Revolution for the Hell of It

Hoffman and the Yippies threw dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and watched the traders scramble. They nominated a pig named Pigasus for president. They attempted to levitate the Pentagon through collective meditation. They understood something that most political movements miss: that a system which takes itself completely seriously can be disrupted most effectively by refusing to take it seriously at all — that absurdity is a weapon, that joy is a tactic, that making the revolution something people actually want to be part of is not a distraction from the politics but the politics itself. Published in 1968, the year everything was happening, written under the pseudonym Free. The most complete expression of Yippie politics and the most direct ancestor of everything in the Laugh & Resist arc — the argument that defiance should be fun, that the refusal to be grim in the face of power is itself an act of resistance. Rules for Radicals tells you how to build power seriously. Revolution for the Hell of It tells you why serious isn't always the right register.