I. Emergence
Spring 2011.
“This is our revolution! No barricades, nothing romantic like that, but what do we expect? It’s a piece of shit, but we already knew this is the world we live in.”
I was shoulder to shoulder with a friend, pushing through the swarming crowds, the tens of thousands that had coalesced out of the democratic desolation to fill Plaça Catalunya, Barcelona’s central plaza. We were on our way back from a copy shop whose employes, also taken up in the fervor, let us print another five hundred copies of the latest open letter with a huge discount, easily paid for with all the change people were leaving in the donations jar at the info table we anarchists had set up.
In less than an hour, al... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Militarization of space and the preemptive suppression of crowds. Checkpoints, helicopters, tanks, and guns. The blanket criminalization of public expression and the demonizing of all who seek to resist the rise of fascism. These are the tools of the democratic state in response to the fracturing of society. Street-level fascists are dangerous, but the escalation of state control and police violence fulfills their program on a much larger scale.
In Newnan, Georgia on April 21, 2018, seven hundred officers from 42 city, state, and federal jurisdictions mobilized to encircle and attack the anti-fascist demonstrators gathered to oppose the National Socialist Movement. We were vastly overpowered. We need to reflect on this experience and draw ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Democracy is the most universal political ideal of our day. George Bush invoked it to justify invading Iraq; Obama congratulated the rebels of Tahrir Square for bringing it to Egypt; Occupy Wall Street claimed to have distilled its pure form. From the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea to the autonomous region of Rojava, practically every government and popular movement calls itself democratic.
And what’s the cure for the problems with democracy? Everyone agrees: more democracy. Since the turn of the century, we’ve seen a spate of new movements promising to deliver real democracy, in contrast to ostensibly democratic institutions that they describe as exclusive, coercive, and alienating.
Is there a common thread... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A wild and growing anti-police revolt is in full swing across the Bay Area. It is a node in the growing national movement sparked by the insurrection in Ferguson following the police execution of Michael Brown, and at the same time it is a continuation of local struggles dating back at least to the 2009 Oscar Grant riots in Oakland. Some of us who have participated in events in the Bay over the past two and half weeks urgently desire to communicate to others around the world about what is unfolding here. Our aim is not to claim bragging rights or to establish Oakland as the riot capital of the United States. On the contrary, it is necessary to spread word of the unprecedented nature of these events precisely because it suddenly seems more p... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Since their successful defense of Kobanê against the Islamic State a year ago, the Kurdish resistance movement has captured international media attention. Meanwhile, their experiments in forming a stateless society in the autonomous cantons of Rojava have fascinated anarchists across the world. But in order to understand the Kurdish resistance in Rojava (western Kurdistan), we need to take a broader look at struggles for freedom and autonomy across the region. We interviewed two members of a network of internationalist anarchists in Germany who have spent time in Bakur (northern Kurdistan), learning from the struggles taking place there. Beginning with a historical overview of the emergence of the Kurdish movement and the PKK’s ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Well-meaning allies and earnest trans activists responded with dismay to Trump’s announcement that transgender people are to be banned from military service once more, recognizing it as a rollback of LGBT inclusion. Behind the scenes, however, some of us reacted with relief: at least we don’t have to worry about being drafted for some rich man’s war. Do we really want to legitimize the US military in return for the forms of legitimacy that are now being taken from us? How does this question sit in the decades-long history of LGBT struggles? And what does it mean that this question is returning to the fore right now?
To allies: the best way you can support trans people is by ensuring that none of us ever has to join the ar... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Over the past two years, the right wing has declared war on protest in the United States. They’ve fought this struggle from the top down with police, courts, and legislatures—and from the bottom up with militias, fascist groups, and lone extremists. These strategies work in tandem to threaten social movements. This is what connects the fascist murder in Charlottesville last weekend to over 200 demonstrators arrested at Trump’s inauguration on January 20 who were all charged with eight identical felonies just for being on the same city block. This connection is all the more obvious after August 15, when Trump attacked anti-fascists and disingenuously denied that the fascists who chanted Nazi slogans in unison were all white... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In early 2011, in response to austerity measures, protesters occupied the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin. It was a localized struggle, but it gained traction on the popular imagination out of all proportion to its size. This clearly indicated that something big was coming, and some of us even brainstormed about how to prepare for it—but all the same, the nationwide wave of Occupy a few months later caught us flat-footed.
In August 2014, after white police officer Darren Wilson killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a week and a half of pitched protests shook the town. Once again, these were localized, but they loomed big in the popular imagination. Police kill something like three people a day in t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) As the French elections loom, threatening to elevate ultra-nationalist Marine le Pen to power alongside Donald Trump, the eyes of the world are turned to France. In this situation, we don’t look to other French politicians for salvation, but to the ungovernable social movements that have rocked France over the past several years. The only surefire way to block neoliberal austerity measures, nationalist violence, and state repression is by building grassroots networks powerful enough to put a stop to them directly. In vivid firsthand accounts, the following retrospective traces social unrest in France from the declaration of the state of emergency in 2015 through the street riots and plaza occupations of 2016 up to the present moment. ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The past year has seen a wave of revelations about powerful people—nearly all men—perpetrating sexual violence against those beneath them. The #MeToo moment has provided a platform for countless courageous survivors. Yet while some men have been made to face consequences for the harm they have done, we are far from being able to solve the problem of male sexual violence. Focusing on the wrongdoings of specific men tends to exceptionalize them, as if their actions took place in a vacuum. This is consistent with the mechanisms of a criminal justice system focused on individual guilt and a reformist politics premised on the idea that the existing government and market economy would serve us perfectly if only the right people were i... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) While our last report focused on the controversial disruption, the 2009 CrimethInc. Convergence went on for five days and four nights before that incident, and many positive things occurred during that time. People exchanged skills and knowledge, built relationships that will last for years to come, and participated in a self-organized, affirmative event full of exciting and fun moments. What follows here are a few personal accounts focusing on these aspects of the convergence.
Learning, Growing, Failing: One Organizer’s Perspective
The first night of the CrimethInc. Convergence, around ten o’clock, I descended into a furious assembly of everyone who had arrived prepared to give a workshop or decided five minutes prior that ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) On November 22, 2011, six of the defendants in the main conspiracy case stemming from the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto pled guilty, while the other eleven had their charges dropped. The defendants just issued a collective statement emphasizing that they emerge from the court case “united and in solidarity.”
Now that the case is closed, it’s possible to speak freely about the campaign of infiltration and repression that produced it. We’ve received this analysis from comrades in Canada who are eager to pass on the lessons from this experience; the document offers valuable insight into how infiltrators managed to penetrate anarchist communities and which vulnerabilities they exploited. This concludes our comprehensive ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The reports are coming in, and many participants are describing the G20 protests in Pittsburgh as a success. This is exciting news; the US anarchist movement hasn’t pulled off an unequivocally successful nationwide mobilization in half a decade or more. At the same time, success entails risks of its own: we may overlook the things we didn’t do well, take credit for things outside our actual influence, or fixate on attempting to repeat ourselves. Meanwhile the authorities, who often exaggerate our effectiveness to justify repressing us, appear to be understating the extent of anarchist damage and disruption in Pittsburgh, perhaps to downplay the possibility of militant anticapitalism regaining momentum.
This appraisal explores t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “Anarchists essentially outsmarted the extensive security plan by taking advantage of vulnerable parts of the city while police officers were focused on the large demonstration and the summit perimeter.” – AP News Report
On June 26, 2010, thousands of anarchists and other protesters gathered outside the G20 summit in Toronto, facing off against more than 19,000 security officials with a budget of nearly one billion dollars. The riots that followed have provoked outrage from public officials and commentators in the corporate media. We salute the courage of those who put themselves at tremendous risk to shatter the illusion of social consensus and reveal the depth of outrage against the G20 leaders and the capitalist sy... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) On this day, July 29, in the year 1900, the anarchist Gaetano Bresci assassinated King Umberto of Italy. But there is a lot more to his story than this single deed. Here, we remember an Italian worker and immigrant who risked his life to save Errico Malatesta from an assassination attempt, then gave his life to impose consequences on the king for the deaths of hundreds of poor working people. We’ve also included translations of Malatesta’s and Tolstoy’s reflections on Bresci’s attack, and an Italian folk song inspired by Bresci’s deed.
“I’m sure I was not wrong to do what I did. I do not even intend to appeal. I appeal only to the next proletarian revolution.”
-Gaetano Bresci, interrogat... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The German government has shut down the German Indymedia site linksunten.indymedia.org, the most widely used German-language platform for radical politics and organizing. They have also conducted raids in Freiburg to seize computers and harass those they accuse of maintaining the site, absurdly justifying this on the grounds that the alleged administrators constitute an illegal organization for the sake of destroying the German Constitution. This represents a massive escalation in state repression against what the authorities call “left-wing extremism,” disingenuously suggesting an equivalence between those who seek to build communities beyond the reach of state violence and Neo-Nazis organizing to carry out attacks and murders ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The past few months have seen a backlash led by professional journalists against diversity of tactics in the Occupy movement. Rebecca Solnit represented our Dear Occupiers pamphlet as “a screed in justification of violence” simply because it endorsed diversity of tactics. Chris Hedges followed up by calling “black bloc anarchists”—an invented category—“The Cancer in Occupy.” Both allege that a violent fringe is undermining the movement and must be excluded from it.
What is taking place here is a kind of silencing. Defining people as “violent” is fundamentally a way to delegitimize them; Solnit and Hedges feel entitled to spread falsehoods about their political adversaries because ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) For good or for ill, the protests at the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions constituted the most significant nationwide effort anarchists have undertaken to organize militant action in the US in several years. Two weeks later, the global economy collapsed, followed shortly by anarchist-initiated rioting in Greece dwarfing anything in Denver or St. Paul. It’s easy to feel that the DNC and RNC mobilizations were inconsequential by comparison. But if US anarchists are ever going to be capable of contributing to insurrections like the ones in Oaxaca and Greece, we either have to figure out how to improve on the models applied at the conventions, or else identify their shortcomings conclusively so as to adopt more effectiv... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Gord Hill is an anarchist artist and a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation who has been active in anticolonial and anticapitalist struggles for decades. Over the years, his art and criticism have been an inspiration and challenge to us. Gord is the author of two comic books, The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book, as well as 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance, and runs the website Warrior Publications. He also draws and writes under the pseudonym Zig Zag.
Obviously, there have always been intersections between art and resistance, but we’d like to hear how you see those intersections for yourself, and how you see those intersections playing out in society today.
I believe art is an impo... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Cold winter night. The smells of smoke and pepper spray are mixing in the air. From behind our backs, we hear the roaring of thousands and thousands of throats: “They [the politicians] are all finished! We will carry them all out!” In front of us, a burning fence, lines of riot police, and—in the foggy distance—the ultimate symbol of democracy, a parliamentary building. On our faces the cold breeze, beside us the shoulders of our comrades, and in our veins—electricity. Several months into the uprising, streets are still ours. What started as a protest against a few “bad seeds” of democracy has opened up a massive opportunity to think beyond the existent. For a brief moment, we have gained control ov... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Once again, the threat of a government shutdown looms over the capital. Politicians exchange barbs, pundits wag their fingers and wring their hands, and the rest of us get up and go to work like we do every day. The news anchors demand to know: whose fault is it? What labyrinthine eleventh-hour compromise will they devise to avoid it? The rest of the nation yawns with indifference.
But we want answers! What if the government does shut down? Who will funnel our taxable income to military contractors? Who will tap our phones and read our email? Who will raid 7-Elevens and deport people? Who will indoctrinate our children? Who will stop people from driving while black? Who will build the wall?
It doesn’t sound all that bad, actually. U... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Many years passed. Sisyphus wearied of heaving his boulder to the crest of the mountain, only to see it roll back down again.
“Rock, old friend,” he said to himself, one night, at the end of a long day’s work, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Yes?” answered the rock.
“What if we just go part way up the mountain? Just up to the first bend?”
“You know,” said the rock, “We could just not go up at all.”
“Hmm,” said Sisyphus, rubbing his chin. “Not go—at all?”
“Just stay down here. Do something else.”
“Hmm,” said Sisyphus. He thought about the blisters, the incline, the sweat in his eyes. Thankless, interminable ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In coordination with the anarchist media collective RadioFragmata, we present the following report from Greece about the ongoing efforts of the Greek government, along with business owners, police, and fascists, to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to intensify repression—and the efforts of anarchists, migrants, prisoners, rebel workers, and others to fight back and open up spaces of freedom.
These updates are adapted from RadioFragmata’s monthly contribution to the “Bad News Report” podcast about the current situation in Greece. We hope to spread awareness about this situation and to bring more listeners to the podcast itself; we recommend the “Bad News” report and the Anarchist/Anti-Authoritarian... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) From December 6, when police murdered 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in downtown Athens, to the time of this writing, Greece has seen unprecedented rioting. Anarchists and students, supported and often joined by significant swaths of the population, have clashed with police, destroyed corporate and government property, and occupied government buildings, trade union offices, and media outlets, not to mention the usual universities. By December 12, police had used over 4600 capsules of tear gas, and were seeking more from Israel and Germany—an ominous pair of nations, when it comes to repression.
What’s going on in Greece? Is it simply a matter of disenfranchized youth protesting a discouraging job market, or is there somet... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) For years, the FBI targeted ecological activists as their #1 priority. This is one of the chief reasons environmental devastation has continued unchecked.
At the end of 2005, the FBI opened a new phase of its assault on earth and animal liberation movements—known as the Green Scare—with the arrests and indictments of a large number of activists. This offensive, dubbed Operation Backfire, was intended to obtain convictions for many of the unsolved Earth Liberation Front arsons of the preceding ten years—but more so, to have a chilling effect on all ecological direct action. In the following analysis, originally published in Rolling Thunder in 2008, we review everything we can learn from the Operation Backfire cases, with t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Following the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School last month and ahead of the March for Our Lives in Washington, DC this coming weekend, people all around the United States are talking about gun violence. As politicians seek to exploit horrific tragedies to consolidate even more power for the state and channel youth outrage into support for the Democratic Party, we have to direct attention back to the structural factors that cause these mass killings in the first place. We’ve prepared the following poster, zine, and handbill addressing the root causes of school violence and the solutions that genuine grassroots organizing can offer. Please print these out to distribute at your local high school, walkout, or protest!
The New Norm... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) We spoke with the world-famous hacker persona and self-proclaimed anarchist revolutionary Phineas Fisher about the politics behind their attacks on the surveillance industry, the ruling party in Turkey, and the Catalan police. Here follows a retrospective on the exploits of Phineas Fisher, followed by their remarks to us.
Text and interview by BlackBird.
Hacking is often depicted as something technical, a simple matter of attack and defense. Yet motivations are everything. The same technique that builds oppressive tools can be used as a weapon for emancipation. Hacking, in its purest form, is not about engineering: it is about leveraging power dynamics by short-circuiting technology. It is direct action for the new digital world we all l... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In the middle of the recent wave of struggles, from Rojava and Catalunya to Ecuador and Chili, while the smoke hanging over the scorched earth of the Amazon reminds us that the rainforest is close to its tipping point, we at the CrimethInc. Technology desk bring you the latest episode in the HackBack chronicles.
A text file just appeared in which its author explains how and why she hacked a bank and gave away the money. Resisting oppression necessitates a diversity of tactics, and the digital front is as important as a theater of conflict as the streets.
An Ode to Expropriation
“This is my simple word for recounting my hacks, and to invite other people to hack with joyful rebellion. […] I robbed a bank, and gave away th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Until our most fantastic demands are met, fantasy will always be at war with reality.
It hijacks history classes and funerals, waylays secretaries on the way to the coffee machine, turns rails into slides and shopping malls to playgrounds — it sends lives spinning out of control. Movie directors endeavor to harness it, travel agents to peddle it, political parties to enlist it; but fantasy, like the one who pursues it in earnest, can serve no employer.
Now that every continent has been conquered and every countryside explored, nothing is more precious than passages to new worlds. Mass-manufactured faiths are haunted by a thousand dreams of escape — and fancy weaves better wings for flighty youth than pragmatism ever fashio... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Over the past few years, there has been a push to criminalize squatting across Western Europe. But in a time of increasing economic instability, can governments succeed in suppressing squatting? What is at stake here?
This article reviews the background and contemporary context of squatting in England, beginning after the Second World War and comparing the current movement to its counterparts on mainland Europe. It touches on many stories: migrants squatting to build a life safe from fascist attacks, gay activists finding spaces in which to build up a scene, vibrant and insurgent squatted areas, single-issue campaigns occupying as a direct action tactic, and anti-capitalist groups setting up social centers. We hope this text will help thos... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)