Wearing a mask is the most honest you will see me

“The rhythms of business society have overprogrammed the body to dance fear, contempt, humiliation, and the seeking of revenge: it’s the dance of the carnivore, the hunter, the copper, the terrorist, the bureaucrat. Don’t you feel now how it could be to walk like the cats, unpredictable, partisans of living life to the limits, guerillas for pleasure, poets of lightning autonomy, in league with an irresistible force?” - Raoul Vaneigem

Class Society is a society that revolves around lies (Class Society here denotes a society in which people are divided into a series of categories, I.e. Women/Men, White/Non-White, Propertied/Propertyless, and these categories are the prime drivers behind a person’s condition in life). Lies are employed by both those who are dominant in Class Society (In order to maintain the present order), and the dominated, (In order to deflect some of the mundane crushing indignities that characterise their lives) and go from grand (‘Austerity is both necessary and positive’) to small (‘No Officer, I did not see where the thief went’). Lies come in many forms, not just words, and the bare face is one tool among many that is employed.



It would seem obvious that lies are an essential and necessary part of society, but I disagree. Lies are only a feature of class society, of a society that is characterised by relationships of hierarchy and domination, and that in a society without these features lies would not be a major part of our lives.

When do we lie? We lie when we are pressed to share information we would rather not, and do not feel like we can simply decline to answer, or the truth is not ‘good enough’. Think of the child who did not do their homework, or the worker who decided to stay in bed today, why do they lie? They lie because the truth is insufficient, and if they do not answer they will be disciplined. The truth of ‘I decided I had better things to do with my time’ is insufficient. The truth of ‘As I stared at the ceiling this morning I found that I could not force my body to sit for one more second in front of a computer screen, doing meaningless work to in order to make someone far richer than I can ever imagine slightly more wealthy’ is insufficient. We live in a society where our time is carefully controlled and ordered, and deviation is only acceptable if it passes through a few preapproved routes. This is why the worker claims they are ill, when all they are sick of is their job, why the child must claim their Uncle/Grandmother/Dog has died, when they simply decided that there were more pleasurable things to do than long division.

Domination and the defensive lies used to attempt to fend it off also express themselves in more subtle ways than the direct verbal lie, namely through our faces. Think of the worker nodding along to their boss’s meaningless critique of their ‘work performance’, as to avoid being fired. Think of the woman smiling politely at the boring man at the bar as not to be assaulted. Think of the black man in a white country keeping his face neutral as he is pulled over by the police, as he feels nothing but rage and fear. These conditions are not natural, but are produced by a hierarchal and violent society premised on the ruthless exploitation of people for the service of abstract, dead ideas (Money, Nation, God).

Imagine if someone told you that they had a friend with whom they constantly had to conceal how they felt, constantly had to lie to defend themselves. You would find this relation at best toxic and dysfunctional and at worst openly abusive. And yet if this kind of relations operates not between friends in equal, loving, relationships, but between those who operate systems of power and those that are subjected to them they suddenly become acceptable.

Of course we should not kid themselves that we can cleanly separate our social relations into one realm where they are determined by hierarchy and domination, and another separate world of our personal relations which are characterised by equality and love. Rather, hierarchy and domination, and the lies that accompany them, echo downward from the abstractions that dominate our lives to the lowest level. Think of the classic illustration portraying ‘Boss shouts at man/man shouts at woman/woman shouts at child/child shouts at cat’. This principle also operates in reverse, ‘Man lies to defend himself from his boss/woman lies to defend herself from man/child lies to woman to defend themselves’. The most abstract and distant principles that make up our social system define the structures of our most intimate moments, and one of the ways it does this is by forcing the culture of lies upon us.

What I have yet to show is how the grand lies that are a vital part of (Generally the lies of ideology) class society directly create the small lies that exemplify the most unpleasant parts of our everyday life. Imagine the ‘boss’ as has been mentioned several times in this essay, they are a person with at least a slightly elevated status in class society, who ‘manages’ other workers, and in the process demand things they do not want to give, and so the workers must lie. Why does this occur? On one hand there is a genuine belief in the lies that make up the system, the boss is probably more likely than the ‘mere’ workers to believe things like ‘Hard work is good for you and will get you far in life’. If simply because they believe they have got somewhere in life and it would be nice to believe you got there for something you have done as oppose to a game of probabilities based on your demographics with a hint of luck (This kind of belief in your own agency is implausible in class society, but is a pleasant illusion).

On the other hand, they have no choice. Anyone in class society has people above them as well as below them, and regardless of how little you believe in it the pressure that is applied to you from the top must express itself downward, or you will find yourself in a lower position. Your boss can know perfectly well that you would be best served coming to work four hour late for no reason, or staying in bed all day, but they must demand the appropriate lie, so they can pass this lie up the chain, as to also protect themselves. These go up and up, our society is out of step with human desires and joy, and this is coped with by a culture of lies, which provides the illusion that we really are beings that have no desires beyond earning in order to spend.

It is amazing that in a world where lies and the lies of the face are so essential that those who choose to cover their faces at demonstrations are denounced as ‘dishonest’. Of course one could take the perspective that this is simply one more lie justified by the dysfunction of the world around it, but this is not what I will argue. Rather, I would say that in a society based on dishonesty, the ‘black bloc’ is a shining example of honesty. They obviously conceal their faces, but in a society where the face so often tells a lie, the mask in fact offers a definitive truth. The masked cannot pretend to be happy or sad; it is an open statement of intent. It cannot pretend to be anything but what it is, someone dressed head to toe in black cannot pretend to a police officer not to be a demonstrator and slipped through police lines, as long as you are dressed in such a way you have a definitive role that you cannot escape from.

The ‘black bloc’ is an honest attempt to create an honest society. The ‘black blocker’ does not pretend to be anything but the total and complete enemy of the present order, and is treated as such. In a world of lies and ideology, the black bloc exposes truth. The violent struggle that emerges between the police and the black bloc as they attempt to destroy property illuminates what was concealed. Namely that we live in a system not set up to serve human life, but dead, heavy things like money and property, and that the ‘end of history’ is a fabricated lie, as there are always those who will resist and attempt to overturn it. There is no possibility to integrate the actions of the black bloc into the spectacle of capitalist lies, it must admit that they are against it, and simply try to demonise them.