“That is why we will consciously sabotage every capitalist enterprise, we will be a burden to each and every boss. Where we, rebellious youth, have to work, materials, machines and products have to be made unusable. Again and again the gears will jump out of the wheels, the pieces will fly from knives and chisels, the tools most necessary will be nowhere to find – we will tell each other recipes and means. We do not want to be destroyed by capitalism, so capitalism will have to be destroyed by us.”

The story of the “Mokergroep” is definitely one of the more interesting histories about the anarchist movement in the Netherlands. Even though De Moker dates back to the twenties, this text is still quite relevant considering our everyday reality. Today, like back then, people seem to get stuck in structures and ways of rebellion that resist and refuse any kind of rupture with the old world. The Moker youth refused to settle for modifying the existing reality, and while trying to destroy it, aimed its arrows not only at the existent, but also at its ever-present defenders.

Their history is one of attacking the suffocation of what was and is presented as ‘life’ with critique, debate, action and agitation, within as well as outside the anarchist movement. Regardless of what was, they chose their own methods and means, without searching for consensus or watering down their words in order to gain allies or applause. Without the illusion that the masses have to be organised, that some kind of formal organisation or union needs to exist in order to reach a revolutionary moment, they individually carved out their own path towards a break with normality and in this way found each other in a ‘group’ that was not based on membership or ideologies, but on affinity and ideas.

a5/90 pages/4 euros