They’re old things, from another century. Two anarchists get arrested after a bank job. The first robbed it, gun in hand. They say the second helped him, holding the money. It happened in a small Greek village, this past October 1. And so? There are things that happen. And then that is a far away country, with an incomprehensible and untranslatable language. Who do you want to be interested in it?
The robber is Christos Stratigopulos, already arrested and convicted here in Italy fifteen years ago on a similar charge. The penalty served, he returned to Greece. Remembered by a few, unknown to most. But the other one arrested is Italian; it is Alfredo Bonanno. Yes, precisely him; who hasn’t heard his name? In its own small w... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Why anarchism?
We state that it is either a fool or a scoundrel who can support the current system in Russia. Most of the proposed “alternatives” contain, albeit under a different sauce, the same “values” on which today’s power stands — hierarchy, relations of domination and subordination, competition, greed, etc. It is not difficult to see that these “values” defects social life of our country.
Anarchism appeals to the thirst for freedom and equal collectivity.
So, anarchism struggles not only with state oppression, with exploitation and alienation generated by capitalism — it rises against the vices that nestled among the “ordinary people”: cynicism, se... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “And there are other losses involved. A loss of basic trust. A loss of feeling of mutuality of relatedness. In its stead is emplaced a contempt for self and others. If you’ve been punished for showing autonomy, iniative, or independence, after a while you’re not going to show them.
In the aftermath of this kind of brutalization, victims have a great deal of difficulty taking responsibility for their lives...They seem to behave as though they’re still under the perpetrator’s control, even though we think they’re now free. But in some ways the perpetrator has been internalized.”
— interview with Judith Herman in “A Language Older Than Words” by Derrick Jensen.
... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Proposition 1
It is impossible to be everything we are supposed to be and to do everything we are ordered to, and when we try the failure we are doomed to is neither interesting nor enjoyable. To take the path of breaking with everything is the only worthwhile end, even if it is hopeless.
Everything is what is ordinary. It is hard to find a glimmer of anything else in life, anything that would suggest an Outside. Everything is the way that things are organized, but it is also a command. An order to do and to be. Everything is ordinary in the sense that everything is ordered. And Everything is ordinary in the sense that everything tends to act as an order.
The order is that you must be Everything. So you fail at everythi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) HIERARCHY, noun. (from the Greek hieros, sacred, and arche, command). The order and subordination of sundry ecclesiastical, civil or military authorities.
Hierarchy lies at the root of the whole authority principle. Starting off with the leader and ending with the henchman, through a whole scale of different executive agents; conjuring up a multitude of gradations which, as one rises through them, confers an ever greater measure of authority; splitting the authority of the State to infinity and bestowing a greater power of resistance upon it by virtue of its multiplicity and variety; organizing within the State a graduated scale of sinecures, benefices and privileges; the essence, in fact, of theories of government.
The yearni... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Did you ever wonder why your parents act so disoriented when it comes to ‘leisure’ activities? Why they start one little hobby, and either fail to follow through with it or become pathologically obsessed with it... even though it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with their lives? Maybe they seek to lose themselves in gardening or following the exploits of some basketball team. Maybe your father buys all sorts of fancy tools (the kind of tools many men his age have), but only uses them for a few days before setting them aside — and then buys a lot of skiing equipment the next month. Or perhaps they just spend their time trying figure out how to pay off the debt they owe for that wide screen television they spend th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The question of how to fight or prevent the Google-Campus can be answered in different ways. The answer depends on the perspective of the fight itself. The following proposal is not only addressed to anarchists, although it is an anarchist proposal. It can be shared by all those who not only want to prevent the Google-Campus, but also seek to completely change the conditions we live in. The Google-Campus in Berlin Kreuzberg is just another project of domination seeking to restructure the power of state and capital (among other things digitalization of the economy, new technology of control and repression, commercialization of everyday life ...). In Berlin-Kreuzberg this kind of restructuring is most visible in new building projects. Example... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Good meeting procedure is probably the most basic tool in the organizers’ kit. It’s the most basic building block in any form of collective action. With it a group of people can accomplish a lot more than they could alone, more than the sum of their parts, if you will. Without it they can do very little, except burn themselves out and reinforce the common beliefs that you can’t fight the powers that be and that collective action is a bore consisting mostly of endless meetings. Maybe that’s why they don’t teach it in school any more.
The purpose of meeting is decision making. Decision making has several parts. The forms used must take care of each part.
Part 1 — Decision Making Dissected
F... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) STRAIGHT TO THE POINT:
Our civilization is in collapse.
This collapse is well-documented: philosophers, scientists, politicians, military strategists, economists, and even NASA have begun sounding the alarm for ecological catastrophe, the technological singularity, and the general collapse of life as we know it. The news anchors appear no less panicked than the environmental and survivalist fringe of the past: the Arctic is melting, Japanese teenagers refuse to have sex, a private company wants to build a colony on Mars, Europe is being looted by hooded protesters, and humans may be extinct by the end of the century.
Through all of this, at the precipice of insanity, there are those who are organizing to save mankind by... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) BE GAY DO CRIME
The following essay was anonymously circulated amid queer/anarchist circles in the Pacific Northwest. It is reproduced here in its entirety. Its initial circulation sparked much controversy among its readers. Here’s hoping for more!
First, let’s clear a few things up: Bash Back! is dead—old history. We’re all still fucking its corpse, totally disinterested while the filthy body falls apart, starting to smell. Whatever. Here’s the real point: if at the moment of BB!’s disappearance this queer virus fails to spread, if we aren’t proliferating terribly, then we’re kidding ourselves, calling what we experienced a death (despite our nihilist woo-woo-insurrecto fa... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The Importance of Support
Building Foundations, Creating Community, Sustaining Movements
How do we develop anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist movements that are capable of maintaining and expanding over the long haul? The infrastructures we create in the course of our political work are key to unlocking the answer. If our infrastructures are to succeed and deepen our movements, we need to abandon the pervasive separation between politics and “personal” life and ground our movement activity in everyday practices of mutual aid and support—both in times of happiness and in times of hardship. This article looks at the latter of these: reflecting on how we can develop models for providing each other with compassio... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Who needs roads?
Do roads harm everyone’s interests? Liberal critics of the road and motor industry add to the list of woes above the following points:
Roads are becoming increasingly less cost effective; the cost of ‘improving’ them is going up.
And as soon as new roads are built and old ones expanded, they fill up because increased road transport is encouraged. Congestion is therefore not improved and businesses pay the cost of traffic jams.
Finally the liberal critics argue that particular car/road capitals are cutting ‘everyone’s’ throat in the long run because ‘we’ can’t carry on indefinitely using resources in this way.
But, although... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Introduction
This book is about living in hiding. It pierces the darkness and leaps into the secrecy of the incognito, a parallel dimension in which even what could be said often is not. Out of excess of tact, fear or because one thinks it is not relevant. Or, in certain milieux and in the worst cases, due to mere political tactics. But, even at a glance, the world of clandestine people is not a desert land; on the contrary it is populated by living beings, experiences and ideas that are very close to ours, in both the most miserable and the most fascinating aspects of our lives, close to our most ardent desires and passionate daydreams.
The following contributions tell of this world. They are the voices of people who have liv... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Black brothers, Black sisters, i want you to know that i love you and i hope that somewhere in your hearts you have love for me. My name is Assata Shakur (slave name joanne chesimard), and i am a revolutionary. A Black revolutionary. By that i mean that i have declared war on all forces that have raped our women, castrated our men, and kept our babies empty-bellied. I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heart-less robots that protect them and their property. –Assata Shakur
I was born into the flames of slave insurrection. My first recorded ancestor was a runaway slave named Felix. In between him and me have been several butc... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) We are making ourselves vulnerable to attack.
More seriously, we are making each other vulnerable. Photographers at demonstrations will soon outnumber demonstrators, those who are willing to take action. This is something we need to take a stand against. Cameras are tools of surveillance, and whether it is us or the enemy that wields them, we are participating in our own surveillance. Groups and individuals who have an interest in publicity and photo opportunities need to recognize the fact that they can make everyone else vulnerable to repression and less effective. One group’s photo op is unwanted Twitter publicity for the 100 people surrounding them.
It is not a question of the desires of the few dictating the safety ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) This document is intended to be an updated version of “In Defense of Smashing Cameras.” The update is meant to address new issues with live-streaming protests and actions, what this leads to and how to address it.
When you’re at a protest you should only be filming the police and police actions.
This is not meant to be a word for word copy, but more of an adaptation for the ever-changing media, ways of producing and creating content and most specifically, those who seek to profit off of social movements.
We are vulnerable to attack. More so than ever. There are not only cameras everywhere, but now there are people with agendas with cameras, who are seeking to capture content to line their own pockets ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Before dying in the mud on the streets
we would imitate Bresci and Ravachol;
anyone who extends a hand to you, bourgeoisie,
is a person unworthy of looking at the sun.
Grinding machines tear the beggars to pieces
and their wives are forever pale and weeping,
The fields remain fallow, the miners buried
and the workers crushed forever by murder.
And to those who don’t give in, open the tombs,
prepare the bombs, sharpen the knife,
action is the ideal!
France, on the watch with the guillotine,
chops off the head of anyone who wants to punish her.
Cowardly Spain strangles with a garrote and murderous
Italy guns down those who aren’t accustomed to trembling.
Hanged in America, throa... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “Projectuality:
starting position that tries to have, from the beginning till the end of the struggle, a global vision — but continuously looking at the changing of necessities – of the elements that compose and characterize it”
(Su gazetinu de sa luta kontras a sas presones #0)
The anarchist individual projectuality
For us to act on life, instead of it being something that happens to us, we need to know what we desire and how to try to attain it, we need to know who prevents us from doing it and who are our potential accomplices in this collective adventure for individual freedom.
The anarchist individual projectuality is born from this reflection and from the will and the disposit... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) "The truth wears longer than all the gods; for it is only in the truth's service, and for love of it, that people have overthrown the gods and at last God himself. "The truth" outlasts the downfall of the world of gods, for it is the immortal soul of this transitory world of gods; it is Deity itself."
-- Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt, better known as Max Stirner (the nom de plume he adopted from a schoolyard nickname he had acquired as a child because of his high brow [Stirn]), German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary grandfathers of nihilism, existentialism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner himself explicitly denied holding any absolute position in his philosophy, further statin... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The Institute for Experimental Freedom’s European appendages and friends are proud to release an English translation of “La Grève Infinie” (Infinite Strike). This text was written on Oct 27th 2010 from within the events transpiring throughout the French strikes and blockades. It has appeared throughout France, and is available in at nantes.indymedia.org and juralibertaire.over-blog.com.
Although the US is not France, we can’t help but find a certain resonance with the strike, with the determinacy of struggle. We welcome the return of causseur, of the vandal, of course! We delight in the fine fractures that link our deep sense of despair with the its negation — the secret solidarity between our wea... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Desert the wars of the state and the powerful, refuse the war between the poor!
Let’s arm ourselves against the nationalistic, democratic and religious manipulations!
Attack here and now all that which keeps us enslaved!
From Gaza in Palestine to Nasiriyah in Iraq, from the Kivu region in the Congo to Grozny in Chechnya, the massacres of thousands of human beings take place on a daily basis. This capitalist and authoritarian system, under the varied disguises it uses throughout the four corners of the world, devastates whole areas through famine, deprivation, pollution, war. Whether they serve to tie down the workforce or deport workers, camps are by now the condition of life for millions of people: refugee ca... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “From a certain point onward, there is no turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”
– Franz Kafka.
For us anarchists the questions of how to act and how to organize are intimately linked. And it is these two questions, not the question of the desired form of a future society, that provide us with the most useful method for understanding the various forms of anarchism that exist.
Insurrectionary anarchism is one such form, although it is important to stress that insurrectionary anarchists don’t form one unified block, but are extremely varied in their perspectives. Insurrectionary anarchism is not an ideological solution to social problems, nor a commodity on the capitalist market of... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The hearing for the appeal of anarchist comrade George Voutsis-Vogiatzis, arrested for bank robbery, was set for June 7th, 2010 but was postponed for May 6th, 2011. Here’s a translated interview he gave to the newspaper “Proto Thema” on May 9th 2010
The tragic account of the march last Wednesday counts three deaths, among them a pregnant woman, which with other victims were locked inside Marfin bank. Murders attributed to the anarchists Molotov...
The emotional and political gap in the last hours after the death of the three workers in the bank from asphyxiation can not be described in words or replaced by actions, counterbalancing or convictions. The value of human life when its not jointly responsible for t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Haussmann and City Planning: the birth of the human tide.
“Having, as they do the appearance of walling in a massive eternity, Haussmann’s urban works are a wholly appropriate representation of the absolute governing principles of the Empire: repression of every individual formation, every organic self-development, ‘fundamental’ hatred of all individuality.” — JJ Honeger 1874 (Benjamin, 122)
“But by the any standpoint other than that of facilitating police control, Haussmann’s Paris is a city built by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Guy De Bord
Haussmann did not invent city planning, the Romans and ancient Chinese planned cities... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Since 1945, they want us to believe that the most serene freedom has arisen in our lifetime; now that housewives have access to all the best household appliances, now that almost everyone has the right to vote, now that “freedom” of speech is guaranteed by the democratic institutions, now that we are left with the listing of false choices- between exploiting or being exploited for nothing at all, and without trying to understand why, threatened to be quashed. Our anxiety and our thirst for liberty do not falter, though that is what it’s all about when the State parrots out its ideas of freedom, democratic and industrial progress.
But here and there, the social peace is sometimes weakened, its necessity reappraised, ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) This was developed by the Quakers originally, but similar principles have been used since pre-history.
“Their natural way of doing it [reaching a decision] is to discuss it at length, ... until public opinion has settled overwhelmingly in one direction”
Obviously, this doesn’t work so well with large groups. But as I pointed out earlier, large groups tend to fragment.
Consensus is not the same as voting. Nor does it mean unanimity. Groups sometimes think they are using consensus but revert to voting when they can’t all agree.
When we vote, we are still using dualism — here is one choice, or another. The choice we will make is the one of the majority. Thus the majority wields power ov... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “The slogan ‘Revolution or Death!’ is no longer the lyrical expression of consciousness in revolt: rather, it is the last word of the scientific thought of our century. It applies to the perils facing the species as to the inability of individuals to belong in a society where it is wellknown that the suicide rate is on the increase. The experts had to admit, reluctantly, that during May 1968 in France it fell to almost nil. That spring also vouchsafed us a clear sky, and it did so effortlessly, because a few cars were burnt and the shortage of petrol prevented others from polluting the air. When it rains, where there are clouds of smog over Paris, let us never forget that it is the government’s fault. Alienated pro... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Four years. Difficult to know if it’s four years already or just four years. Four years and a long mourning which has only just begun several years after her death, after those who justice found necessary to punish directly for the accident which cost Zoé her life finished the prison sentences which they had been assigned, after those who remained outside prison were no longer listened in on, tailed, photographed, filmed, intimidated. But anyway, that’s another story. After those who believe that seeing a friend die is not enough have satisfied themselves with our pain, have been sated enough by our sadness to leave again with a full belly and head held high, proud to have restored order and justice. This order and this j... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) 1. It’s Us They’re Shooting In Warsaw
“The U.S.A. was warned in time by the Russians about the coup d’etat in preparation in Poland, if the Bonn government is to be believed, well before Chancellor Schmidt’s trip to the D.D.R. This time the complicity of the superpowers has worked well.”
— Der Spiegel 21/12/81
“Reagan stated, to illustrate Moscow’s complicity in the repression, that the posters announcing martial law in Poland on December 13th, had been printed in the USSR from last October onwards.”
— Liberation, December 26, 1981
“Marchais was informed in advance of the Polish putsch...According to other sources, the French secret service,... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Killing cops in the street is not enough- we must aim our bullets at the cops inside our heads.
We look around in puzzlement at our world, with a sense of unease and disquiet. We think of ourselves as scholars in arcane liturgies, single entities trapped in worlds beyond our devising. The truth is much simpler, there are things in the darkness beneath us which wish us harm. [1]
Absolute Hostility
To begin, we wish to address a simple yet potentially contentious issue which will form the basis of our appeal here. Police Officers must be killed, the families of Police Officers must be killed, the children of Police Officers must be killed, the friends and supporters of Police Officers must be killed. We mean this both materia... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)