letters  /  sent August 20, 2026

Raoul Vaneigem

I can’t believe it.

Raoul Vaneigem died. He was one of my heroes in the 60s.

His book, The Revolution of Everyday Life, was such a powerful force. The idea that every intimate, little aspect of your life can change if you really want it to. Fuck, what an epiphany.

That’s how I want to be . . . that’s the way I want to live!

Back then, it felt like we were on the cusp of world revolution. Young people were awake, alive, and fighting like hell to swerve our sicko world in a bold, beautiful new direction. In Haight Ashbury, Chicago . . . Tokyo, Beijing, Mexico City . . . Prague, West Berlin, and Frankfurt too . . . we all felt the spark. Raoul Vaneigem and other Situationists like Guy Debord carried it through.

The Revolution of Everyday Life has stayed with me ever since. Everything we’ve done at Adbusters — Buy Nothing Day, Occupy Wall Street, and now this idea of giving birth to a new political ideology and launching Blackspot Parties around the world — it’s all been driven by people like him and that extraordinary spark.

Now, the big question hangs over us:

Is there enough of that spark left to morph this doomsday machine of ours into a new orbit?

“Daydreaming subverts the world.”

— KL

Against the machine

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