Ben Morea: Behind Black Mask

The chances are that you have never heard of Ben Morea. There’s a good reason for that. He didn’t want you to. I first discovered Morea and Black Mask (later Up Against the Wall Motherfucker) by chance while studying for my dissertation. The subject of my work was how the language of the 60s counterculture (be it spoken, visual, musical or poetic) contrasted with and directly opposed that of the dominant technocratic culture.

This compelling, almost literary description is the first thing I ever read about Morea:

‘He was long-haired and bearded like any number of hippies but instead of adorning himself in flowers and beads, he wore a leather jacket, carried a switchblade and peddled manifestos full of cryptic poetry and angry agitprop’. 1

Before I found Black Mask I had been completely focused on the West Coast’s LSD fuelled “Flower Power” / “Free Love” opposition. To me, Morea and his profoundly analytical collective of anarchist activists made the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey (perhaps unfairly) seem like childish cartoon characters.

Black Mask’s (and Morea’s) challenge to the dominant cultural language at that time presented a more direct, aggressive, but at the same time arguably more sensitive opposition than their West Coast contemporaries.

They were certainly more militant than the hippies (Morea eventually ending up on trial for attempted murder). Their stated goal was ‘nothing less than the destruction of this culture’, claiming that ‘we have an art which is a substitute for living, [and] a culture which is an excuse for the utter poverty of life’. 2

They believed that the hippies ‘pursuit of the perpetual high [was] nothing more than the velvet down on the inside of the imperialist iron glove’. They spent too much time getting high, not enough time genuinely fighting the establishment. Black Mask labelled hippies the ‘New Establishment’.3

Here’s a description of Black Mask in their own words, from Black Mask & Up Against the Wall Motherfucker (The Incomplete Works of Ron Hahne, Ben Morea, and the Black Mask Group):

‘Founded in the mid-1960s, the Black Mask group melded the ideas and inspiration of Dada with the anarchism of the Spanish Revolution, and this volume demonstrates how they heavily influenced the art, politics, and culture of the decade as they briefly shut down the Museum of Modern Art, protested Wall Street, battled at Students for a Democratic Society conferences, and defended the shooting of Andy Warhol. This history then details how in 1968 Black Mask reorganised as Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker, which combined the confrontational theatre and tactics of Black Mask with a much more aggressive approach in dealing with the police and authorities’. 4

It was via the publisher of the aforementioned book that I managed to get in touch with Morea. As there are a lot of comparisons being drawn between the political climate of the 60s and that of today, the aim of this interview was not to rehash history but rather to gain some insight into how somebody who was very much involved with 60s activism perceives the contemporary situation.

(M) What have you been doing since the 60s ended?

(BM) I remained incommunicado for 38 years, only reachable the last 8 or so. I left NYC and activism in ’69 (having been on the lower East-side and active from ’59-’69). I first went into the mountains in ’70 and remained in the wilderness, on horseback for 5 years. Then homesteading and ranching for the next 10. I joined with my wife in the craft business and moved into town. Started painting again in the late ’80’s.

The whole time in the West I remained with, and as part of Native American culture. Having adopted it as my own. This replaced political-activism with a living model, eventually giving me an additional (living) agenda as opposed to mechanistic politics. I am convinced that the overthrow of Capitalism and government is not enough, rather, what is needed is a complete annihilation of Materialism — both Capitalism and Marxism. Living must replace consumption.

Why you don’t like to show your face? I heard you mention in another interview that you think it would undermine your message. But had you had a more public persona, perhaps your message would have been heard/spread more widely.

First, obviously in my days of activism the last thing I wanted was a clear familiarity with my image. Second, creating a visual target is never desirable. The system needs symbols to attack. Then there is my discomfort with the “cult of the personality”. Some indigenous people felt the capturing of an image is analogous to the capture of the “spirit”, to which I concur. Then there is the real threat of a face replacing a message.

What do you think of “selfie” culture then?

The “selfie” is the ultimate conceit. A clear indication of the depth of the problem. Fifteen minutes of fame becomes a lifetime of delusion. We can only work for its demise but it will be a long and arduous journey. You can see with its absurdity the extreme outgrowth of this fascination with the image over essence.

What was the nature of your relationship to the Black Panthers? And what are your thoughts on the Panthers in relation to the contemporary race issues in America.

I had (and Black Mask had) a personal relationship with the black struggle, and the Panthers in particular. Though I was an avowed anarchist and the Panthers had an authoritarian bent (some even Maoist), I felt the black struggle was imperative and we could fight out our differences later. The police killings of today are also a major issue. But the police state is not only a racial issue, even though it is more pronounced in the racial context, Authoritarianism can strike all.

How about the evolution of the women’s rights movement since the sixties?

It seems to me that the woman’s movement has the same (potentially) divisive duality of other political, racial, and gender movements, all determined by the ends it seeks. Is it “liberation” or amelioration?

How would a truly liberated world look to you?

And there is the most dangerous question. To every person there is a rhyme, the question is to find the common melody that allows for it. Until now most political and religious solutions have gone aground on these very rocks.

If Black Mask were just starting out today, how would you get things done? …Would you support violence?

I support all efforts to change the paradigm, peacefully or otherwise. BAMN. By Any Means Necessary. It will take all. One can never discount any effort, it is cumulative. The “Warrior” is a state of being. Conditions on the ground will determine the actions taken. There is no “one plan fits all”. Preordained conclusions can never be the finality.

There’s been a huge surge in the use of indigenous medicines amongst young Westerners over the past few years. What do you make of contemporary psychedelic culture in relation to how things were in the sixties?

I feel the use of indigenous medicines to be a mostly positive occurrence, except the false shamanistic profiteering. But the political world also has it’s share of false prophets. That is why I use the term Revolutionary Animism to differentiate from the mere “entertainers and profiteers”. In the 60s you also had both, those using psychedelics to further change, both personal and societal and those who saw it as new entertainment.

Was Revolutionary Animism something that you came to believe in during your time with the Natives? (The idea that everything in existence is imbued with consciousness)

I had a nascent belief, prior and throughout the ’60’s that slowly became more clarified and pronounced both in “wilderness” life and Native American proximity.

It sounds similar to what the hippies were saying in the sixties. You have a well documented dislike for the hippies, would you have taken a more “peace and love” approach then with what you know now?

As for “Hippies” , we never rejected the counter-culture, or the needed “alternative” lifestyle but its “commodification” its reduction to a “safe” product. Quite the opposite, we also saw ourselves as part of this “new consciousness”. We more strenuously rejected the purely (and authoritarian) political path. I was close friends with both Allen Ginsberg and Tim Leary, but always criticised their flirtation with the media.

Later, with the birth of Punk, one could argue that Anarchism itself became somewhat co-opted and commodified. What do you make of Punk culture? Is anything safe from commodification?

Re-definition and shape-shifting is our only recourse. Do not remain a stationary “target.” When they get a “fix” move the parameters. Constant motion is our only hope. Accessibility is its own demise, the enticing trap.

If you could get everybody in the world to read one book, what would it be?

Read!?… I would prefer it if they could SEE.