The Anarchist Cookbook

The Anarchist Cookbook, first published in 1971, is a book that was written by William Powell to protest the United States government's involvement in the Vietnam war. The book contains recipes and instructions for the manufacture of explosives, rudimentary telecommunications phreaking devices and other dangerous and illegal items. While some bits of the book are not without merit, others, if attempted, are infinitely more likely to blow the practitioner to hamburger than they are to deliver any damage to an intended target.

One perfect example of just how reliable the book isn't can be found in the fact that it includes, in all seriousness, a recipe for "bananadine."

Bananadine

Bananadine is a fictional psychoactive substance which is allegedly extracted from banana peels. A recipe for its extraction from banana peel was originally published as a gag/hoax in the Berkeley Barb in March 1967. It became more widely known when Powell, believing it to be true, reproduced the method in The Anarchist Cookbook under the name "Musa Sapientum Bananadine" (referring to the banana's binomial nomenclature).

Researchers at New York University and elsewhere have long since proven that banana peel contains no intoxicating chemicals, and that smoking it produces only a placebo effect. None of this has prevented bananadine from becoming a popular urban legend over the years, however; in no small part due to its inclusion in The Anarchist Cookbook.

Relationship to anarchism

Many scholars of anarchism dispute the association of the book with anarchist political philosophy. The anarchist collective CrimethInc., which published the book Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook in response, denounces the earlier book, saying it was "not composed or released by anarchists, not derived from anarchist practice, not intended to promote freedom and autonomy or challenge repressive power — and was barely a cookbook, as the recipes in it are notoriously unreliable."

Endorsement rescinded

Since writing the book, William Powell has converted to Christianity and in 2000 attempted to have the book removed from circulation. However, Powell noted that when the book was published, the copyright was taken out in the publisher's name, not his, and the current publisher has no desire to remove the book from print. Powell has since written many websites devoted to the book, explaining his desire to see the book removed from circulation as he no longer advocates what he had written, saying:

"The book, in many respects, was a misguided product of my adolescent anger at the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam to fight in a war that I did not believe in."

External links

• The Anarchist Cookbook Comprehensive Faq and download of the Online Anarchist Cookbook.
• Righto.com Information about The Anarchist Cookbook.
• "The Anarchist Cookbook," a review by Esperanza Godot, Free Life: A Journal of Classical Liberal and Libertarian Thought (the journal of the Libertarian Alliance), No. 15 (November 1991); also available in PDF: [1].