view. “No, our erstwhile comrades in YAF & SIL, there was no “property” destroyed”, we said. “And no, Weatherman, we do not rejoice at your supposed service to your pet pigs—Castro, Dong, et al. If a true, Free, “People’s Court” existed, you would be fortunate to escape with conviction on charges of criminal negligence, and be justly spending your lives reimbursing the wife and children of your “casualty”.

For an absolute right to life has been violated. There is only one objective result of your act. Robert Fassnacht is dead. And if there were real Justice to be obtained, Governor Khowles & Senator Proxmire, you would be sued for your gratuitous smear of attributing this act to “Anarchists and Anarchism”. Your sudden respect for life is obscene in its hypocrisy. We anarchists here in Madison, it seems, are the only ones left who have consistently strived for life’s continuance & fulfillment; & we shall continue to struggle against its enemies: the guns of the State, and the bombs of the would-be STATE. THE END.