Revolution or Barbarism
In recent years our days have been filled with news of deaths, with numbers of dead, with the words of “experts” who command arrogantly and boastfully from the power they have been given. They are filled with unreasonable orders and outrageous government impositions. We do not intend to extensively analyze positions on the health crisis. The tragic shortages of medical personnel, equipment and infrastructure, the “stain” of 100 deaths a day, i.e. the dire consequences of decades of privatization of public health care. The provocative strengthening of the private sector, exemplified by the big pharmaceutical companies and health giants, whose profits have reached historic highs. The re-emergence of the ‘strong’ state model to restore capitalist equilibria. The strengthening of centralised powers and the emergence of a new caste of all-round technocrats, with the role of abdicating and covering up the responsibilities of the state apparatus and shifting the responsibility for the spread of the virus to the individual. These are just some of the points that shape the management of the pandemic by the capitalist states.
Throughout the pandemic, the key issues that have dominated the public debate have been around public health, mental health and the effects of incarceration, the social exclusion of increasing segments of the population, growing class inequalities, the wider capitalist division of available resources, the role of science and technology, civil rights and the diminished role of bourgeois democracy in emergency situations.
The health crisis has affected in a universal way the relations constituting the social reproduction of capital. The inability of the social formation to reproduce the formed conditions of capitalist production led to an ideological crisis of the applied model of neoliberalism, while at the same time, following the dictum that “for capitalism every crisis is an opportunity”, it served as a key tool for the organised transition to a new era. The capitalist restructuring under way is the huge-scale operation to rescue a system that is plunging into chain crises of a structural nature. It is also the attempt to move capitalism into a new phase, something that its apologists of all kinds openly admit. It is a given that the contradictions that are developing within societies, states and big bosses will be on a trajectory of bloody conflicts in the coming years. The emergence of a powerful bloc within the imperialist bourgeoisies, consisting of the owners of the great technological giants, with the decisive potential for extracting cultural hegemony, is shaping a historical intersection in which the passage to the new capitalist formation will universally determine the lives, habits and lifestyles of the social majority. In the new totalitarian capitalist world that is emerging, the possession of information (data) will be (to an even greater extent than now) only one of the many fields of profitability of these oligarchs, who, in addition to the sharp increase in their profits, will concentrate even greater powers in their hands. On the other hand, those who live within the hyper-connected metropolises will literally become fully exploitable commodities, as they will not only sell their labour power, but every field of social, personal, consumer, recreational interest will be a profitable process for capital, they will constitute an uninterrupted flow of data. Every click, every piece of information unlocked by the algorithms on their screens will fill the pockets of their provider with profit in an endless game of exploitation and total control of every aspect of human activity.
In this complex and ever-changing reality, there are still a few solid facts that help us to draw a necessary conclusion:
“Since the pandemic broke out the richest people on the planet have more than doubled their personal fortunes. In the two years of the pandemic alone, the increase in their wealth was greater than that of the previous 14 years. At the same time, the number of people living in absolute poverty has increased by 160 million. In addition, the number of women who lost their jobs increased by 13 million.”
The class war that is raging, if it continues to be unilateral, will turn us into slaves of their machines and their digital worlds. It is a matter of life or death.
Or we will live by choosing to take risks to organise the revolutionary war against all these scumbags and their structures – Or we will die at the land and sea borders, in the police roadblocks and persecutions on the streets, in their prisons and psychiatric hospitals, in the labour galleys, in the broken hospitals.
We do not take risks. On the contrary, we believe that the reflexes of the militant community are too late for the times. The Orwellian reality spreading rapidly around us confirms this. “New era, new tasks”, it was once said. And if the prelude to this new era is the modern world emerging in the shadow of the current pandemic, the new tasks of the revolutionary movements are consistently, humbly and militantly to organize, evolve, enrich their discourse, set up war structures and fight this battle to the end. As if it were the last. A relentless battle of the Revolution against modern barbarism.
Our beacon and our road sign are the labour struggles of the Efood distributor workers, the workers of LARCO, the workers of Petroleum and Fertilizers of Kavala, as well as the COSCO dockers at the port of Piraeus. It is in these struggles that our discourse must take root, to contribute to the radicalisation of the demand movements, to show in practice that capitalism is not a one-way street.
Construction of the “dangerous citizen”, or else: Anti-terrorism as the spearhead of modern exceptionalism
“The autoimmune of the biopolitical body is terrorism. An enemy that comes not from outside, but from within.” – Jacques Derrida
In speaking of the restructuring of contemporary forms of state enforcement, we cannot fail to mention the structural necessity of every sovereign power to construct an enemy within, an anthropotype of the “dangerous citizen”. The human being who is excluded from the normality of the constituted power in question is a confirmation and a permanent indicator of who the truly sovereign subject is, but also of the limits of its sovereignty. This domination is determined, beyond the possession of the monopoly on the exercise of violence, by the possession of the monopoly of judgement on what are the limits of the fine line that separates “normality” from “emergency”, what lives are worth living or not worth living.
The contemporary survival strategies of power structures require a proactive management with regard to the enemy within. The biopolitical index of the dangerous citizen also marks the point of separation from the normal one, from the necessary majority of people who, according to mathematical calculations, ought to have internalized and appropriated the dominant values and behavioral patterns, the dominant production and consumption patterns. Normal citizens are only those who have successfully embodied the law and ethics of the dominant power, those who are smoothly and seamlessly integrated into the productive/consumptive process. In such a process of continuous self-reproduction of the capitalist system, the signs of this separation and their materialization in real life (prisons, migrant concentration camps, state killings, exceeding artificial “humanitarian” limits of state violence in marches or other events, displaced migrants, proletarians completely marginalized and excluded from the possibility of self-valorization) is necessary – beyond the definition of sovereignty itself and its limits – also for the absorption of any social shocks, for the inscription of any social situation in the theoretical constructions and meanings of power.
The internal enemy is invisible, but in order to be defined as such it must first be observed and recorded. We can identify it over time in the bodies of the totally undervalued, displaced and discredited by the working condition, of people who cannot or cannot bear to reproduce themselves on the dominant terms, thus giving oxygen to the flame of subversion, as they have nothing to lose. It can also be traced and identified generationally in the consciously unproductive and rebellious people for whom the laws of exception were historically drafted and adapted, and to whom a brief account will be given based on the domestic example: from the bandits of the 19th century (the law on persecution and robbery – 1871) and the communist/socialist revolutionaries of the 20th century (forced deportation – 1913, administrative deportation – 1926, idem for dealing with the communist danger under Venizelos – 1929, and subsequent concentration camps, certificates of social standing and charges of anti-national crime), to the neo-liberal subcultures with elements of questioning the dominant production and consumption model (Teddyboyism Law – 1959), to the more novel forms of urban guerrilla from the 1960s onwards, which also gave birth to the globally prevalent anthropotype of the Neo-Terrorist (politically or religiously motivated), which was particularly reinforced after the Al-Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. On this basis, the foundations had already been laid for the drafting of the modern terror laws, as early as June 2001, subsequently becoming the 21st century’s instrument of exception par excellence, shielding repression ‘with new possibilities of intervention and action for ever more fluid/uncertain justifications, for ever longer periods, with ever looser legislative constraints’.
Speaking now of the counter-terrorism campaign tactics of 21st century Western states as the spearhead of the counter-insurgency doctrine, it is useful to recognize the very specific terms in which the synchronous “witch hunt” unfolds. When power defines an enemy, it must also locate it materially, spatially and temporally. When it has been trained in a preventive tactic, it must also identify the points at which this enemy presumably/conceivably emerges and organizes itself. Thus, according to the rhetoric of the anti-terrorist think tanks, the internal enemy called “anti-authoritarian” has as the first step of its ideological-political self-determination the points of occupations/streets and universities. The reduction of these to “bases” and “breeding grounds” of terrorists gives the state a first clue as to where to turn the mirrors of preventive repression. According to their rhetoric, by hitting the places where “terrorism emerges”, they will also hit terrorism itself. Thus, even at a semantic level, defending our squats, our spaces, and the university as a place of sanctuary, as a place of social and political ferment, and as a place where repressive forces can hardly get a foothold, is a matter of political survival, a matter of paramount importance.
We can see clearly how a regime is established that defines entire spaces as ‘potentially’ terrorist if they dare to challenge in any way the state monopoly of violence and capitalist ‘normality’. The anti-terrorist arsenal is expanding, with the result that more and more movements can be ‘terror-scented’. The ideological dimension of anti-terrorist legislation is evident, as it seems that the mere purpose or threat of a terrorist act is sufficient, without the need to commit it, while the logic of collective responsibility also applies, which may even include the friends/relatives/closest associates of people accused of being ‘terrorists’. By extension, vis-à-vis such places, the state completely strips itself of any ‘humanitarian’ facade, and gives itself the right to use ‘whatever force is necessary’. Consequently, it is inevitable that the torture of those arrested and detained at demonstrations, the rhetoric of “zero tolerance”, the media smearing of anti-authoritarian groups, individuals, places, actions, the fabricated files on “criminal/terrorist actions and organizations”, the cameras in homes and the geo-location systems in the vehicles of comrades and comrades-in-arms are all inevitable. All this sets the stage for our intended final crackdown. And our definitive crackdown sets the climate for a dystopian totalitarian social reality that will have done away with any possible opposition and radical subversive perspective.
The rulers themselves therefore generously offer us the tools to understand how they structure their methods of survival, where they aim and why. It is left to us, as revolutionary subjects, to decide whether to use these tools to sharpen our theoretical and material arsenal or to run permanently behind circumstance. Whether we will organise to defend our relations, our spaces, our acquisitions, our perspectives, whether we will fight for the destruction of class society, or whether we will remain locked into the ideological mechanisms of “non-violence”, of lyrical verbalisms and self-canibalism. For our part, we believe that we must sharpen our consciences, understand our place in the contemporary Western world, and take very coherent responsibilities and decisions for our political activity. Our connections and our ideas have roots, and we cannot overlook that. In the pervasive social fields of culture, in the public sphere, in neighbourhoods and workplaces, in our interconnection with each other, we have roots that cannot be annihilated by the clumsy moves of an equally clumsy and ridiculous governmental administration.
Let us not forget that those who fight us do so simply to reaffirm their superiority and power at the expense of anyone in a weaker position, while we fight to ensure that there are no strong and weak, for relations of solidarity, mutuality, equality and dignity. And this motivation makes us fearless as, in the face of existential deadlocks and in the choice of our minority and collective struggles for Anarchy, we really have absolutely nothing to lose. Only to gain. For starters, a broad smile that we are marching with all our energy against the generalized fall of the times.
The multi-front war which we are experiencing and in which we are consciously taking a fighting position, must find us prepared, to organize ourselves also on the operational level, to force the state apparatus to sharply increase the cost of self-protection of the bourgeois-democratic regime, to push for a political crisis by constantly intensifying social antagonisms, to smash the normality and balance of the commodity society, of exploitation and misery.
The strategy of personal targeting that we have chosen to pursue is intended to put into practice the slogan “let fear change sides”. Placing incendiary devices in the homes and vehicles of the selected targets sends the message as clearly as possible that they are not out of reach, on the contrary they are accessible and vulnerable. The system is not impersonal; it is staffed by people who occupy positions in its hierarchy at the local or international level. The targeting of these people is the targeting of the system’s policies and designs. The revolutionary violence carried out on their properties has a symbolic character. It acts mainly as psychological warfare and is objectively defined as a miniature class warfare that broadcasts our will to take on absolutely real and generalized dimensions. Just as real and generalized is the war they have declared against us.
The feeling of fear is the basic factor that shapes all mass manipulation in the modern world. It is the battering ram to enforce the designs of the political and economic elites. The invocation of fear as a method of persuasion is an attempt to influence the attitude and behaviour of subjects by projecting all the disastrous consequences that will result from non-compliance with the proposed options. Its rhetorical construction and dissemination is done through the media. The basic strategy of the propaganda of domination is to place fear at the centre of our thinking, to permanently inhabit our minds. To make us hesitant and reluctant. To magnify it and in the end offer us the redemptive proposed solutions to avoid it. Solutions represented by a single name: Compromise and Submission. But behind these proposed solutions lie nothing but the interests of those who manufactured the fear, the interests of those who hold significant economic and political power and those who support them or lurk under their arms.
Those who morally defeat capital’s psychological warfare and brainwashing by its ideological apparatuses will be confronted with the real face of its power. With the violence of power and the state terror unleashed, without pretense, by the police-judicial apparatus.
The strategy of “changing the camp of fear” is a fundamental tactical option in order to return to the field of the political threat that can finally create events. Their own fear begins with the threat of a distinct enemy with unknown potential for sharpening its action.
This enemy has a name and it is called Anarchy. It has a soul and is found on every front of the social-class war. It has thousands of faces, those of the comrades who were tortured, murdered, imprisoned, for a better world. It has form and it is the shadows of the people who rise up when they revolt against their oppressors.
In the name of Anarchy and the effort of the Direct Action Cells to maintain it as an active historical force of attack and rebellion, we take responsibility for the coordinated incendiary attacks in Thessaloniki and Athens:
- The incendiary attack at the entrance of the house of the Professor of the Law School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and President of the Permanent Law Preparatory Committee, Lambros Margaritis, in Thessaloniki, on the evening of December 6. It was our tribute to that night when death defeated fear.
This professor is directly responsible for the “American” inspired new criminal code passed in November, as he was the chairman in the Tsiaras committee that recommended all the additions to this bill.
A few hours after Caroline’s femicide in Glyka Nera last May, and while the prevailing scenario of the moment was that “foreign robbers after tying up the pilot murdered her in front of his eyes”, it is heard through the mouth of a minister that the penal code for “serious” crimes will be changed to the strictest on the occasion of that event. After the truth was revealed, the change in the penal code was also “dressed up” in the cloak of “Me too” as the “progressive” cloak of this reform, as the provisions included a tightening of the penalties for rape and domestic violence. In the following days, the commission headed by Margaritis was set up, which in effect formed an even harsher, even more criminal and classist, even more repressive penal code. Under the guise of tightening the framework of penalties for crimes against sexual freedom and dignity, this code is in its essence an all-out attack on the anarchist/anti-racist movement and the poor.
The further criminalisation of insurgent tools (such as Molotov cocktails), the tightening of the framework of penalties, with special reference of course to offences within the framework of a “terrorist” organisation, as well as the longer stay in prison until the person has served his/her sentence, are the tripartite character of this law. The new reality will be reminiscent of the American ‘prison’ system, in which millions of poor devils, mainly African-Americans, who often spend most of their lives in prisons, are packed in a racist manner.
The scumbag in question that we hit is one of the most directly responsible for the above abomination. He is directly responsible for the overcrowding that will be created in the prisons. Responsible for the expected increase in suicides of incarcerated individuals. Responsible for the increase in cannibalism among inmates. Responsible that thousands of prisoners will sit many years longer in the prison cells and be deprived of their loved ones and the possession of freedom for so long that they will be forgotten between the 4 walls. Let this truly symbolic – for the gravity of his actions – act of setting fire to the entrance of his home be seen as a warning.
We are not finished with this particular matter. For us, any attack on the rights of prisoners acquired through bloody struggles is evaluated very seriously, and in this direction we will try as much as we can to keep it high on the priorities of the militant formations acting in the antagonistic movement. We call on them to become a shield of protection for the rights of political prisoners in prisons and to target those directly responsible for this anachronistic penal code that takes us back many decades.
- The incendiary attacks on the houses of the bounty cops in Thessaloniki, Giorgos Deligiorgis at 33 Homerou Street, Nikolaos Amanatidis at 12 Argenti Street, Anastasios Chalkidis at 16A Marasli Street.
The uniformed garbage has been given a blank check by the government headquarters to unleash every criminal inclination they have, without the slightest reprieve. The constant beatings and torture, the cold-blooded shootings, the abuse in police stations and prisons are clear indications of a central strategy that gives every uniformed murderer free rein to commit violence at no cost on our bodies. To beat up in demonstrations, to torture squatters in evacuations of places of struggle, to demolish the houses of the struggle, to execute in the streets anyone who does not obey the orders of order and security. At the same time that the biggest export havens for the most heinous circuits of pimps, abusers and drug dealers are the General Police Headquarters.
If the Ministry of Public Protection values life and liberty under the image of a power seeking to be immune, be prepared to take the burden of responsibility for such a choice. We have made it clear from the outset that we have a particular sensitivity to the uniformed assault battalions hired by bourgeois democracy to defend the legitimate interest and image of the established order. Hands that reach out to crush resistance, to attack strikers, to abuse militants will be crushed. It will be cut off at the root. And the fire will burn its flesh until every open account with tyranny is closed.
- The incendiary attack on the house of the SKAI “journalist” Dimitris Kabourakis in Athens.
It is common for all the sad apologists of the state apparatus to invoke freedom of speech and the attempt to silence them when they are targeted for the dirty services they provide. Kabourakis may have the title of “journalist” but his relationship with real journalism is one of hostility. A consistent defender of Mitsotakis’s New Democracy, being one of the water-carriers of semitic modernisation, he works in its official propaganda organ, the SKAI group. The SKAI group is the transitional stage for ‘journalists’ who dream of a political career with New Democracy. There are dozens of those who, after practicing their skills in lying, misleading and manipulation, took the next step by entering the political arena under the umbrella of ND (e.g. Babis Papadimitriou, Aristotelia Peloni, Konstantinos Bogdanos, ). Kabourakis, having personal ties with the Mitsotakis family, attempted to make such an attempt himself before the 2019 elections. However, the objective fact that stupidity is one of his few virtues forced him to remain on the bench, remaining a useful idiot throwing mud to defend the government’s policies.
“Freedom of speech” when it comes to journalists working for the big TV conglomerates is the biggest scam of all and everyone knows it. Freedom of speech in the media is about defending the economic and political interests of their owners.
Could there be an investigative programme on Marinakis’ MEGA to look for the reasons why all the NOOR 1 martyrs have been murdered in various countries? Could SKAI journalists do a show on Alafouzos’ smuggling or his environmental violations that constitute ecological crimes? Could STAR news call for accountability for the “industrial accident” at Vardinoyannis’ refineries, with seriously injured and dead workers a few years ago, due to inadequate measures and non-existent controls? Rhetorical questions that could fill a whole book on the systematic cover-up of the crimes of all these excellent scumbags by their “journalistic” clerks.
- The incendiary attack on the house of the “trade unionist” and “lifelong” president of the Special Guards Association, Vassilis Doumas in Athens.
For this particular piece of rubbish, not much needs to be said. He is a known TV personality, defender and accomplice in all the far-right attitudes and practices of the police in recent years. From his position he appoints lawyers – lackeys like Kougias to defend his murderous colleagues, the most recent case being the murder of Nikos Sampanis by 7 policemen of the DI.A.S. team in Perama. Known for his vulgar far-right rhetoric on the repatriations and murders of immigrants by the police, a staunch supporter of the DELTA assault battalions, a constant slanderer of the anarchist movement and revolutionary practices. Lately he has been scouring the television stations to put pressure on his political leadership to move forward with the University Police project. The dream of Douma and his colleagues is a totally controlled, policed university where every radical voice is suppressed, every movement is monitored, every entrance is controlled, every radical political process is banned. It seems that Doumas and his ilk are probably repulsed by the years when the EAT-ESA* stormed the universities, arrested and tortured struggling students in its forks. That is why we have a duty today to remind Doumas and every similar nostalgic of the seven years that, just as they were expelled from the universities with bloody struggles, so now any implementation of the University Police Law must – and will – have a huge political cost for the government.
As for his drooling on TV the morning after the attack on his house about fascist practices on our part, let us remind the “democrat” president of the special guards’ union that it is not us who are killing migrants at the border and Roma in Perama, but he and his colleagues. We are not the ones who torture and humiliate migrant detainees and detainees, as in the Omonia Police Station. Nor do we keep captive girls in our house with the intention of raping and extraditing them, like his colleague in Heliopolis. Nor do we sell protection to brothels, illegal casinos and strip clubs, as the majority of his colleagues do. We don’t bribe big drug dealers and oil and tobacco smugglers like he and his colleagues do. We do not suppress or use violence against workers, students and fire victims, as his colleagues do at marches and rallies. Let us remind him that we live our time with dignity and with our heads held high, risking and fighting for freedom, while he and his colleagues live by begging their bosses to throw a bigger piece of scrap on the floor.
10 – 100 – 1000 Direct Action Cells
Over the last year we have been acting consistently at regular intervals, realizing the necessity of having a militant response to the full frontal war that has been declared against us. We want to inspire more comrades to understand the importance of the period we are living in and to be consistently and dedicatedly on the front line of the attack. Through the Direct Action Cell we are striving for the greatest possible rallying of our forces to a common goal and strategy, which is necessary and promotive for the fighting revolutionary forces in the modern era. Part of this effort is the realization of the attacks in Athens and Thessaloniki last month. We call once again on every comrade who seeks to turn his words into deeds. Every comrade and comrade who believes deeply in the necessity of violent revolutionary action, to organize Direct Action Cells to strike at the state and capital, while building comradeship and trusting connections.
We send our unconditional solidarity to all political prisoners and detainees in the Greek hellholes.
To those who will face their judges in the coming period, paying the price of their political choices. We stand with you.
Solidarity and strength to comrade Thanos Xatziagkelou and the comrade arrested in Thessaloniki on 08/02.
We demand the immediate release of comrade Haris Mantzouridis, in order to put an end to his physical and mental annihilation. Every day of prolongation of his hostage-taking is another reason to attack him.
Solidarity and complicity with all revolutionary political prisoners and prisoners in every corner of the world.
Internationalist struggle to break the special detention regime that states are building with their anti-terrorist laws for long-term prisoners. For the subversive comrades in Chile, Claudio Lavazza in France, Dimitris Koufontinas in Greece, Ali Osman Köse in Turkey, for all the militants who are held prisoner indefinitely in the prison hellholes with legal tricks.
For Monica Caballero and Francisco Solar in Chile, who is facing serious health problems and is not being given the necessary medical care.
For our comrades who are being held prisoner in the dungeons of Belarus and Italy.
Our solidarity with all the self-organized spaces and occupations that are under attack by the state and are defending their projects with dignity.
Direct Action Cells
Anarchist Cell “Santiago Maldonado”
Source: athens.indymedia
* ΕΑΤ-ΕΣΑ, the main security force during the military junta.