Just in time for the anniversary of the beginning of the Egyptian uprising, we’ve received this report from a comrade who participated in the most recent clashes in Cairo. It offers an overview of the current context in Egypt, along with photos and video footage from the front lines.
Live from the Streets of Cairo
When we heard gunshots coming from the cabinet building, we were certain they were blanks. Despite having seen the military use live rounds earlier that day, we had a naïve sense of security among the thousands in the streets.
When the screams and panic erupted as one of the people standing next to me was shot in the neck and rushed to the ambulances at the back of the crowd, we stayed put, along with most of the cro... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Cast a spell.
People in North America are already under a spell: the spell of private property, of the legitimacy of government, of hopelessness. None of these are inherently real; they derive their reality from our collective belief and activity. You have to be hypnotized indeed to believe that property is more sacred than the needs of human beings—that the decisions of the government are more legitimate than your own judgment. To break this spell, cast another. When a few people invest themselves entirely in another vision of reality, they open up space for others to invest in it as well. It doesn’t have to be realistic at first—it just has to spread until it creates the conditions of its possibility. The original call ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) 1.
Pay attention to where and how you spend your money. Is your money going to support companies that don’t care about you? Are they destroying the environment, killing animals, treating your friends who work for them like shit? Are they trying as hard as they can to sell you a product that gives you cancer? Are their advertisements designed to manipulate you, to make you feel insecure or make their product seem like more than it really is? You don’t need to give those motherfuckers your money! For that matter—do you buy many things that you don’t need? Soft drinks and junk food at convenience stores, for example? Do you end up spending a lot of money whenever you want to relax and have a good time? There are a thou... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) If you’ve used the internet at any point since May 2013, you’ve probably heard that you should use encrypted communications. Edward Snowden’s revelation that the National Security Agency logs all of our calls, texts, and emails sparked a surge in the development and use of encryption apps and services. Only a few years later, encryption is widely used for daily communication. If you use any of these encryption tools, you’ve probably also heard the phrase “end-to-end encryption,” or “E2EE.” The name seems straightforward enough: end-to-end means content is encrypted from one endpoint (generally your phone or computer) to another endpoint (the phone or computer of your message’s intended r... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) President’s Day, a federal holiday, observes George Washington’s birthday on February 22. Yet as a slave owner and profiteer on others’ servitude, George Washington is a poor exemplar of the struggle for freedom. Rather than looking to him for a model representing resistance to tyranny, let’s remember the slaves and indentured servants who sought to escape from him and the Native Americans who defended themselves against his attacks.
Washington is celebrated as the father of the American Revolution, itself the blueprint for countless subsequent struggles for independence and democracy. We can’t grasp the meaning of the American Revolution without recalling that George Washington was one of the wealthiest peopl... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) As Europe descends further into nationalism and xenophobia, we are seeing feminist, atheist, and progressive discourses appropriated to serve reactionary ends. Following the assaults in Cologne and the media feeding frenzy about “migrant violence,” many people have struggled to find a way to speak about the situation without minimizing the issue of sexual assault or contributing to the demonization of migrants. Yet displacement and sexual assault are not distinct issues—they are interrelated components of a larger context that must be confronted as a whole.
The Story Thus Far
The past decade has seen a series of cascading disasters in the Middle East and Europe. First, there was the bloody occupation of Afghanistan and I... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In Chili, in response to student protests against an increase in the cost of public transportation, the President has returned the country to dictatorship-era martial law, putting soldiers on the streets and threatening protesters with decades in prison. The following report comes directly from the streets of Santiago at the epicenter of the fighting. You can read an update to this story here, including an interview with a Chilean anarchist and a call to action from other participants in the revolt.
Friday’s conflagration took place following a week of action against fare increases under the slogan “evade” or evade y lucha (“dodge the fare and struggle”), which now appears on nearly every wall downtown in spra... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) It was a romantic life, maybe to be looked back upon as the glory days of youth. If it was poverty it was poverty only on paper. Poverty is a mathematical equation, an expression of how much one can buy. What about how much we can steal? Doesn’t that count for anything?!
And poverty in pocket means richness of experience. We had spent uneventful periods of our lives paying rent and long practiced the dull habit of paying for things. But those years of school, work, and middle-class lethargy are a blur. Being “born again” for us wasn’t finding “God,” but shedding convenience. Then life began, and since then we remember each dumpster, abandoned house, and footchase by retail security. At night, after runni... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) On July 19, Kelly Rose Pflug-Back was sentenced to eleven more months in prison for her participation in the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto. She remains unapologetic about her role in the black bloc that caused so much disruption during the summit, demonstrating that the forces that impose capitalism and patriarchy are not invulnerable.
To support Kelly and the millions like her who are imprisoned for the inconveniences they pose to the powerful, we are proud to present her eloquent and thought-provoking memoir of the time she spent incarcerated after her original arrest: “Every Prisoner is a Political Prisoner.” In this account, Kelly powerfully evokes the experience of captivity and the importance of understanding all captives ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A tremendous amount of attention has focused on Greece lately. Looking at the successful anarchist movement there, we can nurture utopian visions to strengthen our resolve; but if we only consider apparent success stories, we will not be prepared for the challenges ahead.
The entire Balkan peninsula is a sort of laboratory of crisis. Studying it, we can discern some of the possible futures that may await us now that North America seems to be entering an era of crisis as well. The vibrant anarchist movement in Greece represents one possible future, in which a powerful social movement establishes hubs of resistance. But only a few hundred kilometers north Serbia shows another: a nightmare of ethnic conflict, nationalist war, and false resist... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Nowadays, entirely apart from the question of whether you’re engaging in illegal activity, it can be important to protect your privacy while participating in public protests. Local and federal law enforcement agencies are compiling extensive files on everyone they deem suspect; if you don’t want them invading your privacy, it may be appropriate for you to remain anonymous while exercising your supposed right to free speech. The same goes double if you lack the privileges of citizenship or you fear your employer may discriminate against you for your political beliefs. In the light of the felony charges resulting from the recent RNC protests, it is especially important for activists to be aware of this.
We’ve already publis... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) With the current surge in political activism over the last year, femmes all over the world have been wondering: How can I participate in the revolution, and look hotter than a Molotov cocktail while doing it? Look no further: we’ve got you covered better than a balaclava!
Disclaimer: for the purposes of this article, “rioting” designates any kind of assertive protest activity. As right-wingers try to stigmatize and suppress protest activity of all kinds as “rioting,” we aim to normalize it as something everyone can participate in.
There are several important considerations to keep in mind when assembling the perfect outfit for insurrection, including hair, makeup, mask, and which articles of black clothing wi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Like graffiti, wheatpasting is a direct action technique for communicating with your neighbors and redecorating your environment. Because it’s easy to mass-produce posters, wheatpasting enables you to deploy a nuanced, complex message at a large number of locations with minimal effort and risk. Repetition makes your message familiar to everyone and increases the chances that others will think it over. If you’re looking for posters to paste up, we offer a wide selection of poster designs to print out or order in bulk.
Making Paste
To make wheatpaste, mix two parts white or whole-grain wheat flour with three parts water, stir out any lumps, and heat the mixture to a boil. When it thickens, add more water; continue cookin... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The following breathless account of last week’s street fighting in Barcelona and the surrounding regions reaches us from anarchists in Catalunya, where the Spanish government’s crackdown on the movement for national independence has provoked a wave of popular resistance that threatens to transform the demands and consciousness of the movement itself.
We’ve just experienced the heaviest rioting in Catalunya since the 1970s. Six nights straight, starting Monday, October 14. It’s Sunday night now. Reports are coming in of a barricade on fire in Girona, so make that seven nights.
According to one journalist, 1044 dumpsters burnt, 358 city trash cans ripped out of place, and 6400 square meters of asphalt burnt. And tha... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Here’s a testimonial of sorts, demonstrating the proper use of a copy of Fighting for Our Lives. There are 500,000 of them in print, which really isn’t that many when you consider that there are over 26,000 active nuclear warheads worldwide. Please make every single copy count!
In the fall, there was a secret cafe at Station 40. I worked as a server with my housemates, carrying amazing food through a crowded room of friends watching performers in a burlesque show. It was one of those nights where all the familiar faces that you haven’t seen for a while appear, and everyone has an expression like “Why don’t we all hang out like we used to anymore?’’ When things were almost over, I ran into Darci&mda... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Overture: A True Story
We dropped out of school, got divorced, broke with our families and ourselves and everything we’d ever known.
We quit our jobs, violated our leases, threw our furniture out on the sidewalk, and hit the road.
We sat on the swings of children’s playgrounds until our toes were frostbitten, admiring the moonlight on the dewy grass, writing poetry on the wind.
We went to bed early and lay awake past dawn recounting all the awful things we’d done to others and they to us—and laughing, blessing and absolving each other and this crazy cosmos.
We stole into museums showing reruns of old Guy Debord films to write faster, my friend, the old world is behind you on the backs of the theater seats.
The ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In 2013, Brazil made headlines around the world as a powerful autonomous movement triggered by the rising cost of public transportation brought millions into the streets. Heartened by success, some imagined that such movements could pursue a strategy of linear growth, moving from one demand to the next. But history rarely moves in a straight line. The ensuing years brought new waves of repression, followed by a right-wing reaction that ultimately toppled the government. In the United States, we have seen a similar arc in the trajectory from Occupy Wall Street to Donald Trump’s Presidency.
Today, Brazil is in the news again as a fresh round of disturbances threatens the right-wing administration. To understand the context of these con... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Ten years ago we published Days of War, Nights of Love, one of the most influential anarchist books of the turn of the century. Tremendous technological and cultural shifts have occurred since then. On reflection, it seems that many of the incidental changes radicals were calling for have taken place, but none of the fundamental transformations. We can learn a lot from studying how this happened and what is different about today’s context.
Towards that end, we present the following analysis, the product of months of discussion. We hope that this will inspire further analysis and strategizing, and we invite you to share your feedback with us.
Overture: The More Things Change…
Once, the basic building block of patriarchy was t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Our story begins at the polar opposite of liberation and self-determination: an utterly apolitical, consumerist macho hardcore show. A former bandmate of mine was on tour with a popular band in the genre, and I went to see them at the rock club where they were opening for another band that had a music video on MTV. There were four fights during their set alone.
With the exception of the few minutes I got to watch my friend making music, I would have felt pretty silly being there—except that, as usual, I had a secret plan. Earlier that day, I had learned that the National Socialist Movement and the Ku Klux Klan were to hold a “white unity” rally at the state capital in a couple weeks—and I was interested in whether a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Those who can, write; those who can’t, write reviews. Writing reviews is the surest shortcut to a sensation of power for those who lack the dedication necessary to create something of actual worth. In passing judgment on others’ work, the reviewer experiences a fleeting high of self-importance cheaper than any other.
Fortunately for the next generation of hacks, after squandering the best years of our writing careers composing purple prose for the throwaway tabloids of yellow journalism, we’ve finally perfected this most elusive of literary forms. Deceptively simple and mundane, reviews are often assumed to be easy to pen; in fact, it’s almost impossible to compose one worth reading. To save you the trouble of suffe... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In May, a new movement spread across Spain and elsewhere around the world, with crowds occupying public spaces in an attempt to formulate a new resistance to the effects of capitalist crisis and austerity measures. We are excited to present Fire Extinguishers and Fire Starters: Anarchist Interventions in the #Spanish Revolution, a full report from a comrade on the ground in Barcelona. This report chronicles the trajectory of the movement and offers a critical analysis of the potential and limitations of the forms it assumed.
Barcelona, Spring 2011: Chronology of An Unexpected Event
Buildup:
September 29, 2010: The major labor unions, CCOO and UGT, along with the anticapitalist CGT, the anarcho-syndicalist CNT (which has multiple splits),... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) On January 20, 2001, anarchists nearly stopped the inauguration of George W. Bush. Although there was considerable anger about Bush winning the election while losing the popular vote, the Washington, DC police hoped it would be easy to confine protesters to “free speech” zones. In contrast, anarchists had decided to “disrupt” the inauguration by attempting actively to block Bush’s motorcade from the Capitol to the White House. Passive protest groups complied with police orders, leaving the anarchists out in the cold. An anarchist black bloc a few hundred strong had formed, but most people had no idea how to get through the police barricades between the protesters in “free speech zones” and the bleac... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) When nationalist billionaires attempt to pose as rebels against the global elite, it’s important to remember all the genuine grassroots movements that pose a real threat to those institutions. In that spirit, today we recall how eighteen years ago, demonstrators shut down London’s financial district in protest against the injustices of global capitalism.
Whatever rhetoric he spews about “globalism,” Donald Trump is not an opponent of capitalist globalization, but one of its foremost practitioners, updating it for the 21st century. In contrast with his opportunism, anarchists have always maintained a principled position against so-called “free trade,” coordinating with others around the world to resist it... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Self-care has become a popular buzzword in activist circles. Yet until recently, it has inspired little critical discussion. Do “self” and “care” always mean the same thing? How about “health”? How has this discourse has been colonized by capitalist values? And how could we expand our notion of care outside the common stereotypes?
In this analysis, we identify the normative tendencies in conventional self-care rhetoric, discuss how to undo the unequal distribution of care in our society, and explore the potentially transformative power of illness and self-destructive behavior.
This is the first text in a collection of essays about care that we will publish shortly. We look forward to more dialogue on th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Today, rather than speaking of the working class, it might be more precise to speak of the endangered class. In this account, a delivery driver at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in Manhattan describes the conditions that workers are exposed to and the stark class relations between the vulnerable and the protected, concluding with a call for solidarity among all on the receiving end of capitalist violence and inequality.
With all these calls coming out for solidarity among all humanity in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’d like to be specific about where my solidarity lies and to encourage others to do the same. While some of us are risking our lives, others are pulling the strings from above as they ride this pandemic ou... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A person who has a sense that her life is meaningful and her destiny is in her hands is in fundamental ways more alive than a person who does not. In that sense, on September 11, terrorists used airplanes to kill thousands of people, and politicians and media used the event to kill a little bit of everyone who survived.
Here’s one of those rare stories that gets the same spin from both the corporate and the independent media: there was a brief window of time between November 1999 and September 2001 when the most fundamental conflict in the world was between power and people. Up until the Berlin wall fell [1], it had been between capitalism and communism; now, as everyone knows, it’s between terrorism and so-called democracy. Bu... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) I. Normalcy
People from the (rapidly splintering) “mainstream” of society in Europe and the United States today take a peculiar pleasure in considering themselves “normal” in comparison to legal offenders, political radicals, and other members of social outgroups. They treat this “normalcy” as if it is an indication of mental health and moral righteousness, regarding the “others” with a mixture of pity and disgust. But if we consult history, we can see that the conditions and patterns of human life have changed so much in the past two centuries that it is impossible to speak of any lifestyle available to human beings today as being “normal” in the natural sense, as being a lifesty... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) This story accompanies Designed to Kill: Border Policy and How to Change It, an analysis exploring how the actual effects and objectives of US border control policy differ from its ostensible purpose.
We were walking up a small canyon. One of my companions was doing very loud and rather florid call outs: “!COMPANERAS! ¡COMPANEROS! ¡NO TENGAN MIEDO! ¡TENEMOS AGUA, COMIDA, Y MEDICAMIENTOS! ¡SOMOS AMIGOS! ¡NO SOMOS LA MIGRA! ¡ESTAMOS AQUI PARA AYUDARLES! ¡SI NECESITAN CUALQUIER COSA: GRITENOS!” The great majority of the time no one is there to hear these call outs.
We turned a corner in the canyon, and there were about thirty five people: men, women, children, and teenagers, dressed in al... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A dialogue with members of the French news source Lundimatin comparing the aftermath of September 11, 2001 with the situation in France today. For more background on the situation in France, read our Letter from Paris; for our perspective on how this relates to the so-called migrant crisis, read The Borders Won’t Protect You, But They Might Get You Killed.
Bonjour, France, and welcome to team War on Terror! For fourteen years, you’ve looked askance at us across the Atlantic, raising your eyebrows at US foreign policy. Now you get to have your own state of emergency, your own far-right party in power, your own warrantless wiretapping and waterboarding scandals and Department of Homeland Security. Where will you put your Guantana... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) What about human nature? Don’t we need laws and police and other authoritarian institutions to protect us from people with ill intent?
If human beings are not good enough to do without authority, why should they be trusted with it?
Or, if human nature is changeable, why should we seek to make people obedient rather than responsible, servile rather than independent, craven rather than courageous?
Or, if the idea is that some people will always need to be ruled, how can we be sure that it will be the right ones ruling, since the best people are the most hesitant to hold power and the worst people are the most eager for it?
The existence of government and other hierarchies does not protect us; it enables those of ill intent to do mor... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)