Anti-capitalism – Dark Nights

UK: Wildfires will begin: An interview with Toby Shone

Posted on 2025/09/18 - 2025/09/18 by darknights

1st June 2025

The former political prisoner talks about his anarchism, the 325 project and resisting the physical and mental jails that surround us all.

~ Interviewed by Elizabeth Vasileva ~

You recently spoke about the importance of solidarity and connections, between prisoners and with their supporters on the outside. Can you give us any examples of this kind of mutual or collective empowerment in the pushback against prison’s continuous repression?

Shortly before I was released in 2024, violent cell searches by a tactical unit of prison guards known as the National Search Team took place on C-wing of HMP Garth in Leyland, where I was being held. The NST took over the wing with dogs and riot gear. Cell by cell the raid took place with a lot of pointlessly brutal drama. In ones and twos we were handcuffed and placed in a locked wet room. Some prisoners were beaten, abused and a lot of our things were trashed. Some of the guys fought back, flooded their cells, banged their doors or played music really loud as a protest. The next day the whole wing refused to go back into their cells after the early morning unlock hour. As a cacophonous and unruly mob we demanded the immediate return of seized items, the replacement of damaged items and denounced the violence. This lead to the screws backing off. There was nothing at that moment that the screws could do because we all acted together, and without any leader. At the end of the lunch period, the stop-out ended.

Similar things happened in my experience when one of the prisoners was killed by depression or hopelessness. Demonstrations outside the prisons where I was held also were a strong experience that had an impact upon the guards and us. Especially when the fireworks exploded across the night sky and the comrades outside were militant. I found other prisoners to be generally supportive of each other in the roughly anti-system and criminal environment. Whenever I was transferred or moved to a different cell, the local guys usually would come to check if I was okay and if I needed anything. I helped other guys with their legal cases or prison admin, and tried to find common points of interest and subversion. We’d try to back each other, and if I had some problem, the guys would be voicing their demands too. There’s refusals and kick-offs being made in most of the prisons around the country each day about conditions and treatment. I lost track of the number of prison labour refusals and walkouts I heard about when I was inside, they are very common, as is getting on the netting that separates the landings to protest about treatment and poor conditions.

When I heard that comrades outside were carrying out revolutionary solidarity, that is when I felt our power inside the prison, I can say. From hearing about the direct actions with the Adream case in Chile, France, Italy, Indonesia and around the world, to the phone-call interventions that I was able to make from inside prison to meetings of comrades on the outside, I could feel the warmth from the comrades. Also knowing about the censored letters and books, the solidarity funds and benefit events, it was great.

For readers who don’t know 325, what can you tell us about the project and its content?

325 is an anarchist network of counter-information and direct action. In November 2020, Dutch counter-terrorist police took down the nostate.net server which held the 325 website, upon request from their German and English colleagues. The website was a long-running information clearing house of general news, reports, communiques, publications, event listings, etc. Mostly the website covered Europe, Latin America and South East Asia. 325 is also a hard-copy magazine which comes out on an intermittent basis, and dozens of publications have been published by the collective, including the newsletter Dark Nights, which has it’s own website.

Over the years, 325 has participated in an evolving participatory international network based on direct action and the support of prisoners, as well as providing space for various tendencies of anarchist, anti-capitalist and anti-civilisation groups. In recent issues of the magazine the analysis has shifted slightly to the profound new industrial changes in production and technology, such as artificial intelligence, life sciences and automation. The archive of the 325 site is an important document of social and armed revolutionary struggle over a number of years in Europe and internationally. The project started in 2003 and continues. Continue reading “UK: Wildfires will begin: An interview with Toby Shone” →

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.

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“The Possibility of a Historic Moment is Now” – Burkhard Garweg

Posted on 2025/03/18 - 2025/03/18 by darknights

… from the German newsite “nd” …

Below we document a letter from Burkhard Garweg, which was sent exclusively to »nd«. Garweg is one of the most wanted people by German police authorities because of suspected RAF membership and several robberies in which millions of euros were stolen. His letter is a critical outline of the history of the Red Army Faction (RAF) and at the same time a response to Caroline Braunmühl, daughter of RAF victim Gerold von Braunmühl, who in January in the »nd« was critical of her brother’s »call for clarification« , but also responded to a previous letter from Burkhard Garweg. Burkhard Garweg now addresses Braunmühl’s statements in his current text. He criticizes the RAF for a phase lasting from 1977 to around 1990 in which the urban guerrillas made military confrontation with the state the focus of their politics and neglected social revolutionary struggles. The author, born in 1968, comes from the autonomous squatter movement and now lives illegally, alternates between two levels in his text: one that analyses and evaluates from today’s perspective and a second, in italics, that speaks very personally from the past and his youth. Burkhard Garweg’s contribution is fully documented below.

“The possibility of a historic moment is now”

On the history of the RAF and the question of the reconstruction of an anti-capitalist, social revolutionary, anti-patriarchal and internationalist movement in the present day.

“The possibility of a historic moment is now”

On the history of the RAF and the question of the reconstruction of an anti-capitalist, social revolutionary, anti-patriarchal and internationalist movement in the present day.

In her text in »nd.Die Woche« of January 18, 2025, Caroline Braunmühl presents an alternative position to the bourgeois attitude that attempts to depoliticize the history of militant and armed resistance by reducing its content to violence and negating a political conflict.

In my statement of December 2024, it was also important to me to present resistance to capitalism in the context of the relations of violence – exploitation, the rule of man over man, nationalism, militarism and war – and thus to conduct the debate according to historical reality and to counter the historiography of the rulers and their attempts at manipulation.

The aim of bourgeois historiography is to delegitimize and criminalize anti-capitalist resistance and its history. Its elites have a fundamental interest in maintaining the conditions of exploitation and oppression and in being able to continue to make profits. This is what the proclamation from the ranks of its elites in the 1990s, which has gone down in history, stands for: “there is no alternative.”

Caroline Braunmühl associates the RAF and other militant groups, such as the Rote Zora, with radical resistance against the “violence of socially dominant groups and individuals against socially subordinates – such as class justice, patriarchal violence or transnational relationships of exploitation, oppression and war, from which the economic elites in the Federal Republic of Germany have profited and continue to profit today.” She identifies the justification for militant resistance against violent relations and at the same time denies the legitimacy of targeted assassinations by the RAF in its history.

She criticizes my statement from a feminist perspective and for lacking criticism of the RAF.

I agree with her that a reflective picture of the history of the struggles with the ability to see their weaknesses is necessary. The main thing is to be able to draw conclusions for the struggles of the future.

The world of the dominant capitalist system is moving at an increasing pace towards social and global erosion: war, poverty, displacement and the destruction of the planet’s ecological basis for life. The bourgeois state – and this affects the entire capitalist center of Europe and the USA – is increasingly using right-wing and authoritarian means. It uses the construction of a “national community” to differentiate itself from migrants, Muslims, refugees and the poor. It uses racism, nationalism and rapid militarization both internally and externally. This has repercussions – some of which are also intended – on bourgeois society.

This is becoming radicalized by the deeply rooted racist, patriarchal and social forms of differentiation, exclusion and oppression within society. The world is unmistakably moving towards an infernal tipping point of social, ecological and military erosion.

Capitalism offers no solution to this. It would also be a contradiction in terms. The elites’ solutions to the crisis are now authoritarianism, fascism, war and the process of unifying bourgeois and fascist politics. This is nothing other than a journey into the possible abyss with clear parallels to the historical crises that culminated in the world wars of 1914 and 1939 – albeit with an extremely increased global destructive potential in modern times.

Anyone who wants to prevent this should focus less on the hopeless rescue of bourgeois democracy as a facet of capitalism and the associated retention of the fundamental relations of violence, but rather on social revolutionary alternatives that can only be achieved as a result of social revolutionary and emancipatory struggles.

Existential questions arise: In which steps, initiatives and processes can the reconstruction of an anti-capitalist, social revolutionary and internationalist left be achieved?

But also: What do we take with us into the future from the struggles and concepts of history, from the attempts to overcome the thoroughly violent capitalism and imperialism? How do we as revolutionary leftists discuss and write history from below and appropriate it for the struggles of today and tomorrow and against the propagandistic, depoliticizing and criminalizing historiography from above? Continue reading ““The Possibility of a Historic Moment is Now” – Burkhard Garweg” →