Émile Henry – Dark Nights

Political violence can be understood, from an anti-authoritarian perspective, as an aggressive response that seeks to break, attack, or fracture each of the components that make up domination.

This response could be limited to damaging the symbols of authority, thus leaving a powerful propaganda message, that is, one that manages to capture each of the motivations behind the action and, ideally, causes the violent response to be repeated or spread, or at least part of it.

As I said earlier, it is possible to attack symbolically, understanding that the current system of oppression can be seen represented in different elements or physical objects, or even in people.

For example, we have the case of Sante Caserio, who stabbed French President Sadi Carnot. From my perspective, he did this because the president represented political power, which at that time had led to the deaths of his comrades Ravachol, Vaillant, and Henry. His action sought to be a direct attack on those who publicly upheld power in the territory dominated by the French state in the 1890s. In addition to carrying out revenge, Sante wanted there to be no doubt about his motivations, which is clear in his cry: “Long live anarchy!” At the time of his arrest, as well as in his court statement.

Currently, we understand that the capitalist, heteropatriarchal system of domination is intertwined with complex social and cultural relationships, in addition to material structures and the people who sustain them. Consequently, and from an anarchist perspective, I have (and have held for several years now) the following questions:

How could a decisive qualitative leap be made that goes beyond attacking the symbolic? Is it really possible to “hit where it hurts” the capitalist system, in a world where relations of domination have reached a network of networks throughout the world?

The answers to these questions have changed as I have come to understand how domination has developed and persisted, and I have tried to act on these answers by shaping the many ways in which we can destroy everything that prevents the full development of each individual.

On the long road of how anti-authoritarian political violence is exercised, the successes and failures must necessarily be a collective learning experience for those of us who stand on the same side.

Among those of us who have found ourselves in anarchist/anti-authoritarian “action,” we constantly meet new comrades, just as we painfully say goodbye to many others.

Comrades Belén, Tortuga, Lupi, your memory lives on.

Health and Anarchy!

Mónica Caballero Sepúlveda
Anarchist prisoner
Black August 2025

Source: Informativo Anarquista

Source: La Nemesi

Émile Henry (Sept. 26, 1872 – May 21, 1894)

“Comrades, courage. Long live anarchy!” On May 21, 1894, the anarchist Émile Henry was guillotined. A few words for a comrade who dedicated his short and intense life, integrally and to the end, to anarchy. So many years have passed – well over a century of actions, dreams, revolutions – and the revolutionary will of this comrade continues to shine with the infinite wonderful facets of our ideal. Émile is immortal.

Aphorisms

Once, the cloister opened for souls weary or disgusted with the spectacles of the world, today we have no other refuge than in hospitals and prisons.

What do anarchists want? The autonomy of the individual, the development of his free initiative, which alone will be able to assure him all possible happiness. If the anarchist admits communism as a social conception, it is by simple deduction, because he understands that it is only in the happiness of all, free and autonomous as he is, that he will find his own happiness.

When a man, in today’s society, becomes a conscious rebel of his own action-and such was Ravachol-it is because he has done in his brain a painful work of analysis whose conclusions are imperative and cannot be evaded except by cowardice. He alone holds the scales, he alone is judge of the right or wrong of hating and being savage, “even fierce.”

I believe that acts of brutal revolt are right, because they wake up the masses, shake them like a violent lash, and show them the vulnerable side of the Bourgeoisie still all trembling at the moment when the Rebel goes up to the gallows.

Everyone has a special physiognomy and attitudes that differentiate him from his fellow fighters. Thus, we are not surprised to see revolutionaries so divided in the direction of their efforts. We wonder what good tactics are: they are everywhere proportional to the amount of energy brought to the action. But we recognize no one’s right to say, “Only our propaganda is the good one; outside of it there is no salvation.” It is an old residue of authoritarianism born of true or false reason that libertarians must not tolerate.

Do what you think is best and do it with love.

To those who say, “Hate does not breed love,” answer that it is love, alive, that often breeds hate.

Hate that rests not on low envy, but on a generous feeling, is a healthy and powerfully vital passion.

The more we love our dream of freedom, strength and beauty, the more we must hate that which opposes its future.

In the history of human progress there is only one party; it is the party of movement.

Socialists do not want to understand that the freedom of the individual is necessary to the true freedom of the people.

In the dedication of his book, From the Other Side, Alexandre Herzen specifies a truly revolutionary and effective attitude when he says, “We do not build, we demolish; we do not announce new revelations at all, we suppress the old lie.” This book by Herzen is full of flashes and revelations, but there is no lack of biting remarks in it either: it is a good book for the prison; and away from the street I like to take it as an echo: “The French cannot rid themselves of the idea of monarchical organization; they have a passion for police and authority; every Frenchman is in his soul a police commissioner; he loves alignment and discipline; everything that is independent, individual, irritates him; he understands equality only as leveling and willingly submits to the arbitrariness of the police as long as everyone submits to it. Put a chevron on a Frenchman’s hat and he becomes an oppressor, he begins to oppress anyone who does not wear that rank; he demands respect towards authority.”

There is one right that overrides all others; it is the right to insurrection. Continue reading “Émile Henry (Sept. 26, 1872 – May 21, 1894)” →

Tag: Émile Henry

$hile: Political violence. Words from anarchist compañera Mónica Caballero

Émile Henry (Sept. 26, 1872 – May 21, 1894)