Under The Banner of King Death by David Lester & Marcus Rediker

Full title: Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates of the Atlantic, a Graphic Novel, published 2023 by Verso.

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Of course, we’re (I say “we”, I mean “I”) always going on about anarchistic things here at TriumphOfTheNow.com, so it should come as no surprise that we should bounce so fast from 1890s anarchism to 2010s anarchism, from O.G. Peter Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread to David Lester & Marcus Rediker’s Under The Banner of King Death, a book that explores real life people who took anarchistic ideas and lived by them, and were promptly and aggressively penalised, attacked, murdered and executed by a global alliance of colonial capitalist states hell-bent on convincing the world that no other option was possible.

Who were these people, then, living communally with consensus-based decision making, demonstrating the freedoms and pleasures and equalities to be found in stateless living?

Were they more Russian aristos like you (I) was writing about yesterday? Were they whingy bratty middle class types living on a commune? Were they agricultural types living in harmony with the land and farming and consuming only what could sustainably be produced within their locality?

No, they weren’t any of these things (though maybe some of them came from each of those backgrounds independently), but there is a crucial factor that means the society these people lived within wasn’t built to last: almost all of the resources required by these communities were taken by force, with violence, from other people. Yes, that’s right, we’re (again, “I”) talking about everyone’s favourite anarchists: pirates.

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Everyone loves pirates.

Rabid misogynists like pirates because Johnny Depp played one.

Liberal types who don’t think television is an art form but still watch it like pirates because of Our Flag Means Death.

Really old people like pirates because of the memoirs of Robert Louis Stevenson, the inventor of the train.

Gen Xers like pirates because the puppets from The Muppets Christmas Carol also did a pirate film.

Nerds like pirates because of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag and normal people – i.e. anarchist intellectuals – like pirates because (however briefly) pirates lived out an (arguably doomed) existence as advocates of a better way of life, a simpler way of life, a more equitable and less bureaucratic way of life.

Ay, a pirate’s life’s for me! (Without the stabbing/drowning/poor hygiene and fish-based diet.)

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Of course, this is a book from Verso, not from like Harper Collins (is that the one the Murdochs own?), so it is very much on the side of the anti-capitalist pirates, the anti-racist pirates, the care-giving, the life-respecting, the queer-accepting, the egalitarian and wealth-sharing pirates, who are the pirates focused on in the narrative of the text.

Labour is shared, so is plunder.

Responsibilities and accountabilities are always linked, there is no captain with more power than anyone else, no decisions are enforced by others, mutual respect and communal living is prioritised and enacted.

But then, yeah, they all got fucking murdered by the massed navies of colonial capital.

Violence and the threat of violence remains the sole main factor able to remove people from a shared political consciousness… it is fear of state repression, along with relentless propaganda, that tricks people into long term acceptance of this fucking rank status quo.

So, yes, it’s a short graphic novel and, yes, it’s didactic and making an explicitly pro-pirate argument and, yes, sure, there must have been pirate cunts who revelled in lawlessness and cruelty, paying back in kind the violence and repression of state interests, but who fucking cares about balance – this is not a balanced world, or a balanced society, we are fucking punched in the fucking face on a constant fucking basis with relentless fucking propaganda for a viewpoint and a worldview and an ideology that is the opposite of hope and care and people-focused…

We are daily and unrelentingly lied to, screamed at, bullshit about that fucking bleak ideology that this is the best of all possible worlds, that capitalism is an inevitability, that obsession with constant growth, that centralisation of assets and power and resources is “normal”, is “acceptable”, is “fine”. Which it isn’t. It’s bad and it’s awful and it needs to fucking change.

Will it change? Will you change it? I probably won’t, alas, because I’m a big dumb charmless bald loser lol whoops aha 🤠

Go read about pirates. Go dream about pirates. We’ve all gotta dream about something.

Order Under The Banner of King Death direct from Verso here