Editors

We hereby announce the first issue of The Thresher, a digital journal dedicated to freedom of contempt, released whenever we damn well please. Why would a publication promote freedom of contempt? Because there are many powerful people ­— windbag presidents, ninny bosses, political marionettes, burlesque media pundits, snooty professors, skeezeball gurus, darling Tweeters — who demand a hefty dose of contempt. Yet there are few reliable suppliers of it.

We’re following basic laws of supply and demand, folks.

The Thresher aims to house everyone dissatisfied with the smug status quo. New contributions will be printed and selections will be reprinted from a range of positions critical of capitalism. For that reason, publication in The Thresher does not entail endorsement by the editor.

Indeed, as our venerable Baby Boomer ancestors have taught us, home is where the strife is. The Thresher will provide broad refuge for the online masses stripped of material, emotional, and spiritual livelihood by corporate culture and shopping mall sloth. At the same time, our editorial vision insists on unrelenting criticism, particularly self-criticism, every step of the way. The editors therefore assert the right to scrutinize any views printed in The Thresher and will at times compose ripostes to contributors, including themselves.

In essence, The Thresher declares war on all dogmatism.

Many of our readers will take for granted the dogmatism of the Right. Political reactionaries forcefully assert that what is — or what is believed to have been in the past — must be so forever. No reason can prevail upon such people, nor can non-circular arguments be offered by them.

Yet the Left cherishes its own pet dogmatism — above all, the hallowed creed of Progress, according to which everything new is better. We need not rehearse how such All-powerful Progress has tended to put society’s destitute out on the streets in the name of a greater good, never realized.

There is also a pervasive dogma of Governmentality on the Left. The current crisis is so grim that only mass intervention by Almighty Government can save us now. Sure, such an intervention should be as democratic as possible. When push comes to shove though, Governmentalists will always choose quick revolution by centralized force — the false, transient, murderous kind — over the demanding work of revolution by local initiative and individual empowerment.

Finally, the Left, more so than the Right, multiplies occult disputes by supposing that a single individual, magazine, or school of thought has answers to everything. We are here to remind Marxists, neo-Marxists, Maoists, Trotskyists, Leninists, Communalists, Anarcho-Communists, Social Democrats, Democratic Socialists, Primitive Anarchists, and every other obscure and not-so-obscure Leftist faction, that to be human is to err. Certain of these sects, to be sure, will not be able to bear the allegation of error and will howl “Heresy!” at this journal. We relish in the word. In every age, the guardians of orthodoxy have been the protectors of privilege. We are here to decimate privilege.

This sober assessment of humanity does not mean The Thresher assumes a milquetoast centrism. Centrism is supporting whatever opinion keeps you in office or lands you a promotion. The Thresher, in contrast, adamantly desires liberty, equality, and camaraderie for each and every human being and is unwilling to sacrifice any one of these principles. Accordingly, The Thresher opposes both capitalist and government tyrannies in every form.

Some people might identify this journal’s political stance as “libertarian socialist,” others as “anarchist,” others as radically republican or democratic. Labels matter little. What matters is our support for a universal, decentralized, and genuinely democratic society of free, empowered individuals, treated as equals and fellow citizens not only on paper but in reality.

Dogmatism on the Right or the Left suffocates the mind in a spiritual husk. As our name suggests, The Thresher proposes to liberate the mind from these husks, however painful that may be.