Sometimes people ask me about when I started seeing the world differently than others, like there was some kind of spark that pushed me over the edge into fanaticism. That’s not how it worked though, I’ve always just been weird as fuck, inside and out. When you’re weird, you start running into problems with authority at a very young age. That’s how it was for me anyway. There was never a time in my life where anything about this world and how it works made any sense to me. It’s not something you can really fake either, you can’t pretend to fit in when you don’t, and trying makes it even more noticeable. I found out very quickly that the best thing to do was just embrace the weirdness instead of trying to fight it. The only problem is that authority figures hate this. They attack nonconformity like white blood cells attacking a disease, so I always ended up being a target, especially in school. I’d always hated school, and I was always getting into trouble because I was bored and felt like I was in a prison. By the time I got into high school I was calling every adult in the building a “pig” and spent my time trying to make their lives as miserable as they made mine. I was constantly challenging the teachers in class and derailing the conversation or reading my own books during class with no interest in the lesson of the day. On one occasion in 6th grade I got a week of detention for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and I still refused to stand for it even after that. I also loved vandalizing the school with stickers and graffiti. My favorite act of sabotage was plastering stickers that said “Fuck Authority” all over the school’s trophy case, the juxtaposition was legendary. I had a ton of those stickers because I was on the street team for the punk band Pennywise, and that was one of their famous songs. I was under the influence of something nearly every day of school at that point too, it just made it so much easier to get through the day. Unfortunately, my refusal to be the model child prisoner in school had consequences at home as well. My low grades and regular detentions were always getting me grounded and preventing me from having much of a social life, so I spent much of my time at home on the internet and reading esoteric books. 

The internet was the only place that I felt welcome, and free to be myself. It was a place where weird kids like me could find communities of like-minded people. The early days of the web were less ideological too, especially among those of us that didn’t align with mainstream political parties. There was a vast melting pot of anarchists, new agers, trippers, preppers, anti-war activists, police accountability activists, hackers, and social justice advocates who often posted in the same forums. These groups would have disagreements, but they would also recognize where many of their goals and perspectives overlapped. I developed an eclectic perspective based on many of these different subcultures, but never identified with a particular community or ideology. I was sure that society needed to be totally dismantled, but I wasn’t sure what the next step after that should be. I saw both Capitalism and Communism as obsolete ideologies made for a different time, so I felt we needed some entirely new ideas. I recognized from a very young age that life sucks for a lot of people. There is so much pain and hurt in this world that it's hard to think about, but it's something that is always on my mind and I am reminded of it constantly. There are the neglected and abused children, the addicts, the outsiders, the neurodivergent, the victims of war, the survivors of poverty, and the list goes on. It's a heavy existence for a lot of people and I have always felt a responsibility to do any small part I can to create a better world for those of us in those situations. My activism has not always looked the same though, it has taken many different forms over the years. In my early years it was mostly the typical teenage rebellion against religion, capitalism and politics. My anger was pointed in the right direction, but my understanding of how things worked was limited and my perspective was extremely nihilistic at the time. Changing the world seemed like such an impossible task, especially for someone so insignificant like me. My plan was just to party as hard as possible until it killed me because it seemed like the only way of making life worth living. 

Things began to change after high school though, the rabbit holes on the internet were getting much deeper once video streaming capabilities went online. The culture around activism online was growing and it made me feel like change was actually possible. There were people out there who felt the same way I did and it was empowering to know that they existed. I was also inspired by much of the music that I listened to back then, especially Immortal Technique. His lyrics were intense and thought-provoking, packed with bold references to corrupt politicians and covert CIA operations, so much so that I found myself diving into research after every listen. Many of my favorite musicians were anti-authoritarian, but they expressed these ideas in poetic generalities, instead of clear terms like Technique did. I saw him live in 2005, at the Ottobar in Baltimore, and it was like nothing I ever experienced before. He told the audience that he was there to radicalize us, not entertain us, he said he was looking for soldiers, not fans. I left that venue wanting to riot and I feel like a piece of that has stuck with me ever since. 

I was also starting to have experiences in my personal life that were pushing me to become more militant about my beliefs. A lot of people I knew were getting arrested for drugs and having their lives ruined. After it happened to me a few times, the anger I had about cops became even more intense. The wars in the Middle East were a radicalizing factor too. I was against the wars from the start. The blatant imperialism was just as obvious back then as it is now, but it was hard for a lot of people to see because they were so angry or scared about 9/11. Many of my closest friends bought into it too and some of them even joined the military just before the wars began. I pleaded with all of them to not go, but after a while I resigned to respecting their decision when it became obvious that they weren't going to listen to me. The ones that made it home were changed forever and had trouble adjusting to civilian society and there were a few that never made it home. One loss hit me especially hard—Jen. We were practically inseparable throughout high school. She was killed in Iraq in early 2007 and I always suspected that there was more to the story than we were told. They claimed an Iraqi blew her up with a suicide bomb while she doing some kind of charity work helping locals. It seemed like such a bullshit story and as I’ve learned more about how women are treated in the military my suspicions about the situation have only grown. I was incredibly angry about my own loss, but I also recognized that the people living under US occupation experienced this kind of pain on a daily basis. The whole thing was a pointless waste of life, just like most wars, if not all of them. Her funeral was surreal,I still didn’t believe that she was dead, and I didn’t understand why she even joined the military in the first place. She was smart enough to do whatever she wanted and she definitely wasn’t the patriotic type. It was so weird seeing all of the pictures of her in her uniform, holding an automatic rifle, with the backdrop of an American flag, a far cry from the rebellious goth girl I met when I was 12 years old. There were a few pictures of her before she joined the military scattered around the funeral home at the viewing. I was even in a few of them, but it was definitely a military event and it seemed like her whole life was being defined by how she spent her last two years. I guess in this society that’s considered an “honor” or whatever, but I didn’t really see it that way because I blamed the military for her death. They killed her, along with Bush and Cheney and all those other fucking ghouls.

 I got heavy into anti-war activism after that and dove much deeper into my anti-establishment rabbit holes online. I wouldn't call it an awakening because I always knew society was a prison and pretty much everything about it was a lie, but I did become more active after that. Then something really strange happened when I started throwing raves and developed more of a platform online... people actually started listening to me. I began to believe not only that change was possible, but that I could play a role in it. This is why I called myself a “propagandist” in the title of this book. I see propaganda as a neutral term, that simply means to influence people with your words and ideas. Propaganda is everywhere, in every piece of art and literature. It can be positive or negative depending on how it’s applied. I like to think that I am a propagandist for peace, although, as you will see, there were a few times where I bought into some bullshit and amplified it, or promoted people who ended up becoming totally fascist, but that’s all the more reason for me to share my story, and share the lessons that I learned along the way. My battle with cancer was an especially important turning point, because I bet on my beliefs with my life and was proven wrong. Luckily, I still ended up making it, but the experience humbled me and caused me to question many of my core beliefs. 

 If you read Paper Squares and Purple Stars, then you know a bit about my rave days, but that was only half of the story, that was really only the beginning. That book ended with my farewell event at Ground Zero in 2011, which is actually the perfect place to start the story back up. That was when my attention was really starting to shift from raves to writing and activism. I was in the final stages of completing a book I had been writing for years. Around that time, I announced that I was going to be taking a hiatus from the rave scene to publish and promote my book, but that wasn’t entirely true. I would have kept doing shows while launching my book if people were actually coming out to my shows. I felt rejected by the scene after everything that happened, but I was too proud to say that out loud, so I pretended that my hiatus was voluntary when it really wasn't. I was very bitter and I had a lot of regrets, but I felt that it was better to leave on good terms, so I told everyone that I was moving onto bigger and better things. When you’re in business you always gotta throw the PR spin on everything that goes wrong. What was I supposed to say? That I’d failed and went into debt because they started going to a rival promoter’s parties? I don't think that would have gone over well because they all seemed to love the creep for some reason. I hated myself for turning down that offer to be a partner in his company. I felt like I threw away the opportunity of a lifetime, and maybe I did, but I had an entirely different vision of what I wanted for the culture, and I knew that he wasn't on the same page. Back then I never would have expected him to become so successful either. At the time, it seemed like I had a lot more to bring to the table than he did. He had money though, which I guess is all you really need to succeed in an industry where pretty much everyone is broke. I couldn’t stand the guy, but I stayed on good terms with him for some reason. Maybe I'm just a coward that can't handle conflict, but I decided it would be best to stay on his good side if he was going to have so much power. It was a very weird time, both in my life and in the world at large, but it was an interesting time too, so I thought that it was worth revisiting, just like I did in my last book. I’m also writing this for my own mental health, to help me process how I spent over a decade of my life and help me make sense of why some of the communities I put so much faith in turned out to be so toxic. It isn't all bad, of course, I haven't entirely given up on the idea of a better world, but I’m much more cautious and a bit less utopian these days. 

This book is about my experiences behind the scenes in activism and the music industry, but it goes much deeper than that. This is also a story about mental health, addiction, loneliness and the complicated social pressures that I faced living my life in the public eye, especially as someone who’s autistic. It may seem strange that two seemingly different stories are covered in one book, but I was living in both of these worlds at the same time and there are many issues in activism that became very relevant in the underground music industry, from police brutality to toxic power dynamics and sexual assault. As you read on, you will be able to see how these two worlds fit together in my life and how many of the same themes exist across these different dimensions. 

There are characters spread throughout the book, some of them are based entirely on real people, while others are composite characters that compile a variety of personalities that I’ve met into a common archetype. However, much of this narrative takes place inside my own head. Some chapters will have characters and dialogue, others will have rants and social critiques, and you will often find both in the same chapter, but I'll make sure that it will all flow together and make sense. As I warned in the last book, you aren't always going to agree with my decisions here, in fact, I don't even agree with all of my decisions looking back on everything. The point of this wasn’t to try and make myself look good, it was to share my experience and to learn from it. Writing about the past like this also helps me process the things I’ve been through and make sense of how I reacted. It helps guide my path in the future and it makes for one hell of an interesting story.