We’ve reached the first plateau of the Trump era. Round one is over and we’re still in the fight. With so much happening so fast, it can be hard to step back and get enough perspective to keep ahead of events. Let’s review the events of the past month and get a sense of where we are, so we can strategize for what comes next.
Phase One: Escalation in the Streets
The Trump era began with blockades and confrontational demonstrations in Washington, DC and around the country. Footage of white nationalist Richard Spencer being punched by a person in black bloc attire made antifascists popular even with television stars, though the shooting of a Seattle antifascist by a supporter of Milo Yiannopoulos ended the day on an omino... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Move the doomsday clock forward another click.
We were right about the direction things are heading, but wrong about the timeframe. We thought Clinton would win the election, and would then be discredited by new scandals and the challenges of preserving an increasingly unpopular status quo, producing a reactionary surge like the one that recently toppled Dilma in Brazil. Instead, the scandal broke before the election, with the announcement of further FBI inquiries into emails associated with Clinton. And, as with the Brexit vote, everyone underestimated just how desperate and reactionary the general public has become—at least the ones who still identify with the ruling order enough to vote at all. It’s later than you think.
It... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Perhaps you’ve read about the recently revealed Prism program, through which the US National Security Agency has been harvesting data from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, and other major internet corporations.
Remember, this is the tip of the iceberg. We can’t know how many similar projects are buried deeper in the apparatus of the surveillance state, unrevealed by daring whistleblowers. We do know that the NSA intercepts billions of emails, phone calls, and other forms of communication every day. What they can monitor they can also censor, à la China or Mubarak.
Many have championed the internet as an opportunity to create new commons, resources that can be shared rather than privately owned. But faced with the inc... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Some have suggested that we should simply see the difficult events at the convergence as a reminder to address the issues of white supremacy and gentrification; meanwhile, all manner of uninformed parties who were not present at the convergence have been commenting about it. We humbly suggest that it might be more appropriate for those who were not at the convergence to focus on discussing gentrification, oppression, and abuse in their own experiences, while listening to those who were present at the convergence when it comes to questions pertaining to it.
Summary of Events
After seven years of rural convergences, the organizers of the 2009 convergence agreed it was time to experiment with a new format. In doing so, they set aside a tim... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Honestly, when was the last time you spent a whole day just enjoying what you were doing and feeling? Enjoying it solely for its own sake, without thinking about the future or worrying about the long-term consequences? When was the last time you spent a whole month living that way? Do you have a hard time forgetting about your responsibilities, your goals, your productivity, and just being in the present?
Today, our lives revolve around things. We measure our worth in terms of our material possessions: in terms of our control over things outside ourselves. We gauge our success in life in terms of our “productivity”; that is, our ability to make these things. Our social system revolves around the production and consumption of ma... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The following guidelines are intended to equip street medics and health professionals to respond to some of the common injuries inflicted by police violence. They are drawn from experience in the struggle against an airport that the French government tried—and failed—to build in Noter-Dame-des-Landes. It can be difficult to find solid information about how to treat such injuries based on real-life experience. Most mainstream health professionals have little experience treating injuries caused by police weapons; this guide shares the knowledge that medics gained in repeatedly responding to these injuries, in hopes of saving others the trouble of having to learn by trial and error. Being medically trained does not qualify you to b... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) This was originally distributed as a pamphlet, after the CrimethInc. action at the Atom and His Package show last summer, before the His Hero Is Gone show, which ended up featuring mass nudity and wild dancing during the E-150 set. The pamphlet included a lovely picture of our friend Sally breathing fire at a Gilman Street show, which we lack the technical skills to include here. Please feel free to adapt this flier for your own community!
Punk shows. Punk shows us what we’re capable of in tight-knit communities, it shows us how to have more fun, more experiences, more life. If we let it, punk can show us just how much is possible in this world. And punk shows are exactly the place for this to happen.
Do you remember when you went t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Introduction
After several failed attempts across Europe to frame anarchists and other anti-authoritarians with conspiracy and terrorism charges, the Greek state is at the forefront of developing new legal strategies to attack social movements. Article 187A of the Greek legal penal code has existed since 2004, but last year, Greek officials used it in a new way against Nikos Romanos and several other anarchist prisoners, convicting and sentencing them to many years in prison based on a new interpretation of the article. Regardless of whether these verdicts are overturned in higher courts, the trials indicate a major strategic shift in the policing of social movements in Greece. They offer an important warning sign about the new forms tha... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) There’s no such thing as a free lunch under capitalism—for anarchists, there’s no other kind
Disambiguation: According to the capitalist lexicon, the “Free Market” is the economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses. Any sensible person can recognize immediately that neither human beings nor resources are free in such a system; hence, a “Really Really Free Market” is a market that operates according to gift economics, in which nothing is for sale and the only rule is share and share alike. In the interest of not taxing the reader’s patience, a single apostrophe stands in for the two “Really”s throughout this text... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Every day, we’re treated to another barrage of outright falsehoods from the White House: Trump won the election by a landslide, Sweden is the crime capital of Europe, corpses are piling up in Bowling Green, anarchists are on George Soros’s payroll, nobody loves women or Black people or the First Amendment more than Trump.
Corporate media outlets have responded with earnest fact-checking and debunking, as if Trump’s untruths were just the result of incompetence. This is a naïve misreading of the terms of the conflict. What is at stake is not this or that fact, but the sources of truth—and what truth itself is.
The Facebook Counterrevolution
In 20th-century democracy, politicians competed for power on a stage... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Disaster? Yes, disaster.
When you think of disasters, perhaps some secret part of you thrills at the idea of something happening, something interrupting the tedious routines that comprise existence for so many of us. You might not be ready to own up to actually desiring one, but a disaster would at least offer a chance to escape your cage and explore the unknown for a little while. What anguish, to live in longing for a reprieve from your own life, never knowing when or if it might come!
Or perhaps you cringe at the word, thinking of all the senseless tragedy and loss of life that real disasters entail. In that case, it may have already occurred to you that we are in the midst of the most terrible slow-motion disaster in history, as the... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) One month and a half of full time meetings and action. The real activist way of life. One goal, and working on it. People who knew each other from before, or not. Different communities meeting up for a special event. Just because the word passed on. And mails and posters. And nightlife. And never-ending meetings. Discussions. Why. How. Where to, from there. Drawing and studying plans. Writings. Paintings. Four hours of sleep in a week. Yet not much exhaustion. Bad or no food. Changing clothes from time to time, to disguise. And some burning cars and buildings in the city to keep up the courage, for some guy who died in jail. Meetings. Not only plenary, but also just meetings: Beautiful people. A whole life in the game. Because we’re t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A Look Behind the ‘Scenes’: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer
Everyone knows how insipid and inane most television programs are. It’s clear to anyone who spends an hour in front of prime time that the sitcoms, news, and commercials alike are deliberately designed to appeal to lowest common denominator levels of taste, intelligence, and attention span in the intended viewers. It has been a cliche for generations now that television is “mindless entertainment.” However, most people don’t really see this as any objection to watching television. It’s not too hard to come to associate inanity and irrelevance with entertainment, to come to assume that “being entertained” means giving your ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In February 2015, after months of confrontations in response to the murder of Michael Brown, a number of anarchists from the St. Louis area gathered to reflect on their experiences in the streets, their role in predominantly black struggles, and the ramifications of arson and gunfire in protests. We had sent some discussion questions to get the ball rolling, but mostly they let the conversation take its own course, speaking with admirable frankness and vulnerability. The result is an important historical document, of interest to anyone who might one day participate in something similar.
This transcript originally appeared in the 12th issue of Rolling Thunder, which examines the movement that spread across the United States from Ferguson in... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Starting in the 1960s, people set out to block the construction of an unwanted airport at Noter-Dame-des-Landes in western France. This became the world-famous land occupation known as la ZAD—the Zone à Défendre (Zone to Defend). In January 2018, the French government announced that the airport would not be built; in April and May 2018, French police carried out a brutal military operation to re-introduce state control. Today, the ZAD is a shadow of what it was.
Why was it possible for the government to crush this powerful example of autonomy? In the following retrospective, a longtime resident of the ZAD explores how internal dynamics helped set the stage for state repression. This is one of the many stories that could... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) We’re saddened to announce the passing of Paul Z. Simons, longtime anarchist, journalist, and author. Paul was an anarchist writer with a playful spirit, an uncompromising love of life, and equally uncompromising hatred for authority—be it from the right or the left. We treasure our memories of Paul. His presence will be sorely missed.
Recalled by his eldest daughter as “a uniquely intelligent writer, traveler, idealist, and fire-breathing anarchist,” Paul participated in some of the most inspiring thought and action of the past forty years. We are not equipped to properly write his eulogy, but we hope others will, and now that he is no longer able to speak to you himself, we urge you to read the materials he left b... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) To observe the 204th anniversary of her birth, we remember Tatiana Bakunin, sister of the revolutionary anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. On the basis of all the available information, Tatiana and her sisters were as courageous and creative as Mikhail. Tatiana repeatedly played a pivotal role behind the scenes in her brother’s life and in the intellectual development of several other important thinkers. The fact that her name and ideas are not widely known today attests to the barriers she faced and the deficiencies of the “great man” model of history.
Nearly all of what we know about Tatiana appears in the margins of stories written about men. She is one of the countless people who remain invisible through the lens of patriarch... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Reminiscences of Xelîl, a friend we lost last year.
In October 2012, we organized a lecture tour through Germany on the occasion of the publication of the book Message in a Bottle, a collection of CrimethInc. texts in German. The planning escalated quickly; it became a total of 45 events throughout Northern Europe within less than 2 months.
I was on the road for two weeks of the tour. We did 13 events on 13 days—mostly in Germany, but also in Holland and Belgium. Before the tour, I only knew the other two presenters via mail.
It was an intense tour, full of adventures and meaningful discussions that produced new friendships and connections between communities. Everywhere we went, the venues were full and the conversations wen... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Introduction by CrimetInc.
Around the world, calls are circulating for rent strikes in response to the economic hardships inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past decade, real estate values have skyrocketed and gentrification has destroyed countless communities. Housing costs were already unsustainable long before the pandemic forced the issue.
Yet how could we go on a rent strike against the economy itself? When we think of rent strikes, we usually think of a model targeting a particular landlord, advancing particular demands. In fact, as the following text documents, this strategy has been employed effectively on a much broader basis before. In a crisis in which massive numbers of people will not be able to afford to pay thei... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Throughout June and July 2019, CrimethInc. operatives from South and North America visited fifteen cities in seven different Brazilian states to present the print edition of Da Democracia à Liberdade, the Portuguese version of our book From Democracy to Freedom. The tour also served as an opportunity to compare notes about resistance to the Trump regime and the far-right populist government of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. This report from our trip also offers an overview of the some of the social centers and organizing going on in Brazil today. We have been publishing reports and analysis of social struggles from Brazil for many years.
We participated in a total of 21 events, hosted by social centers, occupations, union headquarters, u... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) For months, hundreds of people, including members of nearly a hundred different indigenous peoples, have mobilized to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. On October 27, police raiding the Sacred Ground camp encountered stiff resistance. We’ve just received the following firsthand report from comrades who participated in the defense of the camp. Describing some of the fiercest clashes indigenous and environmental movements in the region have seen in many years, they pose important questions about solidarity struggles.
The Battle
When we arrive on Wednesday, October 26, we can’t find our contacts, the friends and friends of friends who have been vouched into the secretive Red Warrior camp. Word around the cam... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) We received the following report and request from our comrades in South Korea, who recently published a Korean version of To Change Everything and are active in a variety of struggles there.
Starting in spring, the anarchist appeal To Change Everything was adapted into Korean and distributed in paper and online in South Korea. Many welcomed it; the first printing ran out quickly.
It also provoked a strong reaction when the country’s major corporate news agency reported on it and on a project appearing on the appeal’s blog to gather and distribute songs against the National Security Law. The journalist even went to the prosecutor’s office, inquiring whether these activities constituted “aid to the enemy” (in o... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Donald Trump has taken to his soapbox to carp about “fake news,” as if the corporate news media were a subversive force. On the contrary, while biased or outright dishonest reporting is the rule rather than the exception, it almost always serves those in power. The interests of the corporate news media cannot be disentangled from the advertizers who fund them and the authorities they count on for scoops. In this eyewitness report from a demonstration in Philadelphia last Friday, participants relate how police attacked them with batons and pepper spray, then persuaded local media to report that it was the demonstrators who pepper-sprayed them.
Last night in North Philadelphia, four people were arrested and many were injured by b... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Since the government’s decision to cancel the construction of an airport at Noter-Dame-des-Landes (NDDL) on January 17, 2018, life on la ZAD—the Zone à Défendre (Zone To Defend) where the airport was to be built—has been a complicated series of conflicts about whether to negotiate with the government for the future of the land. Any lingering illusions that it could be possible to coexist peacefully with the authority of the state were dispelled this week, as the French government initiated what they hope will be the decisive eviction of this world-famous inspiring autonomous zone. To learn about the fifty years of struggle that led up to this moment, read our full history, “La ZAD: Another End of the Wo... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “Mindless violence is getting up each day and being complacent. Self-destructive behavior is worshiping routine for its security and praying to the market for happiness or adventure.”
After the presidential inauguration of 2005, nationwide mass mobilizations died down in the United States. Everyone from anarchists to liberals had rightly given up the idea that the Iraq war could be stopped by symbolic mass actions—smashing windows is no less symbolic than a candlelight vigil, unless you come back to smash them again the following week—and without the anti-globalization movement or the election circus to focus on, there wasn’t much left to mobilize people on a national scale besides the standard fare of eco... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) On March 3, 1991, Los Angeles police officers ran down a taxi driver, pursuing him with several police cars and a police helicopter on the grounds that he was speeding and would not pull over. They cornered him, then tasered him and beat him with batons for several minutes. His name was Rodney King. A local camcorder owner, George Holliday, caught some of the police violence on video. On April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted the officers who had assaulted King; even the mayor expressed disbelief. South Central Los Angeles erupted into riots and looting that continued for five days and spread to many other cities. In response, the National Guard, the Infantry, and the Marines joined the police in brutalizing residents of Los Angeles; for example,... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In Paris, on May Day 2018, nearly 15,000 people joined a confrontational march rejecting capitalism and the state, including a black bloc of 1200 people. Intense clashes immediately broke out with the police. This is the story of the events leading up to May Day, what we experienced that afternoon in Paris, and what comes next.
Tension has been building in France for years now, from the street confrontations of 2016 against the Loi Travail to the defense of la ZAD at Noter-Dame-des-Landes. Here, we offer firsthand reports from the events of May 1, 2018 in Paris and discuss the aftermath of this day in order to participate in the critical analyzes that have emerged within our radical circles for several days now.
To hear reports from other... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “We love athletics” —anarchist contestants for the 2010 Olympics
We’re pleased to bring you breaking news from Vancouver, where united indigenous and anarchist resistance has disrupted the capitalist and nationalist triumphalism at the opening of the Olympic Games.
Anti-Olympic Riots and Militant Actions Rock Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories
The following report was collectively produced by several participants in this past weekend’s militant resistance to the 2010 Olympic games. This is not a full analysis of Olympic Resistance but rather an in-depth account of what just went down. For more background on why people are resisting these games, check no2010.com and olympicresistance.net.
This was not &ld... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Last week’s elections in Germany brought the ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist, and partly neo-Nazi party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) into the German parliament for the first time with approximately 13% of the vote. They join the far-right parties that have significant political power in over a dozen other European countries. Why is the far-right gaining ground in German politics? And what can partisans of freedom and equality do to halt their advance?
The victory of the AfD is just the latest consequence of a process that has been unfolding over several years. We can situate them in the continuity of fascist political activity in Germany since 1945. Starting in 2014 with the rise of far-right street movements like Pegida, an... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) This is what I always meant by “ambitious hedonism.”
I’ve been looking for any excuse to be with you. I am so glad to see you here in St. Paul.
It’s been too long.
What started as idle flirtation has become full blown lust. To be honest, sometimes I can’t get you out of my head. Your energy and smile, the way your body moves with mine. I remember the first time we looked each other in the eyes. You had a spark. I was hooked.
Why else would I have shown up to all those boring fucking meetings? Why else would I sit around outside dumpsters late at night, hoping you’d appear? I used to see you everywhere—the potluck, the shows, the street parties. But once all those fell apart we completely lost... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)