William Powell and the Anarchist Cookbook

William Powell (third from right) in Tanzania (Source: here)

In 1971, at the age of nineteen, William Powell wrote ‘The Anarchist Cookbook’. Twenty-eight years later, in 1999, a copy of his book was discovered among the possessions of the kids, who perpetrated the Columbine School massacre.

William Powell, my former teacher, was instantly vilified.

He died of cardiac arrest in 2016.

I found the notoriety that suddenly surrounded William Powell on account of his ‘cookbook’ deeply disturbing. Bill Powell was a good man, who always acted out of a strong sense of moral purpose. Many of the themes that shaped his life and the issues raised by his experience with the ‘cookbook’ are highly relevant to the politics we face today. It is because of this resonance I am writing this blog.

One of the central questions to emerge from Powell’s vilification over ‘The Anarchist Cookbook’ is whether it is right to blame someone for how the knowledge they created is used by others.

Let me illustrate the question with a banal example. Benjamin Franklin, Alessandro Volta, and Michael Faraday discovered how to harness electricity for human applications. Their knowledge was then put to work in barbaric countries to execute people in the electric chair. Are Franklin, Volta, and Faraday therefore responsible for executions in the electric chair?

Most people would argue they are not responsible. After all, they did not advance the understanding of electricity in order to executing people. Their had nobler scientific and peaceful intentions.

Now consider the ‘recipes’ in Powell’s ‘cookbook’, which were obviously not written with scientific or peaceful intentions in mind. Powell himself acknowledged that the purpose of his book was to educate the “silent majority” of Americans to enable them to organise against totalitarian threats, notably fascism and communism. Does the fact that Powell’s knowledge was compiled with the specific intention of teaching people how to destroy and kill other people make him guilty? Should he bear blame for the Columbine High School massacre?

In my view, there are five reasons – listed below in increasing order of importance – why Powell should not be blamed for Columbine or indeed for any other terror incident linked to his book.

First, knowledge, once in the public domain, is impossible to control. Powell had no way of knowing, let alone control, how the Columbine kids would use his book. Powell was quite clear about the intended purpose of his book – to help ordinary people fight tyranny.

Second, all the knowledge in Powell’s ‘cookbook’ already existed and was widely available. Powell obtained most of his insights from the New York Public Library and boy scout manuals! He also spoke to American soldiers, who learn some or all of these techniques in basic training. In a sense, all Powell did was compile all the information into a handy book.

Third, if production of knowledge with destructive potential is a crime, then every arms company in the world is guilty. In 2024, 2.5% of global GDP was spent on the military, which means that literally millions of people work on how to advance our knowledge of how to killing each other. The US aerospace and defence sector alone employs more than 2 million people.

Fourth, the creation of knowledge – even of a mortal and destructive kind – can arguably be justified if the cause is just. Most of the scientists who worked on the nuclear bomb in the Manhattan Project came to the conclusion that building the bomb was the right thing to do; it would shorten the war and save hundreds of thousands of lives. To them, inventing ‘dangerous’ knowledge in the service of ‘good’ was justifiable.

Personally, I think the last argument is rather weak. There is no objective way to define a cause as ‘moral’ or ‘just’, so it all quickly gets very quickly. One person’s ‘fair’ is often another person’s ‘unfair’.

The fifth, and in my view, strongest argument for not blaming Bill Powell for Columbine is the need to distinguish between the act of generating knowledge and the act of using it. It was the kids at Columbine High School who massacred other kids, not Bill Powell.

In general, inventors of knowledge should not be blamed for what they invent or discover. Knowledge is absolutely central to human progress. We may not always like what is discovered or published, but freely available information is preferable to the alternative. There are too many examples of the great damage caused when reactionaries try to curtail knowledge; such actions have, without exception, led to injustice, tyranny, and regression.

Columbine was not the only atrocity in which there were links between terrorists and ‘The Anarchist Cookbook’. Another case was the London Public Transport bombings in 2005. The UK government reacted to the attack in characteristic fashion by banning ownership of the 'cookbook'. Several people have since been sentenced to multi-year jail sentences for owning copies (see here).

Banning ownership of ‘The Anarchist Cookbook’ is analogous to prohibiting Galileo from speaking about his discovery that Earth is not at the centre of the universe. It is just wrong. So why did the British government ban the book? Apart from the fact that British governments just love to pass laws, regardless of whether they are stupid or even enforceable, what really triggers governments is that outrages, such as the London bombings and, indeed, the Columbine High School massacre, expose major failings at the heart of government.

It is the job of governments – specifically their intelligence and security branches – to prevent terrorist attacks and they clearly failed. The acts of blaming the terror attacks on Bill Powell amounted to simple scapegoating with the aim of covering up gross government ineptitude.

That governments behave in such cowardly ways should not surprise anyone, because it happens all the time. Take how Robert J. Oppenheimer from the aforementioned Manhattan Project was treated by the US government. He went from hero in 1945 to zero by the mid-1950s, when he was targeted during the Red Scare. These things happen, because society’s collective memory is patchy at best, political loyalties are time inconsistent, and human emotions are strong. Sentiments are so easily manipulated for political gain.

When nineteen-year-old Bill Powell wrote his book at the height of anti-Vietnam War protests, he was just one of many, many young people with similar views. But he was the only one who wrote a ‘cookbook’, and so when, thirty years later, some kids went on a shooting spree in a school in Colorado, Bill Powell was suddenly thrust into the media spotlight. Inevitably, a journalist spotted an opportunity to make splash and put together a tendentious documentary. Result: William Powell was ostracised from good society, blamed for crimes he had no knowledge of.

The five arguments I listed above as to why Bill Powell should not be blamed for Columbine are strong enough to exonerate him, but let me also add my very own personal reasons for maintaining this view.

As mentioned earlier, Bill Powell was teacher in high school in Tanzania in the early 1980s. He taught me English and drama and I knew him very well. In fact, he was the best teacher I ever had. He was a great humanist. In a school and at a time when it was acceptable for teachers to bully and even beat kids, especially poor and non-white kids, Bill Powell stood out for his kind and respectful treatment of all his pupils.

Powell’s classes were never boring, because he was able to convey to the kids a sense of meaning and relevance to the real world of everything he taught. What really stands out in my memory are his classes about the big moral questions of our time and especially his empathetic treatment of war poetry. To this day, I can recite every word of W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming”, Randall Jarrell’s “Death of a ball Turret Gunner”, and Rupert Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est”.

Bill also set up and ran the school’s debating society. He encouraged open and free debate. Intelligent kids were particularly drawn to him, because they sensed in him a mentor, who would treat them with respect and encourage their personal and intellectual development. I have just one picture of Bill from those days - see below. Bill is the man in the middle of the picture in the red shirt, bent over my classmate Gaurav Desai to hear what Gaurav had to say. Gaurav was super-smart and has since gone on to become Professor of English at the University of Michigan. The picture is emblematic of how I remember Bill, always respectful, encouraging, inspiring.

Bill Powell, in red, bent over Gaurav during a debate (Source: own picture) 

I also have a vivid memory of Bill from drama class. One year, we put on Arthur Miller’s ‘A View from the Bridge’ at the Little Theatre in Dar es Salaam. Bill was directing. The play is about two generations of Italian immigrants in New York City. I played the part of the young Rodolpho, newly arrived from Italy, who falls in love with Catherine, the daughter of Eddie Carbone, who is an old school Sicilian macho man. Rodolpho’s free and modern ways threaten Eddie, who struggles to adjust to the modern world. In a shocking scene, Eddie kisses the young Rodolfo roughly on the mouth, not romantically, but to humiliate and dominate, as in rape.

When my classmate, who played the role of Eddie fell ill with Malaria, Bill Powell stepped in. Hence, I got to be ‘raped’ by Bill Powell in public on stage in Tanzania’s only theatre several nights in a row. I still remember the gasps from the audience, when the kissing scene came around. But I was always OK, because characteristically Bill was incredibly considerate and empathetic. He understood how the kiss could seem overwhelming to a young boy and had gone out of his way explain to me the full rationale. I understood and was always comfortable.

The events that fuelled Bill Powell’s anger in the 1970s were not dissimilar to the events that are taking place in our own time. Powell had been angry about the gross injustices committed by the United States in the Vietnam war. Today, he would have been equally appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the creeping fascism and xenophobia of Trump’s America. The Trump Administration is even trying control the kind of research and teaching that can be done at American universities, showing that Trump is cut from the same cloth as those who seek to blame Bill Powell for Columbine.

Bill Powell’s anger echoes strongly within me – read my blog if you don’t believe me. We are entering a new dark age, darker even than the early 1970s. I share Bill Powell’s view that fascists will never respect human rights, never support democracy, and never adhere to the rule of law. They will, if allowed, bring the full force of the state to bear on their enemies. On you and me. To break us. Are we not right, then, to consider fighting back? To prepare, at least? To acquire knowledge about how to defend ourselves?

The decision to commit to active resistance is not easy. It involves many difficult dilemmas. It may cost you your freedom, your livelihood, your reputation. It may put your family at risk, even your life. Bill Powell explained these dilemma to us in English class using literature. When we read Hamlet, Bill would ask us, as Shakespeare had asked his readers, “whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and, by opposing, end them?”

That quote too has remained in my head ever since the early 1980s. A year after I left Tanzania, I found myself in Denmark and unhappy about the world and my situation. I became an anarchist. I dropped out of school to read Peter Kropotkin, Mikhael Bakunin, Emma Goldman, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in the local public library. I weighed the costs and benefits of becoming a revolutionary. I might have even written a manual about revolution if only I had had some of Bill Powell’s conviction and moral courage.

Today, being much older, I believe the young Bill Powell was right. When you are up against genuine fascists, you have to fight them. Or they will crush you. Bill was on the right side of history all along. And the right side of history always wins in the end.

The End