Zo D'Axa

French lampoonist, publisher, writer, adventurer and anarchist propagandist.

An individualist and aesthete, d'Axa justified the use of violence as an anarchist, seeing propaganda of the deed as akin to works of art. Anarchists, he wrote, "had no need to hope for distant better futures, they know a sure means of plucking the joy immediately: destroy passionately!" "It is simple enough.", d'Axa proclaimed of his contemporaries, "If our extraordinary flights (nos fugues inattendues) throw people out a little, the reason is that we speak of everyday things as the primitive barbarian would, were he brought across them." D'Axa was a bohemian who "exulted in his outsider status", and praised the anti-capitalist lifestyle of itinerant anarchist bandit precursors of the French illegalists. He expressed contempt for the masses and hatred for their rulers. He was an important anarchist interpreter of the philosophy of individualist anarchist Max Stirner, defender of Alfred Dreyfus during the Dreyfus affair and opponent of prisons and penitentiaries.