Italy: To the Rebels and the Dead of Modena Prison

[A letter from an incarcerated companion on the massacre in Modena Prison. [Published in Italian on Round Robin on March 19, 2020. Translated to French on Attaque on April 8, 2020. Most translator’s notes are from Attaque]

A little more than a week has passed since the revolt in Modena Prison, and the media has already forgotten the massacre that took place here and in the other prisons where revolt broke out, just a few days ago. Nine deaths in Modena alone.

I knew some of them because, until a month ago, we were in cells close together, and these days I’m thinking of them so much I can’t sleep.

They were men who, just before, were discussing what could be done to improve the developing situation. Read the rest of this entry »

For Those With Fiery Hearts

[This text was written collectively by the anarchists arrested in Trentino, Italy in Operation Renata in October 2019. The verdict in their case is likely to come down on December 5, 2019. This translation is from the source texts on Round Robin and draws on the French translation on Attaque. There are two appendices from those same sources providing additional context.]

[This text is laid out as a pamphlet for printing and distributing]

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“Anarchists don’t aspire to success, to victory, to competition. They struggle because it is right to do so. And, in each struggle, defeat is a part of life. They don’t abandon their ideas because they lose or give up on the struggles to come. The System can perpetuate itself because the people don’t struggle, not because it is invincible. The task of the anarchist is to breathe revolt into the people, not sporadically but continually. Like a wave that rolls in and rolls out. You ask me if we’ll win? This is the wrong question. Ask me instead if we struggle, and I will answer yes.”

Luigi Galleani

Today, we have decided to speak up about the repressive operation dubbed “Renata” [See Appendix 1]. Other texts have analyzed the investigation in terms of both the state’s overall repressive character and of the technological, investigative, and judicial tools used to strike against those who still dare to fight for something different, who still fly on wings of freedom.

We have decided to address ourselves not to the judges nor to zealous agents of repression. No, it’s not in the courtroom that we have decided to speak today. We want to speak in spaces of struggle, where there are still critical minds, wherever people are aware of how much needs to change immediately, that this state of affairs needs a revolution.

We will speak then of the facts presented in court and of which we are accused.

These actions – by night or by day, individual or collective – take place within a conflict that goes far beyond the specific acts or the territory in which they took place. They are the product of a much broader conflict between the exploited and the exploiters and their defenders. Read the rest of this entry »

Burning Equipment and Reflections Against Those Who Make Use of It

[This text from Indymedia Nantes deals with two attacks near Saint-Étienne, a small city near Lyon. The first targeted BTP Eurovia  and the second the Delmonico quarry. Links with pictures and mainstream press articles below.

[Although I don’t agree that workers are as responsible for the harm their work causes as the bosses and owners, or that all work is as disgusting as being a prison guard, this text still feels like a worthwhile contribution to a conversation about the limitations of a class-struggle centric analysis. Because this text is right on that if those with access to the means of production won’t destroy them, the rest of us are going to have to.]

We still remember skimming the assemblies, the furious streets, the blockades, the occupied squares. We remember diving into the posters, the leaflets, and the journals [1]. We were open in our words and encounters, avid and impatient to have it out with this world we were born into and that makes us die a little more each day. Raised on the morality of class, we approached the workers.Were they not our allies by definition? We dreamed of Haymarket, while most others dreamed of their buying power and a good retirement. We wanted to burn it down, they wanted to work better. We were too restless at work to not become disillusioned through contact with the exploited. This text is a distant echo of the nocturnal arson of May 14 and 16, 2019. These were attacks against work, of course, but also against all those who contribute to perpetuating it. Read the rest of this entry »

May the Flames of Joy Burn, May France Burn

Translated from Paris-Luttes.info

Football and its celebration by “the people” is a tool of capitalist social pacification that allows misery to be swept under the rug through a supposed multicultural unity.

Following France’s victory in the World Cup Semi-Finals, a certain enthusiasm took hold in the streets of many cities in the “French territory”. As soon as the final whistle sounded, hundreds or even thousands of people gathered in downtown squares, yelling, singing, laughing, hugging strangers and dancing, people jumped on passing cars, and smoke rose from flares. There was something unusual in the air. This fever contained a taste of what a moment of revolutionary energy might feel like, a break with normality. Read the rest of this entry »

Concerning the Recent Raids across Europe and Ongoing Repression from the Hamburg G20

[The ongoing repression linked to last year’s G20 summit in Hamburg has not been much discussed outside of Europe. Mobilizations against global bodies like the G20 are international traditions (whether or not we consider them to be wise), beyond the sense of international that exists in Europe where borders are less stark. These summits exist as heightened moments of repression that shift around globally, providing local police forces and their masters with enormously enhanced resources to crush anarchists, non-electoral leftists, and others who persistently oppose them locally. The G20 as a policing operation is carried out by different police forces around the world, but the phenomenon is international in scope and recognizing it is a necessary first step in linking our struggle through solidarity.

[In North America, a similar insistence on crushing protests that the state considers to have gone too far is visible in the ongoing J20 repression in the United States and on a smaller scale in the use of G7 policing resources to go after anarchists in Hamilton, Ontario and other Canadian cities. The scale of the hunt initiated by the Hamburg police is beyond either of these and in fact the only recent reference point I’m aware of in North America are other summit protests where the state was humiliated in the streets, notably in Toronto in 2010, where international warrants were still being carried out over a year after the demonstrations took place.

[I don’t always agree with the analysis of repression the comrade from Hamburg is putting forward in this piece, but I still think what they have to say is extremely valuable. I won’t pick out every point, but the narrative of “the German state managed the summit badly” is strange to me, since the good management of a summit’s security isn’t something I think we should care about. I changed the title for this reason, but the original title is translated literally below and it might just refer to the state needing to save face.

[However, the person interviewed remains strongly in solidarity with the courageous acts that took place in the streets during the summit and continues to centre them in their analysis, which to me is a sufficient basis for translating and republishing their words. They also offer specific reference points for solidarity that we can make use of on the other side of the Atlantic. As well, the urgency of the issue of censorship raised in the final paragraphs is largely missing from our conversation in North America.

[All translator notes are in [square brackets], all italics outside brackets are the author’s, and all footnotes are from the original text. More updates in English on G20 repression are available here: https://unitedwestand.blackblogs.org/en/]
Read the rest of this entry »

Info on New Repression against Anarchists in France

Texts on the recent repression against autonomous media projects in France

Translator’s intro:

Over the past couple of months, there have been several acts of repression aimed at autonomous media project in the territory controlled by the French state. Below are two translated texts dealing with this.

The first discusses criminal charges brought against an anarchist comrade for texts published on the long-running anarchist website cettesemaine.info. This site recently decided to stop publishing, while making clear that it is not because of the repression they face, but rather with the limits of counter-info projects and dissatisfaction with how much importance the internet is given in the anarchist space. The comrade’s trial is this Wednesday, November 8, in Paris.

The second is from Indymedia Nantes about their decision to ignore a legal demand from the French cybercrime division ordering them to remove communiques about attacks and announcing contingency plans in case their site is blocked in the coming days.

This repression follows on the German government’s recent decision to shut down Indymedia Linksunten and in a context in France where the current government has bypassed the usual democratic steps to write parts of the State of Emergency (that has been in effect for a year and a half) permanently into criminal law. Some see this as a broadening of the repressive measures developed for use against Islamist groups to include anarchists and social movements.

As an anarchist involved in counter-info projects, as an anarchist period, I feel solidarity with the comrades at Indymedia Nantes and especially with the person being dragged before a judge this week in Paris. Fuck all courts and the world that needs them. One way of showing this solidarity is to share information about the situation and to make plans for how we can continue communicating in a context of increasing repression, while never forgetting that solidarity means attack.
Read the rest of this entry »

Paris: Chronology of solidarity actions with those accused in the burned police car case

Translated from paris-luttes.info

Post updated on October 8 2017 to include new actions and link to full English translations where available

The trial is ongoing for nine people accused of participating in the burning of a police car on May 18^th 2016 in Paris. Because solidarity attacks continue to occur throughout the French territory around the trial dates, here is an attempt at an exhaustive chronology of direct actions carried out in solidarity with those accused in this case.

All links in this article are to French-language communiques unless stated otherwise. All actions are in France unless a country is indicated. Since most of the texts linked to have not been previously translated, we opted to simply translate a sentence or two from each one to give a sense of the action, in addition to providing the link. All italics are translators notes.

Many of these actions specifically name Kara and Krem, two anarchists still in custody in this case. Krem was based in the Paris area prior to his arrest, while Kara is from the United States. Their verdict is expected on October 11, 2017. Read the rest of this entry »

La Chapelle: Defending women or attacking the poor?

From Paris Sous Tension #10  released in late July 2017 and distributed in the streets

It’s easy to just look out for yourself. It’s easy to want to push hardship out of sight when you don’t feel affected by it, when the system favours you. It’s easy to find excuses not to be in solidarity in these democracies that have found ways to dress themselves up, “liberty, equality, fraternity” (1), and relegate cruelty to a darker past or to far-away lands, to cover your eyes and not see what’s going on outside your door. It’s easy to be contemptuous of those who struggle to survive, at least for those whose money allows them so much. But it’s also easy to brag about your success, your cash, your social position that’s held up as a model, as a way to conceal your own existential and emotional misery, the disappointment in the face of our childhood dreams of freedom and self-fulfillment, this frustration that all the money in the world couldn’t take away. And yet, there are those who feel no shame in pushing these plain truths aside with their arrogance.

Last May, a series of articlesin the newspaper Le Parisien (2) took up the disgusting campaign waged by some politicians and citizens in the La Chapelle-Pajol neighbourhood between the 10^th and 18^th districts of Paris. On May 19^th, a so-called “Women’s march against Obscurantism (3)” organized by the right-wing Republicans party in the lead up to the legislative elections had at its head Babette de Rozières (the local candidatea) and Valérie Pécresse (the party’s president in the Paris-area). This event took the shape of a small rally at the La Chapelle metro, with as many journalists as “demonstrators” to elaborate (for the media) their ideas about how it feels in the neighbourhood’s streets. The rally was pushed back by a counter-demonstration until these celebrities had to take refuge in the lobby of a building. In practice, these politicians from the Republicans party were taking advantage of the sexism in the area (the harassment of women by many men either alone or in groups) and deliberately exaggerating it to denounce without distinction “street vendors, dealers, migrants, and traffickers” as being clearly responsible… Easy scapegoats for these partisan reactionaries of the dominant order, of police occupation, of empty, sterile streets (also known as public order), of gentrification and the attacks on the poor that come with it. Easy scapegoats too because these are often people who spend lots of time in the streets, whether by choice or from necessity, rather than just spending all their time commuting, working, or sleeping as they would like us all to do. At last, they concluded that the 18^th district is a “lawless zone” (as though the law prevents sexism…) and called for more cops, more ID checks, arrests, ticketing, and targetting of undesireables (undocumented and homeless people). Read the rest of this entry »

Revolution against all governments: Critical reflections on the attitude of the Syrian opposition towards Turkish politics

Translators intro: I chose to translate this text because there aren’t many texts circulating in English critiquing the complicity of the Syrian opposition groups in Turkey with the increasingly authoritarian position of the Turkish government, especially not from an anti-authoritarian perspective. Though I do consider this text to be substantially  anti-authoritarian for its insistance that revolt must not confine itself to a single country or tyrant, the author situates his argument relative to several categories that are essentially authoritarian, particularly “state-building”. Though state-building is often presented as nearly a synonym to “peace-building” and the word “state” is sometimes carelessly used to mean “society”, the author doesn’t get into enough detail on these concepts to allow us to understand them other than literally. That said, “state-building” and “the rule of law” are juxtaposed with radical Islamist groups and “developing citizenship” is presented as an alternative to the sectarianism pushed by meddling foreign states — this is a context for which anarchists in North American or Europe have no comparison. That’s why, in spite of the references to “state-building”, “citizenship”, “rule of law” and rights discourse, I still consider this text to be of interest to anarchists and to anyone interested in understanding grassroots struggle in the Syrian diaspora.

Translated from Tamaroud [At the time of posting, tamaroud.com seems to be offline… text is available in google’s cache]

Some quick critical reflections on the practices of the Syrian revolution, taking its attitude towards Turkish politics as an example:

As a refugee or resident in Turkey, I’m overcome by contradictory feelings when I talk about this country, which has taken in millions of refugees, particularly from Syria and Iraq. Its political elites are engaged in several ongoing regional issues, notably Syria with all its ramifications. What I find striking here is the widespread attitude of support for the Turkish government by a large section of the Syrian opposition located in the territory of this state that seems to defend the cause of the Syrian people. This raises major doubts about the solidity of their values, which have in turn led to popular protests in Syria about the suitability of the opposition and the effect of passing on their views to future generations.

The question is this: why would Syrians in Turkey defend the politics of the Turkish government and justify most of the recent decisions and behaviours of its disgraceful ruling party? Especially as this party sets caution aside to proceed with lightning speed towards a classic form of authoritarianism following the failed coup attempt? Prominent opinion makers in Turkey keep their mouths shut, especially those who find themselves in official positions in the state. Read the rest of this entry »