Armed Struggle

At Daggers Drawn… – announcing new publications at rupture distro

Posted on 2023/07/13 - 2023/07/13 by darknights

This text, since it publication, has inspired many anarchists in their projects, proposals and practice, but it is with no sense of nostalgia that we have reprinted this booklet, rather because we realize that its central questions and critiques are more relevant than ever: how to identify the enemies of freedom, those in the ivory towers, those on the streets, those within our struggles?

“Published in May 1998 by NN editions, a publisher started only seven months earlier by some anarchists who had participated in the weekly newspaper Canenero, this booklet, has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, German. Since then, it has nourished reflections, offered suggestions, strengthened tensions, raised doubts, as well as provoking much irritation (the concept of ‘the existent’ in particular, in its bursting totality, has proven rather indigestible for those who aspire to administer the State in any way). In its small way, At Daggers Drawn has contributed to the spread of an autonomous, insurrectional anarchist perspective. A perspective that is inherently irreducible to “small reformist steps” and not seduced by “a revolt for a few intimates to the sound of pyrotechnics and poorly crafted slogans”. Forged in the rejection of the false choice between citizenist reformism and vanguardist armed struggle, these pages assert the immediate necessity and possibility of an insurrectional poetry carried out by all. This should not be confused with pathetic political propaganda, nor with boastful and self-referential communiqués.

[…]

It is well known who the authour of this text is: no one. Born from long and continuous discussions, writing, re-writing, additions, changes, suggestions and corrections, At Daggers Drawn should belong to anyone who recognises themselves in it, just as it always should be. Like everything that is the work of no single individual, it belongs to everyone in general.”

– From the introduction of Ai ferri corti, ed. L’oro del tempo, 2015

At daggers drawn: an expression that can be traced back to a variety of historical anecdotes, commonly defining a very specific moment of a violent conflict – the crudest, in the greatest physical proximity and the closest to its end. For those choosing to not look away, nor accept, nor reproduce the miserable and tragic existent that authority imposes, conflict seems inevitable.

As power, its promises, its progress, its blackmails, keep scaring and seducing even those who speak of freedom from authority, we are still faced with the same frustration. We find, over and over, and closer and closer, anarchists making choices based on logics of convenience, efficiency, political strategy and the spotlights of the spectacle, rather than defending, no matter what, anti-authoritarian ethics. So yes, conflict also against the false critics, those who talk about freedom, but when “necessary” throw away our ideas and practices for the sake of favourable alliances, popular acceptance and a chance at a by-all-means-necessary “victory”.

So what these pages declare is permanent conflict: anti-authoritarian ethics are under permanent attack, from all sides, and if those who carry them in their hearts do not defend them, even when it’s exhausting, uncomfortable and inconvenient, their existence in space and time and memory will be relinquished to where authority wants them…

It is with the same passion and urgency that shook us the first time we read these pages that we announce a new print run, in English and German.

Available at: rupture.noblogs.org

France: All fire, all flame. Interviews with former members of the Revolutionary Cells (RZ) Germany, 1973-1993 FR/EN

Posted on 2023/06/25 - 2023/06/25 by darknights

Tout feu, tout flamme. Entretiens avec des anciens des Cellules Révolutionnaires (RZ) Allemagne, 1973-1993

Tout feu, tout flamme
Entretiens sur la résistance armée avec des anciens des Cellules Révolutionnaires (RZ)
Allemagne, 1973-1993

En 1973, deux attentats à la bombe contre une multinationale des télécommunications en République Fédérale d’Allemagne marquent les débuts de ce qui allait devenir les Revolutionäre Zellen (RZ, « Cellules Révolutionnaires »). Inspirées par les mouvements de libération armés dans le dit tiers-monde et portées par l’agitation subversive qui secoue les métropoles occidentales, les RZ réalisent des dizaines d’attaques, ciblant plus particulièrement le complexe militaro-industriel. Au début des années 1980, elles définissent un angle plus social-révolutionnaire avec le foisonnement d’importantes luttes offensives contre la construction de centrales nucléaires et d’autres nuisances industrielles, de conflits contre l’OTAN et le militarisme, de combats contre le patriarcat et les nouvelles technologies, ou encore de révoltes d’une jeunesse enragée. Dotées d’une solide logistique souterraine décentralisée, les RZ revendiquent près de 200 attentats, principalement explosifs et incendiaires, jusqu’en 1993.

Dans ces entretiens, trois anciens des RZ donnent leur vision du parcours historique de cette organisation de résistance armée. Avec une disponibilité au débat encourageante, ils dressent des bilans critiques, s’interrogent sur l’action offensive, réfléchissent sur les difficultés qu’implique une structure organisationnelle décentralisée mais permanente, questionnent les rapports au sein des groupes d’action souterrains et reviennent sur les péripéties de vies ayant une dimension de combat clandestin.

« Notre objectif est et a toujours été la diffusion de la résistance armée, était et reste le soutien d’un réseau de groupes autonomes qui, en tant que tendance armée au sein du mouvement, sont capables d’agir par eux-mêmes dans leurs villes et régions, qui y poussent plus loin les contradictions. »
(RZ, 1981) Continue reading “France: All fire, all flame. Interviews with former members of the Revolutionary Cells (RZ) Germany, 1973-1993 FR/EN” →

Greece: Thanos Chatziangelou | 9/5/76 – ‘Living hearts in dead wings’

Posted on 2023/05/14 by darknights

Political tribute of the imprisoned member of Anarchist Action Thanos Chatziangelou on the 47th anniversary of the murder of RAF fighter Ulrike Meinhof.

Protest is when I say I don’t like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don’t like.

Ulrike Meinhof

9 May 1976

RAF fighter Ulrike Meinhof is murdered in Stammheim solitary confinement. This is preceded by the murder of hunger striker Holger Meins, who was constantly subjected to force-feeding, and a year later Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe are murdered in Stammheim solitary confinement cells, and Ingrid Schubert is murdered in Stadelheim.

The fighter Ulrike Meinhof was a revolutionary, flesh and blood of the armed anti-imperialist struggle, born and died on the path of contributing to the struggle for individual and collective liberation. She abandoned legitimacy during action to free the imprisoned revolutionary Andreas Baader and became an organizational member of the first generation of the Red Army Faction.

She was a charismatic person who balanced theory through practice, playing a leading role in both the theoretical formulation of the RAF’s ideological and political line, without ever leaving the operational field of armed metropolitan resistance. It was a key part of those initiatives that carried the legacy of the Latin American guerrilla movements on their backs, building the armed ‘metropolitan front’ in the European centres. Who took the hostilities to the “heart of the beast”, putting solidarity into practice with the peoples of Vietnam, Palestine and the third world countries that were fired upon by the imperialist interventions of the United States.

At a time when Schmidt’s German chancellery was an imperialist centre of decision-making and operations, carrying Nazi droplets in the mechanisms of power, the flourishing of the urban guerrilla put into practical question and annulment both the regime’s omnipotence and the oppositional tolerance of imperialist crimes by the reformist left. The history of revolt and resistance was written in the blood of those tortured in the internment hellholes, those murdered in ambushes and anti-terrorist operations by the special SoKo B/M department of the Federal Criminal Investigation Service – BKA and those executed in the death wings of the sensory isolation cells.

Comrade Ulrike was just that disobedient star. Her theoretical and practical contribution to the birth of the armed struggle in Germany and the unification of the resistances in Europe and the Middle East categorized her as a central target for elimination in the BKA’s lists. From slandering her political integrity and standing, to spreading false news of her death while she was struggling in an illegal regime, to her exterminating treatment in the isolation of the dead ward, the social democratic chancellery initiated Ulrike’s execution in the Stammheim hellhole, citing the obviousness of suicide. Indeed, state revanchism was not content with Ulrike’s death, desecrating her dead body when it removed her brain in secret to conduct investigations.

Revolutionary history is written in blood and gunpowder. In this history, personalities like Ulrike and the other RAF comrades are taken out of the matrix of the class struggle for social liberation. They stand unscathed, translucent through time like the brightest stars, with the same integrity that challenges and denigrates the monopoly of tyranny. The life and death of comrades and comrades like Ulrike are a cry to the rebellious hearts that yearn for the enduring revolutionary necessity, deafeningly declaring themselves to their persecutors: I was, am and will be.

Honour to our comrades Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, Holger Meins, Andreas Baader, Ingrid Schubert who were murdered in the sensory isolation cells by the German state.

Honour to our comrades Petra Schelm, Georg Von Rauch, Thomas Weissbecker, Katharina Hammerschmidt, Ulrich Wessel, Siegfried Hausner, Werner Sauber, Brigitte Kuhlmann, Wilfriend Böse, Willi-Peter Stoll, Michael Knoll, Elisabeth Von Dyck, Juliane Plambeck, Wolfgang Beer, Sigurd Debus, Johannes Thimme, Jürgen Peemoller, Ina Zipman, Gert Albartus, Wolfgang Grams who dedicated their lives to the anti-imperialist struggle for liberation through the ranks of the German urban guerrilla .

“Behind all of us lies a common history – we will meet again on the unknown and complicated paths of liberation.”

Thanos Chatziangelou, captured member of the Anarchist Action Organization

C’ Wing, Larissa Prison

9/5/2023

Source: athens.indymedia

Chile: Propaganda and agitation on March 29 in solidarity with the detainees of the attack on the National Gendarmerie Directorate + Banner from prison/company Santiago 1

Posted on 2023/04/01 by darknights

Source: https://publicacionrefractario.wordpress.com/

Partisan ’22: Russia’s Anti-Putin Underground

Posted on 2023/03/26 - 2023/03/26 by darknights

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, anti-Putin Russian partisans began to launch sabotage operations against Kremlin infrastructure inside their country.

After almost one year of war, these cells in Russia have grown exponentially. From Moscow to Vladivostok, there have been more than 80 confirmed anti-government attacks in the past 12 months.

Russia: Women partisans – interviews with BOAK group members

Posted on 2023/02/16 by darknights

It is important that women’s protest voices be heard from movements with different strategies: we all have something to exchange with each other. Our activists are interviewing representatives of the Militant Anarcho-Communist Organization to remind us that the phrase “women’s place is in resistance” is not just a beautiful metaphor, and sometimes women make the choice to protest radically. For the initiative, whose representatives we interviewed, it is important to damage public infrastructure, not civilians, so all actions are designed so that no one gets hurt. You can read about the women partisans of the past, whom our heroines inherit, in a beautiful text by Maria Rachmaninova.

If you are in Russia, be careful about distributing this material, learn all the necessary cybersecurity guidelines if you are distributing any material about war and resistance.

_________________________________

Do women take part in your guerrilla actions? If so, in what capacity? Does gender affect camouflage and security, maybe women arouse less suspicion and so on?

Yes, we take an active part in guerrilla actions at all stages, from plan formulation and scouting (note: intelligence) to direct action and media coverage. To some extent, the distribution of responsibilities may be due to physical ability, but it often depends not on gender, but on a person’s individual characteristics: some people find it easier to carry a 15-kilogram bucket of igdanite, some can see better, some run faster, and some shoot more accurately.

Gender certainly affects disguise and security: the very presence of a woman in the collective transforms (in the eyes of the public and the police) a dangerous gang of shady types into a harmless group of friends walking late into the night. Because of the sexism ingrained in the ranks of the police, women tend to be less likely to be stopped on the street or in the subway, and less likely to be searched. We’ve had quite a few cases where, for example, when we pass through a metal detector frame, a signal goes off, and the subway policemen and janitors come running and start meticulously checking a young man (who, of course, has nothing to hide), while a girl with a gun stands quietly nearby. So it turns out that sometimes the man is carrying something heavy and the woman carries something dangerous (like a detonator) in a small purse, without arousing suspicion.

Also, in our experience, it is much easier for women in terms of disguise themselves – changing their appearance. At the action itself everyone looks about the same: as blackblock kids, but before and after the action, when it is necessary to look civil, a woman needs to dissolve her hair (wig) and roll up a dress, when as a typical male image, which should not attract attention, allows only minor changes, for example in the color of clothing.

Editor’s note: We clarified here whether we should publish such details and whether it would hurt disguise strategies, but we were allowed to publish in full to share with others.
Continue reading “Russia: Women partisans – interviews with BOAK group members” →

Greece: Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis – Speech of internationalist solidarity in the context of the trial of the Organization Revolutionary Self-Defense

Posted on 2023/01/08 - 2023/01/08 by darknights

FOR INTERNATIONALIST SOLIDARITY

There are moments when silence is an invitation to crime. There are moments when silence is complicity. Georges Ibrahim Abdallah

You are guilty not only when you commit a crime, but also when you do nothing to prevent it when you have the opportunity. Dimitris Tsafendasⁱ

Since May ’22, a counter-revolutionary trial has been taking place against anarchist fighters, for participation in the armed Organization Revolutionary Self-Defense. This trial comes at a time when the state-capitalist regime is climaxing its aggression against the oppressed, the exploited and excluded. The anarchist Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis is also on trial for this case, while he has taken responsibility, both in public and in this courtroom, for his participation in revolutionary struggle through the Organization of Revolutionary Self-Defense, as well as for keeping the weapons (which in the repressive operation of November ‘19, fell into the hands of the state), in order to continue the guerrilla struggle through the experience and strategy of the Organization Revolutionary Self-Defense. The court of appeal of this particular military tribunal of the counter-revolution will be completed in January ‘23.

Throughout the course of this trial, Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis has been defending the right of revolutionary struggle, the necessity of guerrilla organization and of the armed social self-defense against the tyranny of power, and has been deconstructing and attacking bourgeois justice and its counter-revolutionary laws, inside the enemy field. With an eye to the world revolution, from the beginning of the trial, Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis is speaking about movements and struggles in all parts of the globe, expressing solidarity with those who are struggling, with current struggles, with the political prisoners and their fight today, and with reference to fighters who have been killed. These days, a struggle in italian prisons is taking place; comrade Alfredo Cospito is on hunger strike already for more than 65 days, against the state of total isolation, 41-bis, that has been imposed on him. With the awareness of how critical Alfredo Cospito’s struggle is, comrade Dimitris made extensive reference to Alfredo’s fight, during the trial. Meanwhile, the italian authorities rejected Alfredo’s demand for his removal from the 41-bis regime, and the comrade is continuing the hunger strike. Continue reading “Greece: Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis – Speech of internationalist solidarity in the context of the trial of the Organization Revolutionary Self-Defense” →

Greece: Thanos Chatziaggelou – ‘Don’t ask if we will win or if we will be defeated – Just fight!’

Posted on 2022/05/16 - 2022/05/19 by darknights

Solidarity message of the imprisoned member of the Organization Anarchist Action to the unrepentant anarchist Claudio Lavazza, in response to the appeal of his 25-year-old sentence which is to be examined on the 17th of May.

While being imprisoned in the most dystopian Hall of tyranny a combination of a few words on a piece of paper could never vividly describe the ideal of revolutionary intransigence. How could anybody fit a moment a life of disobedience, complexly devoted to the relentless struggle without leaving out any important detail.

Until today, there are only few people who wholeheartedly attempted to build a bridge filling the gap between a life and survival. These people who devoted their whole existence to the bright direct actions of the revolutionary base against the fierce doctrine of tyranny for the “end of history”, laid down their lives in the wholehearted hostilities of the revolutionary base. They enlisted sternly and unyieldingly on the fractious front of subversion, bled while comrades were perishing in battle, but imprisoned in the face of the danger of repentance and legitimacy, they chose ironclad pride.

Comrade Claudio Lavazza belonged to the same mixture of figures of struggle that divided them by a very important “particularity”: injustice and exploitation, social decay and tyranny were not just statements but issues that concerned them individually and collectively. They did not adapt ideology and politics to their lives; they devoted the absoluteness of their existence to vital and militant resistances. Enlisted in the armed ranks of the Italian Autonomy, he chose very early on the path of illegal freedom in the face of repression and political degeneration from statements of repentance. Continue reading “Greece: Thanos Chatziaggelou – ‘Don’t ask if we will win or if we will be defeated – Just fight!’” →

Athens, Greece: Demonstration at the French Embassy in solidarity with the anarchist prisoner Claudio Lavazza (17/05)

Posted on 2022/05/14 - 2022/05/14 by darknights

The open assembly convened after the call of the Anarchists’ Initiative against State Killings decided to convene a demostration at the French Embassy (7 Vassilissis Sofias Avenue) on Tuesday 17 May at 18.30, the day when the appeal of comrade Claudio Lavazza is being considered, through which he is demanding his release from prison. Below is the text of the appeal.

FREEDOM FOR CLAUDIO LAVAZZA

THE FRENCH STATE TAKES REVENGE ON POLITICAL PRISONERS

Our anarchist comrade Claudio Lavazza has been in prison since 1996, having already completed 25 years of continuous detention. He is one of the longest serving political prisoners in Europe. Claudio was one of the militants who took up arms to oppose capitalist rule politically and militantly.

An insurgent proletarian who participated in conflicts and expropriations in the early years of joining the movement in the dynamic 1970s in Italy. Armed fighter of the revolutionary movement of the 70’s-80’s afterwards. Member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism, a horizontal guerrilla group with strong ideological influences from workers’ autonomy. Participant in the coalition of groups under the name ‘Organised Communists for Proletarian Liberation’, an armed project to support fugitives and free comrades and comrades-in-arms from prison. Accomplice to the 1981 attack on the prison in Frosinone where imprisoned militants were released.

At a time when the meaning and content of words had not been surrendered to museification, revisionism, and limited activism. But it found meaning through the practical cultivation of hope in those imprisoned and “exiled” from the legal order by the relentless repression of the state and the parastate. That words like freedom and solidarity would be put into practice with guns in their hands. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Demonstration at the French Embassy in solidarity with the anarchist prisoner Claudio Lavazza (17/05)” →

Athens, Greece: Update and contribution from the event on the case of anarchist Claudio Lavazza on 14 April at ASOEE

Posted on 2022/05/04 - 2022/05/04 by darknights

On Thursday, April 14th, the event of the Anarchist Initiative against State Killings, concerning the case of the anarchist comrade Claudio Lavazza, took place at the ASOEE with a relatively massive presence of comrades. The presentation was read as well as the transcript of an interview Claudio has given about his case and a video was shown concerning the expropriation of a bank in Cordoba and the subsequent confrontation with the police forces where he was arrested. Finally, comments and statements were made by comrades about the connection between Claudio’s experience of struggle, especially the years he participated in the Italian movement, and the present day, and it was decided to call an open assembly to organize a meeting at the French embassy on May 17, the day when the comrade’s appeal against the decision of the bourgeois justice system that forces him to serve another 5 years in prison until he is released will be heard. Below is the text of the submission where you can also find a Pdf file.

We will begin our submission by answering the simple question. Why do we consider solidarity with the comrade Claudio Lavazza important today? We answer by saying that in Claudio’s person we see a part of the revolutionary memory of contemporary revolutionary history.

Claudio from an early age was an insurgent proletarian who was actively involved in the mass movement and proletarian struggles of that period in Italy. But what was the historical context that fuelled the great struggles of that period?

“The post-war environment and the Cold War”

On a macro-level, the end of the Second World War and the new balances of terror that took shape in the international environment after the use of nuclear weapons of mass destruction in 1945 in Japan by the US and the subsequent nuclear arms race from 1949 onwards (when the USSR acquired the corresponding technology), influenced the intensity of the historical period of the Cold War, the milestones of which were the Greek civil war (1946-1949), the Chinese revolution in 1949, the Korean civil war (1950-1953), the lifting of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis a year later in 1962. These developments were decisive for the so-called transition to the so-called ‘peaceful coexistence’ process, which largely involved the establishment of strict non-intervention zones. These zones were in the perceived centre of the western and eastern world, i.e. almost the entire northern hemisphere of the planet, which of course did not prevent any of the main Cold War competitors from intervening even militarily in their own immediate zones of influence and even more so on the periphery of the perceived undeveloped world, moving the hot fronts of warfare to Latin America, Africa and Asia. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Update and contribution from the event on the case of anarchist Claudio Lavazza on 14 April at ASOEE” →