Hakim Bey/Peter Lamborn Wilson & Pedophilia

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Postby nathan28 » Sat Jan 10, 2009 7:48 pm

I thought i responded to this.

Truth4Youth, Apocalypse Culture II is one of my favorite books. Apologies if from my text I seemed like a square. Also I should have known better than to mention "CIA" here without expecting people to take it too seriously.

Here's a link to a page that archived a Parfrey article on this topic.



http://groups.yahoo.com/group/konformist/message/2686

THE HAKIM BEY CIA CONNECTION

My high opinion of Peter Wilson went beyond the excellent weed he
dealt.

Back in 1985, when gathering material for the original "Apocalypse
Culture" I visited Peter Lamborn Wilson's small, rather seedy rent-
controlled apartment near Columbia University and Harlem. He
contributed two articles under the pen name Hakim Bey. One remains in
the revised edition of the book to this very day.

Though I did not share his appreciation for pre-pubescent boys, whose
photographs, cut out of magazines, decorated his flat, I felt lucky
to find in Peter Wilson, a person broad-minded enough to use an
entertaining, politically impolite collage I had executed for Exit
magazine called "What is Democracy?" for his USA zine issue
of "Semiotext(e)" I was happy to be included in this anarchist
compilation, not only due to my high regard for a number of their
early '80s issues, but its publication there might, if anyone was
looking, might confuse my reputation as a goose-stepper for Satan.
This reputation started due to my refusal to follow the rules of what
should be accepted as proper unorthodox/outsider material. As I
discovered, the so-called outsiders of independent publishing were
often more orthodox than the mainstream.
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Postby Truth4Youth » Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:49 pm

nathan28 wrote:Truth4Youth, Apocalypse Culture II is one of my favorite books. Apologies if from my text I seemed like a square.


I figured that I was probably misinterpreting what you wrote. But since other readers may have misinterpreted what you wrote, I feel that it is good that we cleared this up.

Also I should have known better than to mention "CIA" here without expecting people to take it too seriously.


You can write whatever you want, but realize that non-discerning people who may just be casually passing over this message board will take accusations as gospel truth.
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Postby §ê¢rꆧ » Sun Jan 11, 2009 11:54 am

Well this is very distrubing, and I kind of had to work up to post this. Please go easy on me.

I've always found Hakim Bey's work very inspiring for the most part. TAZ is kind of spellbook for me, stolen when I was 14 (I remember thinking, having read it mostly in the store, that in the right circumstances they could get in more trouble for selling it to me than I could for stealing it, heh). I'd listen to the recorded spoken word of "Chaos" when I'd be really down and depressed and it would lift me up like only a prayer could.

By most lights, I would have been a 'wild children', and honestly at 14 would have adored hooking up with Hakim Bey, nasty old dirty man that he is, even though I really wasn't into males, just to have an experience with such a poet and thinker would have been exhilarating. And if it had happened, I really don't think my mind could ever process it as an act of predatation. So I ask, where are his alleged victims? Has not anyone spoken up who was hurt by this wretched pedophile in the last 25 years? He is fairly well known in the underground, there would be reason to do so if one felt he had been abused by him, and Bey apparently does not have wealth to placate anyone, nor do I imagine him resorting to violence to silence any accuser... I'm sorry, but in a lot of ways, it would seem Hakim Bey is being pilloried not because he is a low down pedo, but because he writes poetry about it, which is somehow worse (?).

All that said, I have not read any of his NAMBLA stuff, nor this collected-works book "Wild Children" (and wasn't there a sci-fi novel he wrote, featuring some boy-love protagonists?). Some of the stuff in his anarchist writings is outrageous, yes - "Its only concern for the Family lies in the possibility of incest ...& in the masturbation of a child it finds concealed (like a japanese-paper-flower-pill) the image of the crumbling of the State. " from Amour Fou. But I have never taken any of this so literally, considering other things he says like [of Amour Fou] "Naturally it shits on schoolmasters & police, but it sneers at liberationists & ideologues as well--it is not a clean well-lit room." Obviously this is poetry, people, and not some maladroit pedophile writing "a/s/l are your parents home" in teen chat rooms.

So, I guess, for me, it is a matter of degree. I am willing to accept that consentual sex can exist between an adolescent and an adult, under some circumstances. But if he is really into molesting pre-pubescents then that makes him a true monster and I'm kind of horrified that I'm as inspired by his anarchist writings as much as I am.

The idea of Hakim Bey being an agent, or more likely a useful idiot, is interesting. He has several hallmarks, I suppose. No obvious means of support, all that travel to the middle east, writing vitriolic propaganda, a definite shady character. You can see he'd be extremely useful for tarnishing anarchism overall, equating it with that blackest of black sins, pedophilia.

Additionally, thinking about all the RA stories here bides the horrifying thought that Hakim Bey's benefactors may very well be the shadowy elites that perpetrate such crimes - the exact opposite of the free, anarchistic chaos magi that he appears and proports to be for and of.

I really would like to see some of the more offending works and judge for myself. Perhaps I need to outgrow the nonsense rooted in my head by Hakim Bey and accept I was just victimized by some kind of sick pedophilic paeon written specifically to seduce children by a predator. While it won't be easy to confront, I think I have to, that's how rooted soem of his writings are to my identity. I still have that original copy of TAZ, one of the only things I still have from around that time.
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Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sun Jan 11, 2009 8:15 pm

By most lights, I would have been a 'wild children', and honestly at 14 would have adored hooking up with Hakim Bey, nasty old dirty man that he is, even though I really wasn't into males, just to have an experience with such a poet and thinker would have been exhilarating. And if it had happened, I really don't think my mind could ever process it as an act of predatation. So I ask, where are his alleged victims? Has not anyone spoken up who was hurt by this wretched pedophile in the last 25 years? He is fairly well known in the underground, there would be reason to do so if one felt he had been abused by him, and Bey apparently does not have wealth to placate anyone, nor do I imagine him resorting to violence to silence any accuser... I'm sorry, but in a lot of ways, it would seem Hakim Bey is being pilloried not because he is a low down pedo, but because he writes poetry about it, which is somehow worse (?).


Thanks for your honesty.

I once saw a show about a famous Kiwi dancer, who was gay. he grew up in rural NZ in the 60s or 70s I think. There is no way being gay would have been acceptable. On TV he said that when he was about 12 he started going into a major city, to well known gay cruising areas, and that he really enjoyed seducing older men.

From the age of 12...

Personally I think adult shouldn't have sex with 12 year olds even in that situation, just on principle. (I know a straight girl who did something similar, she was 12 her dads best mate was in his early 40s, and at the time she was fine about it, apparantly, but 5 or 6 years later she was a mess.)

And perhaps he had plenty of relationships with teenagers who still feel there was nothing sus in the whole situation. But also, many victims of sexual abuse never come forward about it. Ultimately where we live people are innocent until proven guilty (despite how quick we all are to judge people), so you have a good point secrets.

And on the off chance that he's been writing love poetry to pre pubescent boys his whole life, and never acted on it cos he might know the damage that can cause ... IF thats the case he deserves credit for it.

The again if his writing inspired someone to go out and rape young boys ...

Perhaps its worth remembering that some people may have great ideas, and be scumbags in life. It might be worth seperating the idea from the person. After all everyone loves 2001, no one ever writes it off cos Arthur C Clarke was a pedo. (Apparantly he admitted it, although the accusations never stuck. So I should say) ... was an accused pedo.

Childhoods End is still a great novel, as is Rendevous with Rama, and as a kid I loved his novel Dolphin Island.
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Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sun Jan 11, 2009 8:31 pm

BTW Secrets how were you victimised? (WEll you don't have to answer if its not cool.)

I read a story James Hillman wrote/told when he did a book with Micheal ventura (We've had 100 years of psychotherapy and the world is getting worse).

It was a story of a couple who got drunk one night, and during the night they had sex. The next morning the guy said, "that was great last night".

The girl said "What was". Turns out she was asleep or unconscious (tho how you wouldn't notice that if you were the guy is beyond me).

She ended up saying "you raped me."

They split up, now she is (or was) a recovering rape victim in a 12 step program. He's in a program for "recovering rapists", and their relationship is dead. (I think the guys reaction to her accusation was "What, really, sorry I didn't mean to.")

What happened then?

My wife and I both gave immediate consent to each other for anything either did to the other while asleep, or very drunk. Just so there's never a chance of that happening again.

Rapists are fucked, but so is convincing someone they are a victim of that sort of thing, when they haven't actually been through it.

If readings Hakim beys writings added to your life, and you can still look back and appreciate them don't throw that away cos he's a prick in his personal life.
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Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Wed Jan 14, 2009 1:35 am

§ê¢rꆧ wrote:By most lights, I would have been a 'wild children', and honestly at 14 would have adored hooking up with Hakim Bey, nasty old dirty man that he is, even though I really wasn't into males, just to have an experience with such a poet and thinker would have been exhilarating. And if it had happened, I really don't think my mind could ever process it as an act of predatation.


This is the part I don't really get. Why would the fact that someone in their books is a great poet and thinker make you any more (or, for that matter, less) likely to submit to sexual attention from them as a straight (or even gay) male? Intelligence and charisma and knowledge and power are obviously attractive to both sexes - regardless of sex, in fact - but where does the actual sex come in? I got a lot from Colin Wilson's books as a pre-teen, and as a teenager, and I admired a lot of other writers and activists and thinkers, too - but it just never occurred to me that they might want to fuck me, or I them.

Saying that, I once got a dangerously flirtatious letter, at the age of thirteen, from the son of a very famous English novelist (not an Amis) - and at the time, knowing no better, I probably woulda let him, so to speak, if we'd met.

It's the not knowing better part that matters. I now know I wasn't, and would never have been, the only "young man" this guy wrote to - and that the "exhilarating experience" of "becoming his Muse" would've been that of being humped by an old man and cast aside for the next lad.

NAMBLA may well be a "discussion group" as Ginsberg called it - a place where intelligent and cultured men meet to discuss Platonic love and Eros and the multi-facetted face of the divine as represented in the critically anarchic (so many reversals!) symbol of a man penetrating a boy.

Do you honestly think they ever wasted time talking, far less arguing, with the boys about all this?! An NRA member who talks to the animals - that I can believe. A strain of anarchist thought which believes in the ultimate expression of patriarchy, and of "might makes right" - that, sadly, I have no choice but to believe in.

The fact that no victims have come forward - all too easy to believe, and understand.


I'm sorry, but in a lot of ways, it would seem Hakim Bey is being pilloried not because he is a low down pedo, but because he writes poetry about it, which is somehow worse (?).


It's the opposite, in my case anyway. I think he has been spared and excused for a long time because he is not seen as a low down paedo (though he is) but a great poet, thinker and activist (activist how, by the way? Going to the middle east and writing a few books doesn't make you an activist. Leaving Iran because of the Islamic revolution, even as a foreign-born Sufi, does make you a coward, though. Did he prefer the Shah? Did SAVAK leave him be?).

Sorry, Secrets, I am not aiming all this at you. I agree with Joe that your post was brave and honest. It's Hakim Bey and the overall elitism of radicalism that is annoying me.

My posts are too long. To sum up, I won't stop reading the good work of Burroughs or Clarke or Ginsberg or anybody just because I find them a bit dodgy in their personal lives. Good work is good work - bad work is bad. There are people who had their porches and patios built by Fred West and John Wayne Gacy who have no known complaints, and that's fine. The personality produces the work - but the work is separate from the man. So the parts of Bey you enjoyed you should still enjoy, just as I'll still enjoy Ginsberg, and Larkin (racist who wrote long prose fantasies about schoolgirls) and J.M. Barrie (functional paedophile who wrote Peter Pan - a functional paedophile is one who does not act on their desires) and D.H. Lawrence (wife-beater, child-beater, and all-round Grade-A arsehole).

Only joking about Lawrence. I never enjoyed him. Compared to him, Fred West was a writer.


Dylan Thomas was a
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Postby §ê¢rꆧ » Fri Jan 16, 2009 10:26 am

Thanks for the responses, I was afraid maybe I killed the thread by getting too personal. I'm going to take both of your advice and try and distance myself from it, mostly because I don't see how I can really know the truth, and just try and take the good stuff from Bey's writing that I can. I think I overreacted, I had always kinda shoved Bey's pedophilia out of the equation, and reading those two articles recently brought all that nasty shit into focus. Realizing I was wrong about that makes me doubt lots of other assumptions, perceptions, reality-tunnels, what-have-you...

AhabsOtherLeg wrote:Why would the fact that someone in their books is a great poet and thinker make you any more (or, for that matter, less) likely to submit to sexual attention from them as a straight (or even gay) male? Intelligence and charisma and knowledge and power are obviously attractive to both sexes - regardless of sex, in fact - but where does the actual sex come in?


To me, the mental aspect of my partner has always been the biggest turn-on, moreso than the physical. I think it's just personality types; some of us live more in our heads, our hearts, our bodies, perhaps our souls. And for the record, I've never been interested in younger lovers nor had any sort of experiences of that nature. When I was younger I was interested in older lovers. Now I'm happily married.

Joe it is interesting you ask me how I was victimized and not if I were... heh. I don't think I was grossly sexually victimized, but memory is a funky thing from childhood. I only remember 'playing doctor' with a slightly older babysitter at maybe 8 or so, and being very sexual very young, bascially consensual role-playing with peers my own age, and very light sexual activity. I've always thought it was perfectly natural and part of childplay to do this sort of thing.

However, I was psychologically victimized: my father was fucking nuts, in a bonafide anti-semitic christian identity militia cult. Lots of LULZ there. I remember being 'indoctrinated' around the same time and being made to watch videos and attend bible studies - apocalyptic, mark-of-the-beast conspiracy pablum, from what I remember, but it certainly had an effect on my impressionable young mind, I'm sure.

Maybe there's a lesson in all that. Most of it was rejected (and rinsed away, I think, through use of LSD in my twenties) but a bit of the conspiracy theroist has survived in my personality obviously, else I probably wouldn't be here on RigInt.

I don't mean to veer too far of the topc, and that's the last of personal stuff from me for a while, anyhow.

AhabsOtherLeg wrote:It's Hakim Bey and the overall elitism of radicalism that is annoying.


Do you find Bey's writing overall elitist in tone, or are you refering to his bit about "Tongs," or secret societies, i.e.

Hakim Bey wrote:So the modern Tong cannot be elitist - but there's n reason it can't be choosy. Many non-authoritarian organizations have foundered on the dubious principle of open membership, which frequently leads to preponderance of assholes, yahoos, spoilers, whining neurotics, & police agents. If a Tong is organized around a special interest (especially an illegal or risky or margin interest) it certainly has the right to compose itself according to the 'affinity group" principle. If secrecy means (a) avoiding publicity & (b) vetting possible members, the "secret society" can scarcely be accused o violating anarchist principles. In fact, such societies have a long & honorable history in the antiauthoritarian movement, from Proudhon's dream of re-animating the Holy Vehm as a kind of "People's Justice", to Bakunin's various schemes, to Durutti's 'Wanderers.' We ought not to allow Marxist historians to convince us that such expedients are 'primitive" & have therefore been left behind by 'History." The absoluteness of 'History' is at best a dubious proposition. We are not interested in a return to the primitive, but in a return OF the primitive, inasmuch as the primitive is the "repressed.'
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Postby Joe Hillshoist » Fri Jan 16, 2009 10:00 pm

Joe it is interesting you ask me how I was victimized and not if I were... heh. I don't think I was grossly sexually victimized, but memory is a funky thing from childhood. I only remember 'playing doctor' with a slightly older babysitter at maybe 8 or so, and being very sexual very young, bascially consensual role-playing with peers my own age, and very light sexual activity. I've always thought it was perfectly natural and part of childplay to do this sort of thing.


When I asked I didn't mean it from the point of assuming you were victimised, what I actually meant was... It was in direct response to this comment:

Perhaps I need to outgrow the nonsense rooted in my head by Hakim Bey and accept I was just victimized by some kind of sick pedophilic paeon written specifically to seduce children by a predator.



Cos quite frankly I don't see how you could have been victimised if someone wrote something that greatly added to your life, no matter how they acted in their own lives...

So it was directly in response to that comment, and I meant it in terms of ..."Don't let reading about his dodgy rock spider mentality force you to lose all the good things you got from his writing."

After all if his writing helped make your life better and he's a dirty slimebag, that writing helping you through life may be one of the few things that redeems him a little.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, does that clear it up a little?

Everyone played dress ups and kiss chasey as a kid (didn't they?), kids have some sort of sex life - I know I did. But nothing like adults. Dress up, kiss chasey, sneaking off into bedrooms and flashing your privates at each other. Really very innocent, definitely not sleazy.

Its nothing like what we'd consider sex, but looking back, it was a kind of preparing for everything that leads up to the actual rooting. This is pre puberty of course, so even if we knew what sex was we really had no idea what it actually was. The adults probably had no idea about this either. If they did, I suspect they wouuld have objected with a whole lot of moral panic.

I doubt there's any more victimisation going on there than there is in ny other interaction among children of that age.
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