Mel Kontent

Daily Barbarian Number 2

Fifth Estate #316, Spring 1984, Vol. 19 No. 1

This is the second issue of the Daily Barbarian—perhaps you missed the first? Number one was printed back in 1979 (or was it ’78?), and along with this current issue, the Daily Barbarian probably has the largest circulation of any bi-decadal publication in the world…in the universe! Now that’s quite an achievement, but we’re not satisfied! At the very least, we’re planning to have the Barbarian appear four times a year and at best, once a month. But we will only publish when we have something to say.

Its title though, Daily Barbarian, has nothing to do with the regularity of its appearance, but rather the daily activities of modern human society—civilization—and the people who keep it rolling…all of us. To us at the Barbarian, this sham we call “civilization” is just a play on words, a rhetorical trick that while posing itself as progressive and liberatory, is in reality a destroyer and slave master. It’s a bad joke that, unfortunately, we have for all too long fallen for. Well we don’t want to wait around for the punch-line (A: nuclear war, B: systematic starvation, C: survivalism, D: “things as usual”, E: all of the above) and hope to bring an end to this terror, civilization.

We desire a world in which there is no need nor want for modern banking, modern computers, modern manufacturing, modern industry, modern wage-slavery, modern prisons, modern schools, modern science, modern technology, modern warfare…We want to bring a thundering halt to all the “progressive” steps and “modernizations” that have created so much organized despair and depression while bringing not only humans, but the entire planet, at best, to a universal code of normality and boredom (Detroit to Damascus, Berlin to Brasilia and all around the globe everything starts to look alike) and at worst, to the brink of complete nuclear destruction.

But we do believe there is hope. Even though we are all products of this society, we are still capable of changing ourselves and thus the society at large. The publishing of the Daily Barbarian is one of our attempts to share our ideas, hopes and desires for such a change. We want the Barbarian to be a collection of information, theory, critiques, poetry, art, humor, craziness, laughter and much, much more. We also realize that a paper cannot, by itself, change the world and it is necessary to carry on a multitude of differing activities. We will be doing this and we hope you will too!

Barbarian Home Delivery

The Daily Barbarian is free to everyone except government institutions and corporations (if they want it, they’ll have to pay through the nose for it), but we will mail it to you if you do half the work. You send us, say, four large envelopes 9×12—with your address on it and stamps for postage—40 cents—and we’ll mail you an issue each time we publish. There is a risk here, since this could be our last issue, but everything worth having means taking risks. Anyway, this is the closest we could get to free subscriptions.

And of course, if you’d like to send us a contribution, we’ll gladly accept. The Daily Barbarian does not and will not take in paid advertising and will not be sold, we don’t want to have it turned into just another commodity. The paper is paid for out of the pockets of those who work on it, but don’t let that stop you from sending in endless streams of checks or large bundles of green-leafy cash. Send all mail to:

Daily Barbarian
c/o Urbane Gorilla
P.O. Box 02455
Detroit, MI 48201