Dark Nights – Page 14 – For Mutual Aid & Solidarity

Notes on New Anarchy – A talk about the New Anarchy trend by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, Spyros Mandylas and Cell of Chaotic Strike (2013)

Posted on 2025/04/21 - 2025/04/21 by darknights

The following interviews were given by Spyros Mandylas and Christos Tsakalos (CCF) on events organized by anarchist collectives (mentioned above each interview) and on self-organized anarchist radio 105FM. In addition, a brochure of Cell of Chaotic Strike accompanies the collected speaches. Some parts within the text might sound repetive, exactly because there were similar questions on different interviews. The point of this article, was to collect most of them (if not all), in order to give a clear picture of what New Anarchy is.

—Dubus Dumno

Anarchist Haunt “Nadir”. Thessaloniki 7/12/2013

Spyros Mandylas, member of the meeting of the Anarchist Haunt “Nadir”.

Q: Would you like to start by telling us which political features shape New Anarchy and how it differs from the traditional one? Also, what kind of problems do you spot within the so-called “official” anarchy?

S.M: In those last few years New Anarchy is being discussed quite a lot, this new drift, so it would be right to give a definition as well; what do we mean with this term and what is its difference with traditional anarchy and that what is called the “official anarchist movement”. The “trend of New Anarchy” is what we used to say some time ago, a new anarchy within Anarchy. I believe that’s how it all started. Its main features are anti-societism, the anarcho-indivualist perception, existential analyses, informal organization, direct action – which is a very basic feature, nihilist perception and much more. We will now look into some individual points to better clarify what this trend is, what this thought is. By “anti-societism” we do not mean, obviously, a pogrom against the populations and innocent citizens. Anti-societism speaks of a war that is waged against the state and, at the same time, harshly criticizes society. So what we are saying is this: the rulers and the administrators of power, are given their positions by certain someones; someone elects them and someone tolerates them. For this reason, the “oppressed” citizen is not without responsibilities. This passivity and voluntary slavery is a problematic situation, which should not be left untouched and out of criticism. Now, another important structural difference, in relation to traditional anarchy, is that New Anarchy does not speak of a social catechism; it speaks of anarchist diffusion of ideas. It’s completely different. This new trend is not meant to persuade, but to communicate. New Anarchy does not talk about the revolution, placing it in an indefinite future, but it talks about the present, here and now. New Anarchy presupposes the coupling of theory and practice and does not want clappers, but accomplices. New Anarchy, as I have experienced it, is aimed for minorities. Nowadays, when various means such as strikes, funeral-like marches, symbolic building-occupation and protests are ineffective and act as decompression valves; we do not consider it just a wrong strategy, we consider it stupid to when you call yourself an anarchist, yet fight for better living standards. Anarchy cannot replace the welfare state, nor can it be a kind of union for students and workers as it has become in recent years.

Q: How would you comment on the term “vanguard” that has been attributed to New Anarchy?

S.M: This characterization of the New Anarchy trend has, in fact, been attributed to some others. This characterization is completely wrong in relation to what this new current stands for. I’ll start by saying what I read recently: “Anyone who thinks they know everything is doomed to learn nothing.” What is true is that there is no person, no book and no trend that says how the revolution will take place. The constant revolt does not obey any truth and has no recipe for how this theoretical revolution will take place. This characterization of “vanguard”, I personally, return it to the official movement, which believes that its actions and interventions in various, cinematic, intermediate struggles, will act as a trigger for the social or any other revolution. Anyone who considers themselves a pioneer is arrogant and, therefore, is doomed to stand still in a situation.

Q: You are involved in the part of New Anarchy’s idea-diffusion. How important do you think it is for a bridge to exist between the trends of New Anarchy and why do you think that the state, in addition to armed action, is targeting such actions? An example of this phenomenon is translation networks and the international media. What do you think is their role?

SM: Speaking of New Anarchy, we are essentially talking about a dialectical relationship between theory and praxis, between the public image and the illegal. This relationship is, I believe, a very important part of New Anarchy. This new trend is essentially made up of direct action teams, collectives, blogs, websites and radios, book/brochure publication or translation groups and much more. This tendency, organized on the characteristics of informal organization, affinity groups, internationalist solidarity and having a specific political analysis, is a very significant and difficult opponent for our enemies. Essentially, when we talk about New Anarchy, we are talking about concepts such as “anti-societism”, “anarcho-individualism” … We are talking about an existential analysis and view that goes beyond the stagnation of a class orientation and refers to the sabotage of social relations.

For New Anarchy, revolution is not placed at an indefinite time in the future, but it is demanded in the present, as we believe that mass preparation cannot in any case be one of the preconditions for revolution. New Anarchy speaks of war on the state and harshly criticizes society. It is clear that for the suffering of the oppressed, the oppressed themselves are not without responsibilities. For me, they are a voluntary mass that through various procedures have advocated for their tyranny.

Now, regarding why the state, in addition to armed formations of direct action, is also targeting public structures (translation and publication structures and so on), this is due in part to the fact that it fully realizes the effectiveness of these operations in ongoing anarchism; the uprising. To be more specific, I believe that the state would prefer armed groups, without public speech and presence. As it would also prefer to see the international media become consumed by harmless, theoretical analyses. So when the state sees that there are some bridges between the two, it makes total sense for it to do everything it can to break them down. In practice, we can see this in Italy over the last two years, where we several repressive operations had taken place; in operation “Ardire”, in operation “Shadow”, we saw exactly this thing. We have seen persecution not only against individuals for direct action but also against translation websites. As it happened, for example, with the “Culmine” website and the “Kerveros” publications. This means they’re doing a good job. If half thing is the immediate action, the other half is how it will reach the recipient.

Operation Phoenix, for example, has already counted eight strikes. The four have taken place in Greece and the other four have taken place in Indonesia, Russia and Chile. If it weren’t for all these networks, that didn’t exist before, we wouldn’t have learned anything. So, we notice how they interact together and how much they break down borders. In recent years, a large volume of political texts has been translated from language to language on these sites and translation networks. For example, there, today you will find the book “Armed Joy” by Nadir Publications. At the same time, a week ago, the book “Armed Joy” was published in Indonesian. The books of the Conspiracy of Fire Cores and the Black International are constantly being translated. This is a terrific job, it is very important. Continue reading “Notes on New Anarchy – A talk about the New Anarchy trend by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, Spyros Mandylas and Cell of Chaotic Strike (2013)” →

Athens, Greece: Responsibility Claim for the bomb attack on the Ministry of Labour and Hellenic Train – Revolutionary Class Self-Defence

Posted on 2025/04/19 - 2025/04/20 by darknights

RESPONSIBILITY CLAIM FOR THE BOMB ATTACK ON THE MINISTRY OF LABOUR AND HELLENIC TRAIN

“Death on the scaffolding, death on the trains, capitalism is fed with blood”

Slogan born in the huge demonstrations of March 2023 for the state capitalist crime in Tempi.

On 26 January 2025 and 28 February 2025 respectively, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against the government of murderous anti-worker restructuring and Hellenic Train, a subsidiary of the Italian monopoly Ferrovie Dello Stato, which bears the main responsibility for the murder of 57 fellow human beings in Tempi on 28 February 2023.

The demonstrations and strikes are a contribution to the formation of our collective defence as a Class and at the same time, since they took place in a country that played an active role in the US-Zionist genocidal war in Palestine, a practical act of solidarity with the heroic Palestinian people, who, with gun in hand, are showing the way for the liberation of the peoples of the whole world.

In particular, the strike of 28 February was a response to the rivers of blood that are spilled every day in the labour sweatshops. A response to the unspeakable pain for our fellow workers, our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters, our friends and girlfriends, lost or crippled in the struggle for a living wage. A response to the relentless class warfare we live every day here.

The massacre of the working class in the workplace as a conscious policy of capital and the state apparatus

The figures for deaths at work, even those given by official state statistics, which do not record a large number of incidents (e.g. of migrants) or show deaths as pathological, are inexorable. In the last three years alone, over 600 workers have died and over 1000 have been seriously injured (amputations, permanent paralysis, severe respiratory and cardiac problems), while thousands of others have been injured in need of medical treatment (with all the multifaceted costs that this entails) in over 40,000 work ‘accidents’. These figures are much higher if we include the hundreds of deaths per year, according to estimates by independent international organisations, from diseases (cancers, cardiovascular diseases) related to unhealthy working conditions (e.g. permanent exposure to chemicals, exhaust fumes), which the Greek state does not even register as such, in violation of international guidelines.

The butchery of the working class in the workplace has a name: it is called class exploitation, the pursuit of maximum profit by capital, the extraction of surplus value. It is called employer terrorism, it is called state policy of strengthening the competitiveness of the labour market, it is called employer trade unionism. It is called memoranda, it is called a policy of reducing public debt, it is called the EU’s fiscal stability pact, it is called the Achtsioglou law, the Hatzidakis law, the Georgiadis law. It is called poverty, unemployment, extortion of survival.

The parliament is a mechanism of class domination. The ministers and deputy ministers, the general secretaries, the technocrats of the Association of Enterprises and Industries, the banks and the shipowners who staff the legislative committees for the drafting of anti-worker laws are well aware of the consequences of the laws they pass. They are fully aware that the abolition of collective labour agreements, compulsory unpaid overtime, six-day work, the slashing of heavy and unhealthy work, the linking of wages to productivity (minimum wage law), the increase in retirement thresholds, the virtual abolition of the labour inspectorate, the criminalisation of strikes and the liberalisation of dismissals, the abolition of basic safety standards, all lead with mathematical precision to an explosion in the number of workers’ deaths and injuries. But that is their job, their role, that is why they are in this position. To shield and reinforce the capitalists’ profitability with the blood of the working class : with the blood of construction workers, shipbuilders and dockers, with the blood of bicycle drivers and train and transport workers, with the blood of call centre and catering workers, with the blood of workers in industry and public works, with the blood of migrant farm workers.

This is precisely why its persons and structures have been in the crosshairs of the proletariat and the revolutionary movement throughout time. From the execution by urban guerrillas in the Nazi occupation of the fascist corrupt labour minister Kalyvas to the bloody battles of the building movement in the 1960s in front of it and the attacks on its structures during the Junta by anti-dictatorship organisations, and from its constant targeting in the post-war period by revolutionary organisations to its militant blockades by workers’ unions.

Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility Claim for the bomb attack on the Ministry of Labour and Hellenic Train – Revolutionary Class Self-Defence” →

Greece: Message of Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis for the trial of comrade Daniela Klette (25/3/2025)

Posted on 2025/04/19 - 2025/04/19 by darknights

The whole game of the German state on the comrades Daniela Klette, Ernst Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg is an operation of psychological warfare, what they call in their terminology psy ops. In addition to the always fruitless attempt of the counter-insurgency to isolate revolutionary struggle, in this hunt it wants to torture the living history, to bury it under the concrete, in order to spread the idea that all resistance is eventually exterminated, to instill terror in the new revolutionary generations. The act of evading from the counter-insurgency’s dragnet is an important resistance: It removes from the state the opportunity to hold the ritual of the “final act”. For this reason, its vengeance against defiant history, now manifested on the body and person of comrade Daniela, is rampant.

The fugitives prove that the passage to free life cannot be blocked. Despite the capitulation of the revolutionary organization, the three comrades have lived for decades in the struggle for the self-organization of proletarian life against the chains of class discipline and bourgeois civilization that kills for money. Now it is in the hands of all of us to pass on the history of the comrades to the current resistances. The hearts that refuse to live enslaved do not leave the final act to any master. And because every “final” word of the state, political, judicial, economic, scientific, determines the crushing of the common body, we will do everything to end Daniela Klette’s captivity.

The most important political legacy of the German revolutionary movement is the strategic and organic internationalism. Burkhard to this day is not hiding, he is singing for the bloodied body of Palestine, of Kurdistan, of the poly-ethnic proletariat and the Earth. The familiar old Europe of colonial war, nationalism and imperialism wants to put Daniela on trial. Let the vampires understand that our people are not for their teeth.

Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis

20-03-2025

Domokos prison

Source: Act for freedom now!

Athens, Greece: Beneath the concrete, something is burning. Statement regarding the occupation of a building and creation of Rasprava Squat

Posted on 2025/04/19 - 2025/04/20 by darknights

Following the end of the event “Revolutionary memory and perspective of the struggle” in Mesologgiou street, a crowd of comrades descended to Kolettis and Themistokleous streets to defend the liberation of the building.
The following is the self-introductory communique of the occupation:

The silence of the metropolis weighs like a stone on our shoulders. The streets are filled with worn-out stares, bodies crawling out of habit, out of fear, out of submission. The world moves along predetermined paths, without a second thought, tempering its dreams. Everything is programmed to work exactly as they want: work, consumption, obedience. Yet, always, beneath the surface, something is boiling.
History is not written by the obedient. A few choose to bear the burden of disobedience. To crack the concrete of normality. To confront the invisible hand of power that chokes every aspect of our lives. Refusing to submit is not a mere stance. It is a call to question, to overturn, to take back everything that belongs to us.
We are comrades, anarchists who derive from different political and ideological backgrounds, but we have found ourselves in the very same fires of struggle. It is there, where our common struggles and collective experiences united us, that we recognized the vital need for the creation of a space for meeting, political maturation¹, exchange of views and organizational empowerment.
At a time when isolation is imposed and communities of struggle are being dismantled by repression, the formation of such spaces is not only necessary – it is crucial.
The repressive blows of recent years have not come by accident. The authorities are attempting to eliminate any focus of resistance, to crush any form of self-organisation and to extinguish the flame of contestation.
Great achievements have been lost, the movement has been put on the defensive, the recession is now on the horizon. But we know that history is written by those who do not fall back, by those who are not afraid to confront reality.
To remain on the defensive is to accept defeat. And that is not going to happen.
The time is now to turn words into action, to move from defense to attack.
So let’s make it clear that the enemy will not get rid of us so easily.
We must define our own field of struggle, reclaim our space and time.
To liberate territories from domination, to create a vibrant centre of resistance, a radical cell for mobilisation² both in theory and action.
We perceive the occupation as an integral part of the movement and the movement as an organic element of the occupation.
The existence of territories of struggle is not just a practical question, but a deeply political one.
Squats are not just places to hang out, they are not just places of hospitality.
They are strongholds of resistance, laboratories of radical practices, cracks in the normality they try to impose on us.
And this is a non-negotiable reality.
Every neighbourhood, every street, every square is not a neutral ground. It is a vibrant map of oppositions, conflicts and claims. Cities are built on the basis of discipline, policing and the sterilization of public space. Squares are filled with surveillance cameras, walls are painted grey, buildings become inaccessible bastions for those who cannot afford to pay the price of existence in a world where everything has a tag price.
Dominance is implementing a strategic plan of universal control of the metropolises, crushing any source of resistance.
Armed with black propaganda and ideological warfare, it attempts to shape consciousness, while the deliberate degradation of neighbourhoods through the spread of organised crime and the violent expulsion of the local population is paving the way for its complete absorption by capital. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Beneath the concrete, something is burning. Statement regarding the occupation of a building and creation of Rasprava Squat” →

Italy: Anarchist Prisoner Ghespe Hospitalized

Posted on 2025/04/19 - 2025/04/19 by darknights

On the night of 14 to 15 February, an arrest put an end, after about two years, to the fugitive status of Salvatore “Ghespe” Vespertino. The beatings and threats he suffered in detention led him to make an extreme gesture: in order to leave the section of the Soto del Real prison in Madrid, he cut the veins on his arms and was transferred to the psychiatric hospital where he was again subjected to ill-treatment. The rule is that anyone who endangers his or her own life is subject to hospitalization and medication under duress. Ghespe specifies that his act was not carried out with a suicidal intention.

After his release from hospital, he was extradited to Italy on March 4 and locked up in Rebibbia prison in Rome. On 20 March, he was transferred to Spoleto prison and placed provisionally in the infirmary section. Following a dispute with a guard, he was subjected to another hospitalization under constraint in psychiatry. Ghespe is in a cell alone and is waiting for permission to be able to visit with his partner. His comrades invite all those in solidarity to send him letters and books (in Italian and Castilian): Salvatore Vespertino / Casa di Reclusione Spoleto / Località Maiano, 10 / 06049 – Spoleto (PG) / Italy.

Source: https://secoursrouge.org/italie-dur-parcours-carceral-pour-un-prisonnier-anarchiste/

Via & translated by Abolition Media

New York, U$A: Direct Action Against Magellan Aerospace

Posted on 2025/04/19 - 2025/04/19 by darknights

April 15, 2025

Last night, some people in NYC took direct action against Magellan Aerospace, a company which makes parts for Lockheed Martin F-35 jets and other death machines used by the American and Zionist regimes. Someone went inside the fence at the back of the building and slashed the tires of trucks at the loading area. Actionists also redecorated the building with paint. Free Palestine.

97-11 50th Ave, Corona, NY 11368

Submitted anonymously.

Source: Never Sleep

New York, U$A: NYPD Vehicles Attacked on 4/15 in Revenge Action

Posted on 2025/04/19 - 2025/04/19 by darknights

On Tuesday night we punctured the tires on 8 NYPD cars and sprayed “PIG” all over them at the 88th precinct right under their stupid noses. When the pigs are too complacent then collectively we are doing something wrong.

The 88th precinct is known for its tyrannical rule over both local community and new migrant neighbors. It famously collaborated with ICE during the 2020 George Floyd uprising by using ICE to guard their precinct building besieged by massive protests.

Five years later and where are we now? Every day another human being murdered in custody, through neglect or savage beatings. Robert Brooks and Messiah Nantwi. Five people have died at Rikers just this year. Two died in nyc holding cells just in the past month before even being arraigned.

Every day another neighbor disappeared in to some far off prison, never to be seen again (look up CECOT). Every day another student kidnapped by ICE. Every day another community invaded by fascists demanding papers and hunting Black and Brown people for sport.

Every day another family incinerated by USA-made bombs in Palestine and Yemen.

When will it stop? We must come to a point where we realize that NOTHING WILL STOP unless we MAKE IT STOP. No amount of appealing to politicians, to cops, to institutions like Columbia, will help us. Let go of that, and we free ourselves.

The Empire must fall. Strike where you are, at whatever institution you can that upholds this whole stinking pile of dogshit. Every strike against the NYPD is a strike for communities here and all over the world. May the strength of revolutionaries who have lived and died for liberation be with you.

Source: Abolition Media

Athens, Greece: ‘Provocateur Faction’ takes responsibility for the incendiary attack on the house and police guard of the Supreme Court President Ioanna Klapa

Posted on 2025/04/12 - 2025/04/12 by darknights

“Injustice is not anonymous, it has a name and an address”

Bertolt Brecht

In the early morning hours of June 27th [2024] we attacked the house and the police guard of the President of the Supreme Court, Ioanna Klapa, in the Papagos area. That summer evening found the cop who happened to be on duty instead of carelessly gazing at Instagram photos or playing slots (in earlier watches this seemed to be how those on duty spent their time) screaming from the Molotov cocktails that burned him and then being rushed to the emergency room by his colleagues, badly injured. And Klapa, instead of sleeping, fearfully putting out the fire in the entrance and garden of her house.

But why did we choose to attack Klapa while her house was being guarded?

First of all, it was an operational choice with three political considerations. It was not a matter of mere desire or convenience but of collective recognition of the need to attack, yes, using the element of surprise, but on a guarded target. In a field where, in theory, immediate engagement reflexes have been designed and provided for by the police guard to protect the high profile person. In this area there is not room for much analysis. Their preparedness and the proud spirit of the Greek police corps went out the window. Although their operational planning was disgraced, we, to tell the truth, acknowledge that we did not achieve anything particularly great. Life the next day went on as usual, a world of squalor and rot remained the same and the violence of apathy, misery and deadlock still lingers. We had no illusions that we would achieve the most decisive blow to the mechanisms of bourgeois justice and the police. To be a substantially dangerous pole in the social war, however, you have to sharpen the violent responses quantitatively and qualitatively. This is a finding that is eloquently described even by renowned academics and in particular by the jurist Manoledakis: “The overthrow of a political power, and especially today when the state has a perfected huge mechanism for eliminating its opponents, cannot be done on paper or with wishful thinking. In order for the ‘political criminal’ to reach his goal, he must willingly or unwillingly violate a multitude of legal value so that his crime always appears complex. The state is a legal value entangled with other legal values (human lives, personal freedoms, facilities, services, etc.). To reach it you have to go through these values”. So we recognized the importance of such an action and achieved a goal that was both realistic and decisive. To wound their confidence and arrogance, to wound the security they feel in the quiet of their homes and their service cars. We have succeeded, and literally. The burn scars of the security guard will be there to remind him and his colleagues when they notice them that they are in fact vulnerable no matter how much they may think otherwise.

Here lies the second aspect of the rationale behind our attack and the conditions under which it was carried out. The central outcome of our operational planning was to completely destroy the service vehicle and injure the cop, which is what happened. If to some ears this sounds too violent and alienating to their humanistic, pea-brained little minds, then we are speaking and addressing those who read this text and either consciously and with clear political and ideological commitment advocate revolutionary violence by all means or those who instinctively rejoiced and chuckled when they heard the news of a cop being injured that day. To all of them we say that this act was another contribution to the feud we have with the bollocks of the Hellenic Police. We owe this feud and its continuation to our dead. It is a deep and conscious choice with the first and foremost weapon being the determination that defines the need to avenge our dead.

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Chile: Documentary screening “Doom en $hile 16 (A) 2015”.

Posted on 2025/04/10 - 2025/04/10 by darknights

Hoping that your health, emotions, spirit and bodies are strong, we inform you that on Tuesday, April 15, from 19:00 hours we will hold in the space where the Sebastián Oversluij Seguel Anarchic Library is located (ask for address to: biblioangryantiso@riseup.net) the screening of the documentary “Doom en $hile 16 (A) 2015”, followed by a discussion, and we take this opportunity to let you know that on Wednesday April 16 there will be no shift in the Library as it commemorates 10 years of the massacre at the Doom concert, an open wound in the memory of punk.

On that occasion 5 punks died due to the thuggish attitude of those who produced the event, producer Fiskalia & Korova, while at the same time the mythical band Doom (a band with a long history within punk and which many of us grew up listening to their Police Bastard) continued to play while the events unfolded. A stampede, very common in this kind of concerts, in a staircase leading to a subway was the beginning of all this sad story, but the most terrible thing was the treatment of the security of the event who threw water and with electroshock proceeded to repress the people who were trapped between the bodies that were squeezed due to the little space and the containment fences, all this in pursuit of taking care of the damn money of those who sell events.

The names of those who died that night were Gastón, Fabián, Robert, Ignacio and Daniel, while several others were left with physical and emotional wounds and after-effects.

We call for (self-)critical reflection, individual and collective self-care, to raise our own spaces of diversion-confrontation with this stinking reality, away from the market, embracing the “do it yourself, alone or with your friends”, and thus make irrecoverable our antagonistic forms to the power to live, create, destroy and even to die.

Let’s recover from the bloody hands of the businessmen what made punk dangerous, far from caricatures, but from the most sincere and authentic that is possible and impossible, there are no limits when we decide to walk through the flashes of chaos.

We invite you this Tuesday, April 15, from 7:00 pm, at the library to share, discuss, stress, meet and disencounter around the documentary “Doom en $hile 16(A) 2015” to continue strengthening bonds of complicity and vomit in the face of this society everything we feel-think in the constant doing and undoing. At the same time we extend the invitation for this Wednesday, April 16, from 19:00 hours, in Alamierda (Alameda) with San Francisco, to participate in the commemoration of the 16(A).

With our prisoners, escaped, disappeared, tortured, dead… Always

Health, punk and anarchy…
¡¡¡Noise ve-mosh in the streets!!!!

Biblioteca Anárquica Sebastián Oversluij Seguel
biblioangryantiso@riseup.net | biblioangry.noblogs.org

Source: Informativo Anarquista

Niort, France: “Direct action will continue as long as I live…”.

Posted on 2025/04/10 - 2025/04/10 by darknights

~~Libération~~ / Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Since September, a strange phenomenon has hit the streets of the Deux-Sèvres prefecture: about once a month, a vehicle from Elon Musk’s factories catches fire. “Libé” followed the pyromaniac’s footsteps until he was found [A Libé writer posted an ad about Indy Nantes and the compas were kind enough to reply; NdAtt.]

The thick smoke from Ivana’s electronic cigarette crashes against the window of her Tesla. “When I park it now, I choose a place where there’s a lot of traffic and cameras,” explains the twenty-something. In Niort (Deux-Sèvres), where this saleswoman works, a strange phenomenon has been roaming the streets since September. At least once a month, somewhere in town, a car from the famous American brand catches fire in the dead of night. A sort of Russian roulette of burnt-out tires. A werewolf game with a burnt-out car. In the parking lot alone, where her electric vehicle is refueled, the flames raged in October, and since then, no driver has risked taking the time off to recharge. The young woman is furious: “It’s shameful, we don’t burn cars for political reasons, just as we don’t buy a Tesla for Elon Musk.”

Faced with these serial fires, the hypothesis of an anti-Musk action is the first to be considered. Demonstrations, scratched vehicles, burning dealerships… In recent times, the damage done to the billionaire’s brand has been mounting as a result of the antics of its big boss. Especially since the Nazi salute by Trump’s right-hand man in January. Support for the far right and outright cuts in US administrations are, moreover, one of the explanations for Tesla’s 13% drop in sales in the first quarter of 2025 compared with the same period last year, and the collapse of the Austin-based brand’s share price by more than half since its record high on December 17, 2024. But in the case of Niort, doubt still hangs in the air: is the richest man in the world the target of the perpetrator, who is still wanted?

For a start, the dates don’t coincide: the first fires took place long before the big boss’s controversial gesture. Secondly, in addition to the dozen or so burnt-out Teslas, at least two luxury vehicles were also targeted. A Porsche and an Aston Martin. In the city’s beige streets, blackish marks now blend into the scenery. Here on charred branches, there on a once immaculate palisade. Libé followed these traces and traced them back to Niort’s serial arsonist.

Stéphan’s jinx

Right now, a lot of people are giving Stéphan a hard time. Colleagues, for one. “They asked me if I’d tried barbecuing,” says the construction salesman and vegetarian. And the firemen, too. “You again?” they taunted him on March 10. For the second time in a few months, the firemen put out a blaze just down the road from his home on the Route d’Aiffres. Once again, the flames reduced a white Tesla, his company vehicle, to ashes.

The first time was on September 15. “My neighbors had heard noises and voices, but at first I thought it was accidental”, says the forty-something with thin glasses. By the second Tesla HS, the doubt had dissipated. That night, the police arrived, very annoyed. Twenty minutes earlier, their patrol had passed the allée du Niortais without observing anything unusual. “We’ve been keeping an eye on all Tesla cars for some time now,” the officers explain.

By this time, they had also been looking for the culprit for some time. Since September, the Niort public prosecutor’s office has been investigating “wilful destruction by fire”. But for the time being, the serial arsonist continues to evaporate. Without ever leaving a clue as to his motives. From his living room, Stéphan has a view of the still-charred parking space. He looks wistfully at a bush that has also been hit: “The leaves hid the road in summer… It’s a shame.” At his feet, his dog, a shih tzu with matted hair, sighs in unison.

Continue reading →