Text – Page 8 – Dark Nights

In Search of the Powder Keg

Posted on 2021/12/06 - 2021/12/06 by darknights

“Does lived experience only tell you where the slave reclines and resigns himself to the yoke, are the master’s arrogance and greed beyond all restraint?”

How long has this been going on? We have almost lost memory of it, overwhelmed as it is by nausea and disgust.
They have caused a pandemic, indirectly or directly. They have worsened its deadliness with completely senseless political-sanitary measures. They have left those affected and worn out to die deprived of the affection of their loved ones. They have banned autopsies that could have contributed to clarifying reality. They have lied about the causes and effects of what’s been happening. They’ve intentionally sowed fear and terror with both hands for the purpose of paralyzing us. They have forced us to stay closed up at home. They’ve put a gag on our mouth to prevent us from breathing and speaking. They’ve forbidden us from moving about, meeting, touching. They’ve killed the outcasts of society who were the first to protest. They created and spread a mass psychosis, putting us against each other. They have made the heart willing to be suspicious, the tongue willing to snitch, the arm willing to lynch. They have made millions of people lose their source of livelihood, throwing them into desperation. They have insulted, humiliated, slandered, sometimes arrested, those who criticized them. They have unleashed a hunt for plague-spreaders against those who have not respected their prohibitions. They have used the Constitution they swore on as toilet paper, still demanding that we respect it on command. They’ve elected a notorious loan shark as head of the government, hailing him as the supreme savior. They have blackmailed first one category, and then all workers, so that they were made unsuspecting guinea pigs of a vaccine. They have praised the virtue of the resilience that adapts, denigrating the vice of resistance that opposes. They have dramatically increased the price of raw materials now essential to survival. They have allowed those nostalgic for the Duce to attack a union’s headquarters so that they can now accuse of fascism anyone who shows opposition to their policies. They now demand that healthy people who go to work demonstrate daily, at their own expense, that they are healthy in order to go to work. Now reduced to being free only to obey, we even have to pay to be exploited…
In short, in less than two years they have trampled down every freedom, humiliated any intelligence, raped any dignity. They disguised their political urgency as a health emergency to achieve a total control of bodies and the territory. And they have done it with attentive candor, without encountering any major difficulties, brazenly, between the tremulous consent of the majority and the well-mannered dissent of the minority. Decades of social peace – occasionally annoyed by some citizenist agitation – has allowed this. Human blood, increasingly artificial, no longer flows with exciting passions, but rather with powerful anesthetics that inhibit action. And where “political responsibility”, “civic sense” or “respect for legality” are not the things crushing the human spirit, there come to be “assembly decisions”, “strategic considerations” or “respect for collective dynamics”.
Stunned and speechless, we find no more words. We don’t even want to find them, the words. Least of all some new social subject willing to repeat them in chorus. There’s something else we need to search for. With stubborness, with fury, with impatience, with ferocity.

[15 October 2021]

Source: Finimondo

Chile: ‘The risks of multiformity’ – Words of anarchist prisoner Francisco Solar EN/ES

Posted on 2021/11/29 - 2021/11/29 by darknights

The search for freedom implies the attempt to establish and develop practices in that sense. Breaking with imposed directions, dogmas and predetermined schemes is essential in the construction of anti-authoritarian relations and in the strengthening of these.

Multiformity in terms of action (and not only) is circumscribed in this way of understanding and carrying out the struggle. It is an expression of freedom that denies singular rigid behaviors and ways of doing things, as well as encouraging imagination and autonomy.

It is also a rejection of specialization and specialists who, as we have seen, sooner rather than later become leaders who become enlightened vanguards. It was and is recurrent to see how the armed apparatuses that perpetrated significant actions became the leadership of an organization or the part of a movement that arrogated, through the use of arms, its representation, demonstrating a militarism that we are alien and contrary to.

On the other hand, the multiformity has managed to extend the propaganda in a considerable way. By means of banners, graffiti, incendiary barricades, explosives and gunfire, anarchic ideas have spread, finding spaces where they are welcomed and put into practice. This is where the importance of what has been called “reproducible actions” comes into play, generally associated with “small actions” that do not require greater risk or that would not entail the questioned prior specialization. “Reproducible actions” would have the advantage of being carried out by anyone, which would increase their possibility of extension, thus generating greater impact and/or effectiveness in achieving a given objective. Continue reading “Chile: ‘The risks of multiformity’ – Words of anarchist prisoner Francisco Solar EN/ES” →

Italy: A text by Anna Beniamino about Marilù Maschietto

Posted on 2021/11/29 by darknights

Written by Anna from prison on the occasion of a day dedicated to Marilù

There are people who are a safe harbor to land in. Marilu had all the characteristics, although thorny and ironic in the discussion and in certain cynical anecdotes of the miseries of the movement, she knew how to be welcoming, always and in any case, without fear or difficulty. In her telling and recounting, far from the rhetoric of some of her writings that linger in a certain hagiographic complacency in painting portraits of comrades and episodes of the 80s, she gave her best in the daily concreteness, with the simplicity of those who have known and lived the most varied experiences. Thus surfaced the revolutionary wave and the times of backwash and the companions of a life of militancy (term now a bit ‘retro, but full of meaning on her lips): from the old anarchist partisans from Carrara described in an anti-rhetorical form, in the act of digging up their infracycles treasures to help the young people of AR, to the ” comrades ” of the Roman squats of the 90s to support in the occupations; from Horst Fantazzini in the few periods of freedom between one jail and another, greedy for life and adventure, to Gianfranco Faina, an intellectual in struggle and on the run; Fernando Del Grosso, a partisan from Abruzzo, who told of not giving himself peace until he reached all those responsible for the death of his brothers slaughtered by the Nazi-Fascists. All this mixed with memories of a trip to Nicaragua to support the struggle and the stories of the Bangladeshi stallholder to help with his problems of being an illegal immigrant in the metropolis, the posters of Casa Pound under the arcades of Piazza Vittorio to tear down (“and if no one helps me I’ll go”, and she really did! ) and the frequentation of the chorus of women singers of the popular tradition and struggle, the flamenco shoes shown with pride and the heart medicine “forgotten” in the drawer, her presence at any parade, making fun of the dismayed look on the guards’ faces when they saw this lady in a camel-colored coat and half-heeled shoes surrounded by young punks, the same smile with which she whispered, twenty years ago in the streets of Genoa, “we’re going together” taking under her arm the comrades she saw weighed down by “overly” loaded backpacks.
The same density of stratified experience immediately caught the attention of those who crossed the threshold of the old house in Piazza Vittorio for the first time, also of lived and crumpled nobility, between the Bangla market and the Chinese stores, open day and night for the comrades. On the walls were oil portraits of a frowning nineteenth-century ancestor (Marilu came from a noble and “fascist” family of Ferrara, of which she was the refractory daughter) and posters of the fight against special prisons; the photos of dead comrades and the lace tablecloths worn to welcome the living ones, the peach stones carved in the shape of a ring “Horst’s gift when he was in jail” and the ” diary” with the phone numbers written in pen on the wall (“so when they come for the next search, even if they take away the diary I’ll have them”), behind the heavy frame that enclosed the aforementioned noble frown.

It was clear that there were no stereotypes of movement applicable, but solidarity and indestructible bonds were always valid, despite galleys and ideal shipwrecks; pride was valid, in narrating her and her comrades’ experiences of struggle, the pride of narrating something well done, a job completed to the end.
In this sense, above all, she was enlightening and luminous in revealing, almost in a fairy-tale way, the hardness of the blows she received and the beauty of resistance, freeing those who came into contact with her from the heavy weight we carry on us, in order to travel light.
It would have made a mockery of the infamous presence of the police, up to the occasion of the last farewell to her, the last anecdote of an anarchist watched by living and dead, as if a funeral could be a seditious demonstration. Or perhaps, in these dark times, the dead are considered more alive than the living?

Anna, Rebibbia Prison

Source: Il Rovescio

In Defense of Associative Specificity by Gustavo Rodríguez EN/ES

Posted on 2021/11/29 - 2021/11/29 by darknights

ES: APOLOGÍA A LA ESPECIFICIDAD ASOCIATIVA

“The International was founded in order to replace the Socialist or semi-Socialist sects by a real organisation of the working class for struggle. The original Statutes and the Inaugural Address show this at the first glance. On the other hand the Internationalists could not have maintained themselves if the course of history had not already smashed up the sectarian system. The development of the system of Socialist sects and that of the real workers’ movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other. So long as the sects are (historically) justified, the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity al sects are essentially reactionary. […] And the history of the International was a continual struggle on the part of the General Council against the sects […] At the end of 1868 the Russian, Bakunin, entered the International with the aim of forming inside it a second International called the “Alliance of Social-Democracy,” with himself as leader. He – a man devoid of theoretical knowledge – put forward the pretension that this separate body was to represent the scientific propaganda of the International, which was to be made the special function of this second International within the International. His programme was a superficially scraped together hash of Right and Left […] atheism as a dogma to be dictated to the members, etc., and as the main dogma (Proudhonist), abstention from the political movement. This infant’s spelling-book found favour (and still has a certain hold) in Italy and Spain, where the real conditions of the workers’ movement are as yet little developed, and among a few vain, ambitious and empty doctrinaires in French Switzerland and Belgium. Resolutions I (2) and (3) and IX now give the New York committee legal weapons with which to put an end to all sectarian formations and amateur groups and if necessary to expel them.”

K. Marx, Letter to Friedrich Bolte, November 23, 1871. [1]

Since the defeat of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, reiteration is a frequent ocurrence in the Babellian context in which the life of the so-called “anarchist movement” painfully takes place.[2] As if it were “Groundhog Day” [3], we are condemned to repeat the same experience indefinitely. Time and again, the ideological displacements and the conceptualizations of others gain presence in our camp. Thus – again – the notions of “sect”, “sectarianism” and “sectarian” emerge in the debate. We don’t have the slightest chance of escaping from this vicious cycle. Like Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in the famous comedy, every day the same song is hammered into us (at six in the morning!), forced to repeat ourselves in an infinite cycle from which not even suicide saves us.

Perhaps, for those who come from the so-called “left” – who have happily already evolved into “libertarian” positions – and today share the same barricade side by side, these imprecations have always been there, close at hand. Ready to be wielded at the slightest provocation. So they assume that such curse words are part of our lexicon or that they are part of a kind of universal vocabulary that we have to use out of obligation.

For those of us who have been in the fight for some years, the feeling of déjà vécu caused by the remastering of this farcical operetta is inevitable. Indeed, it’s not the first time that we have to face these epithets and, definitely, it will not be the last. They are repeated as a mantra invoking the “crushing march of history” (Saint Charlie of Trier, dixit). The sad observation is that this liturgy even occurs in the ins and outs of the praxis —live and active today— of the Informal Anarchic Tendency (TIA). A tendency that has no place for uniforming practices, nor for repetition; that is to say, the attempts at fronts, nor the attempts at “tactical unity” and “collective responsibility.” Continue reading “In Defense of Associative Specificity by Gustavo Rodríguez EN/ES” →

Chile: ‘The only certainty: some reflections on the “revolt” of October 18’ – Ignacio Avaca

Posted on 2021/11/16 - 2021/12/08 by darknights

It’s been 2 years since the wave of mass demonstrations started on October 18, 2019, and it lasted in the streets much longer than what the media “reported”. Many of us may have participated in some way in those events. And now, after its decline, and on the occasion of the ephemeris, there are a couple of things worth pointing out, always in order to sharpen the criticism and continue the conflict.

(I) Of Revolt(s) and confrontation during the century of the Chilean democracy.

The “revolt”, as many have wanted to call it, meant a generalized breaking point of the “normality” consolidated by the democracies of this territory during the 21st century. These kinds of “critical” moments are not alien to any government, and, for our part, it is absolutely necessary for us to take into account that the conflict with that normality has existed since before, coexisted and continues to exist after the events of October 18. That is why we cannot forget all the expressions of attack and confrontation that have taken place so far during this period, but which definitely have not had the stir and massiveness of the events of October 18 (and probably did not seek that with them either).

If conflict and violence against this normality are nothing new, much less are the consequences of taking this path. Prison is not new in this scenario, and, far from any victimhood, it is a “hazard of the trade”. Although the “prisoners of the revolt” have also enjoyed greater media coverage, and their situation and dynamics are totally different from those of the anarchic-subversive prisoners, prison will never be strange to those who have constantly materialized their desires to destroy the reality that destroys us.

To all those who did not follow the institutional paths in the era of Chilean democracy, and who have been an unquestionable source of inspiration and learning for those of us who have taken the same path, but in “our” way… we do not forget you! The anti-capitalist and autonomous subversion, the resitance of the Peñis, And this does not detract from or call into question the breaking of the October “revolt”, it only shows that some, for a long time now, have been in constant revolt.

There is nothing and no one to wait for. Continue reading “Chile: ‘The only certainty: some reflections on the “revolt” of October 18’ – Ignacio Avaca” →

Chile: Text of anarchist comrade Mónica Caballero from San Miguel prison

Posted on 2021/10/12 - 2021/10/12 by darknights

This week marks 8 years since various groups of the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) and different individuals around the world raised the initiative to maintain a week of international solidarity with imprisoned anarchists, and that this week coincides with the day on which the anniversary of the legal murder of anarchists Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco by the U.S. government in 1927 is commemorated.

The official history written by the powerful plus the progressive democratic left and a part of anarchism have been especially concerned with creating a victimized image of Sacco and Vanzetti and far from any illegalist practice. All this based on the recognition by the American judicial apparatus that within the criminal process that condemned Sacco and Vanzetti there were many irregularities and that they would be legally “innocent” (information that became known many years after the murder of the comrades). Probably the comrades had no relation with the expropriation of South Braintree, which is important to know and make visible, as it is also important to emphasize that Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists of action, who propagated anti-authoritarian ideas and exercised different illegalist practices.

In the territory we call the USA in the early 1900s there were several informal anarchist groups dedicated to expropriations and to the spread of ideas antagonistic to domination. Nicola and Bartolomeo actively participated in one of these groups, specifically in the one surrounding the newspaper “Cronaca Sovversiva”. These last elements “the official history” has omitted them as in the same way they have taken special care not to remember the international solidarity that the comrades had during the year 1927. There were many demonstrations of repudiation in different localities of the political/legal/police process, as well as explosions in the name of Sacco and Vanzetti, one of the best known being the action that destroyed the Italian consulate in Buenos Aires.

It is not by chance that those who sustain the Power and its false critics use and make up the history related to Sacco and Vanzetti, certainly it is not the first time and it will not be the last.

The repressive apparatuses of the State break with their own legality constantly: they create montages, rape, torture and a long etc… These practices, for those of us who position ourselves as enemies of the hegemony of Power, should not surprise us… Trusting in the democratic legality of the State is not part of my political construction. This does not mean that I intend to naturalize the abuses exercised by the powers of the State on a daily basis; making visible is not the same as being a victim.

I see a week of solidarity specifically with anarchist prisoners as one more occasion to make visible what happens behind the high walls. Prison for me is yet another scenario of confrontation, which is felt in the smallest and most everyday things.

The first step I took in a prison was a long time ago, since then I have never stopped feeling the solidarity of my comrades, that solidarity I have had in a fraternal embrace or in a beautiful seditious light in some icon of Power.

94 years after the legal assassination of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, nothing and nobody is forgotten.

Those who fight against Power do not cease to be remembered.

Source: Publicacion Refractario

Against The Tide – Gustavo Rodríguez

Posted on 2021/07/15 - 2021/07/15 by darknights

-The dilemmas of the contemporary «anarchist movement» versus the instituting character of the «social movements.»¹.

«Vulgarly it is held that the «great mass» could not remain without religion; the communists extend that claim.»

Max Stirner, My Enjoyment of Myself, in The Only One and His Property.

«To see what we have in front of our noses requires a constant struggle.»

George Orwell, In front of your nose.

Contrary to what all the verbal diarrhea of post-modern neo-Leninism claims about the so-called «social movements», the novelty of these movements does not lie in the replacement of trade unions and traditional political parties, but in the motivational structure of the subjects involved; That is, in the convergence of perceptions around multiple factors (economic-socio-cultural) that nourish the collective longing for the welfare state and the labor society and, through processes of social mobilization, constitute a new institutional force that serves as a platform for the different fascisms -whether black, brown, red or whatever color they are given in order to persuade the «masses»- and paves the way for populist leaders.

Meanwhile, the social scientists (neo-Marxians and/or proto-populists) juggle a thousand and one times to semantically accommodate «institutionalization», giving the concept a one hundred and eighty degree turn so that it is grammatically instrumental for them; that is, hiding the intentions of co-optation of the struggles and forced integration to the «new» domination.

In this way, they reconceptualize «institutionalization» and define it as a «mediation» (between the so-called civil society and the regime) that redesigns the forms of participation, the mechanisms of representation and the devices of legitimization, enhancing the «transforming» character of social mobilization in total «recreation of the movementist tradition»² . In the words of the merolico mayor Boaventura de Souza Santos: showing the emancipatory horizons that they recreate as agents of social change, by participating in the construction of hegemonic ideas that drive the politicization of reality³ .

Despite this evidence, the critique of the instituting maneuver of «social movements» has been mute in our tents. The shameless silences in the face of these instituting vessels -which suffocate individual breathing in the forced gasps of the movementist ritual-, have contributed to the theoretical-practical confusion that today plagues our circles, facilitating the imposition of alien programs and the adoption of the logic of the enemy (diametrically opposed to our desires for total emancipation). Instead of drawing a crucial dividing line, which establishes the definitive separation of the instituting struggles and punctuates the consistent action of contemporary anarchic grammar, an ambiguous discourse, loaded with vague expositions and excess of positivity, has been encouraged. Continue reading “Against The Tide – Gustavo Rodríguez” →