My axe! is my buddy, I bring him when I walk

From The Transmetropolitan Review

Click here for the full pamphlet version

Back in 1908, an anarchist named Aristide Pratelle wrote an article titled ‘The King of the Forest’ for the French anarchist newspaper Les Temps Nouveaux, detailing the crimes of the Weyserhaeuser lumber company in the United States. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Aristide saw the Weyerhaeuser lumber company for the leviathan it was. At a time when most of the US public knew about the crimes of JP Morgan and JD Rockefeller, the ecocide of Friedrich Weyerhäuser went largely unnoticed, and after devastating the ancient forests of the Midwest, his company began to devour the Pacific Northwest.

Aristide’s article coincided with the first successful IWW lumber strike in Portland, Oregon in 1907, while a correspondent for Les Temps Nouveaux named Laurent Casas soon became an agitator in the Pacific Northwest lumber camps, as did many other anarchists in the years ahead. Like many other anarchist writers, Aristide wrote ‘The King of the Forest’ not just to be informative, but so that other anarchists might act against a clear and emergent threat.

In the interests of fostering physical print culture, Aristide’s article is only available in pamphlet form. Below you will find a short biography of Aristide Pratelle, an anarchist who’s been all but forgotten outside France.

 

Biography

Aristide Pratelle was born in Paris on October 4, 1877, and by 1900 he was collaborating on the anarchist education journal L’Éducation Libertaire. In addition to his passion for education, Aristide was also an accomplished poet, and in 1902 he published Les Résolutions, a volume of social poetry sold through the weekly anarchist newspaper Les Temps Nouveaux for 1.50 francs.

Aristide began writing short news items and articles for Les Temps Nouveaux in 1904 and was very close with its editor Jean Grave. He was the stenographer for the 1907 International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam, and the proceedings he transcribed, as well as the speeches, were republished in Les Temps Nouveaux and other publications over the following year.

In addition to writing for several other paper, Aristide was also friends with the radical educator Francisco Ferrer, serving as secretary for his paper L’Ecole Rénovée when Ferrer moved it to Paris in 1908. In that time, he was also one of the main international news writers for Les Temps Nouveaux, and his King of the Forest is just one example of his feature articles.

Aristide was an early French supporter of the Partido Liberal Mexicano, an umbrella group of Mexican anarchists which helped trigger the Revolution of 1910. Aristide wrote many articles in support of their movement, just as he raised funds for their war against the dictatorship. He was also a fervent supporter of the Japanese anarchist Kōtoku Shūsui, writing in his defense before and after his execution by the Empire in 1911.

Not only was Aristide dedicated to education, he was also passionate about science, writing about the universe with the anarchist Paul Delesalle and discoursing on the atom with the anarchist Fernando Tarrida del Mármol.

Aristide moved north to the city of Beauvais in 1914, the same year he stopped writing article for Les Temps Nouveaux. He remained in Beauvais as an active educator and anarchist up through the Nazi occupation, which made his last years lonely and desperate. He died in Beauvais on January 20, 1942 at the age of 64.

Comments

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/26/2026 - 03:44

Francisco Ferrer was nowhere a "radical", but a liberal socialist tied to the establishment as well as a Freemason... which means full hierarchical, patriarchal and pro-statist, not the contrary. But since the Transmet are liberal college scumfucks it's a very understandable even if unfortunate old pattern that they'll consider anyone on the Left as such.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/26/2026 - 13:51

In reply to by dumbshit (not verified)

I learned about the modern school when you were still at postmodern small school. The claims above on Ferrer all check out.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/26/2026 - 10:12

Ferrer is buried between Durruti and Ascaso. I don't think they do that with weak assed liberals.

Rebelempath (not verified) Thu, 02/26/2026 - 17:14

There is definitely a psychological doorway into the rebel-empathic realm which all natural wildernesses like forests open up to our organic aesthetic and ignite our disdain for disharmony and destruction of the sacredness of Nature.

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