Chapter 9 : Press Communique

Press Communique

Text distributed to press agencies and periodicals.

Incomplete and erroneous accounts given by the press concerning recent events have obliged us to give a few explanations as to the objectives and characteristics of the ‘1st of May Group’.

During the night of the 2nd and 3rd March 1968 the 1st of May Group carried out (in various European capitals) a series of actions directed against the diplomatic and military corps of the United States and the fascist governments Greece, Spain and Portugal. Actions such as the kidnap of Mgr. Ussia in Rome, the machine-gunning of the American Embassy in London, the attacks on the embassies of Greece and Bolivia in Bonn, etc. to which the Press gave, at the time, an essentially psychological character, had two principal objectives:

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to inform the public at large, through the means of the press agencies, of the claims which motivated these actions;

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to demonstrate through these claims the palpable of the ‘escalation of terror’ which is at present spreading throughout the world under the patronage of the USA, oppose it by a ‘counter-escalation’ of rebellion in all its aspects and on all grounds.

Clearly it is not a matter of opposing to global terrorism an ‘heroic’ terrorism but rather to spread an offensive movement capable of breaking down the passivity which governments, using increasingly scientific methods, are attempting to create in us.

The genocide of the Vietnamese people, the subjection of Latin America, and the conflicts fomented in the Middle East by the assassins of the White House and the Pentagon are aspects of a systematic program to encapsulate the world. In Europe too, once can observe important aspects of this program: the fundamental support given by the USA to the dictatorships of Greece, Spain and Portugal in exchange for the guarantee of strategic bases in the Mediterranean.

As for the ‘bourgeois democracies’ of the west and the ‘peoples’ democracies’ of the east, they are busy looking for new markets as they are moving in the direction of the ‘super consumer’ society. Financial trusts in the west and the bureaucratic party structures in the east, totally disregarding any humanitarian scruples, strengthen their ties with dictatorial regimes.

Thus private and state capitalism converge towards the same objective (while preserving their respective systems), using as justification a political plan for ‘national independence’, or an economic plan for ‘national expansion’ while the countries of the ‘third world’ are kept in a perpetual state of repression and misery as the main source of raw materials and cheap labor.

In the face of this reality we submit that a generalized revolutionary action against capitalism and all reigning bureaucracies (including that of China) is the only way left open to an exploited humanity wishing to regain control of its destiny.

At a time when new generations of the whole world, shattering the myths of a ‘free’ western world and the ‘construction of socialism’ (directed by an omnipotent party) crystallize their aspirations towards an anarchist revolution we believe that only the international co-ordination of these movements could oppose an effective force against the global collaboration of the forces of oppression.

The struggle against dictatorships—Spanish, Greek, Portuguese, against racism in the USA and ‘apartheid’ in South Africa, against the extermination of the Vietnamese people or the enslavement of Latin America, constitute the global fight against all systems of exploitation.

March 1968

1st of May Group
Movement of Revolutionary Solidarity