Some notes on Insurrectionary Anarchism
(A) | 01.05.2011 13:05 | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements
Some notes on Insurrectionary Anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism is not an ideological solution to all social problems, a commodity on the capitalist market of ideologies and opinions, but an on-going praxis aimed at putting an end to the domination of the state and the continuance of capitalism, which requires analysis and discussion to advance. We don’t look to some ideal society or offer an image of utopia for public consumption. Throughout history, most anarchists, except those who believed that society would evolve to the point that it would leave the state behind, have been insurrectionary anarchists. Most simply, this means that the state will not merely wither away, thus anarchists must attack, for waiting is defeat; what is needed is open mutiny and the spreading of subversion among the exploited and excluded. Here we spell out some implications that we and some other insurrectionary anarchists draw from this general problem: if the state will not disappear on its own, how then do we end its existence? It is, therefore, primarily a practice, and focuses on the organization of attack. These notes are in no way a closed or finished product; we hope they are a part of an ongoing discussion, and we most certainly welcome responses (interesting responses will be printed in the next issue of Hot Tide). Much of this comes from past issues of Insurrection and pamphlets from Elephant Editions (see the Insurrection Page on our website or write us if interested).
1: THE STATE WILL NOT JUST DISAPPEAR; ATTACK
--The State of capital will not “wither away,” as it seems many anarchists have come to believe--not only entrenched in abstract positions of ‘waiting,’ but some even openly condemning the acts of those for whom the creation of the new world depends on the destruction of the old. Attack is the refusal of mediation, pacification, sacrifice, accommodation, and compromise.
--It is through acting and learning to act, not propaganda, that we will open the path to insurrection, although propaganda has a role in clarifying how to act. Waiting only teaches waiting; in acting one learns to act.
--The force of an insurrection is social, not military. The measure for evaluating the importance of a generalized revolt is not the armed clash, but on the contrary the amplitude of the paralysis of the economy, of normality.
2. SELF-ACTIVITY versus managed revolt: from insurrection to revolution
--As anarchists, the revolution is our constant point of reference, no matter what we are doing or what problem we are concerned with. But the revolution is not a myth simply to be used as a point of reference. Precisely because it is a concrete event, it must be built daily through more modest attempts which do not have all the liberating characteristics of the social revolution in the true sense. These more modest attempts are insurrections. In them the uprising of the most exploited and excluded of society and the most politically sensitized minority opens the way to the possible involvement of increasingly wider strata of exploited on a flux of rebellion which could lead to revolution.
--Struggles must be developed, both in the intermediate and long term. Clear strategies are necessary to allow different methods to be used in a coordinated and fruitful way.
--Autonomous action: the self-management of struggle means that those that struggle are autonomous in their decisions and actions; this is the opposite of an organization of synthesis which always attempts to take control of struggle. Struggles that are synthesized within a single controlling organization are easily integrated into the power structure of present society. Self-organized struggles are by nature uncontrollable when they are spread across the social terrain.
3. UNCONTROLLABILITY versus managed revolt: the spread of attack
--It is never possible to see the outcome of a specific struggle in advance. Even a limited struggle can have the most unexpected consequences. The passage from the various insurrections--limited and circumscribed--to revolution can never be guaranteed in advance by any method.
--What the system is afraid of is not these acts of sabotage in themselves, so much as their spreading socially. Every proletarianized individual who disposes of even the most modest means can draw up his or her objectives, alone or along with others. It is materially impossible for the State and capital to police the apparatus of control that operates over the whole social territory. Anyone who really wants to contest the network of control can make their own theoretical and practical contribution. The appearance of the first broken links coincides with the spreading of acts of sabotage. The anonymous practice of social self-liberation could spread to all fields, breaking the codes of prevention put into place by power.
--Small actions, therefore, easily reproducible, requiring unsophisticated means that are available to all, are by their very simplicity and spontaneity uncontrollable. They make a mockery of even the most advanced technological developments in counter-insurgency.
4. PERMANENT CONFLICTUALITY versus mediation with institutional forces
--Conflictuality should be seen as a permanent element in the struggle against those in power. A struggle which lacks this element ends up pushing us towards mediating with the institutions, grows accustomed to the habits of delegating and believing in an illusory emancipation carried out by parliamentary decree, to the very point of actively participating in our own exploitation ourselves.
--There might perhaps be individual reasons for doubting the attempt to reach one’s aims with violent means. But when non-violence comes to be raised to the level of a non-violable principle, and where reality is divided into ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ then arguments cease to have value, and everything is seen in terms of submission and obedience. The officials of the anti-globalization movement, by distancing themselves and denouncing others have clarified one point in particular: that they see their principles--to which they feel duty-bound--as a claim to power over the movement as a whole.
5. ILLEGALITY; insurrection isn’t just robbing banks
--Insurrectionary anarchism isn’t a morality on survival: we all survive in various ways, often in compromise with capital, depending on our social position, our talents and tastes. We certainly aren’t morally against the use of illegal means to free ourselves from the fetters of wage slavery in order to live and carry on our projects, yet we also don’t fetishize illegalism or turn it into some kind of religion with martyrs; it is simply a means, and often a good one.
6. INFORMAL ORGANIZATION; not professional revolutionaries or activists, not permanent organizations
From party/union to self-organization:
--Profound differences exist within the revolutionary movement: the anarchist tendency towards quality of the struggle and its self-organization and the authoritarian tendency towards quantity and centralization.
--Organization is for concrete tasks: thus we are against the party, syndicate and permanent organization, all of which act to synthesize struggle and become elements of integration for capital and the state. Their purpose comes to be their own existence, in the worst case they first build the organization then find or create the struggle. Our task is to act; organization is a means. Thus we are against the delegation of action or practice to an organization: we need generalized action that leads to insurrection, not managed struggles. Organization should not be for the defense of certain interests, but of attack on certain interests.
--Informal organization is based on a number of comrades linked by a common affinity; its propulsive element is always action. The wider the range of problems these comrades face as a whole, the greater their affinity will be. It follows that the real organization, the effective capacity to act together, i.e. knowing where to find each other, the study and analysis of problems together, and the passing to action, all takes place in relation to the affinity reached and has nothing to do with programs, platforms, flags or more or less camouflaged parties. The informal anarchist organization is therefore a specific organization which gathers around a common affinity.
The anarchist minority and the exploited and excluded:
--We are of the exploited and excluded, and thus our task is to act. Yet some critique all action that is not part of a large and visible social movement as “acting in the place of the proletariat.” They counsel analysis and waiting, instead of acting. Supposedly, we are not exploited alongside the exploited; our desires, our rage and our weaknesses are not part of the class struggle. This is nothing but another ideological separation between the exploited and subversives.
--The active anarchist minority is not slave to numbers but continues to act against power even when the class clash is at a low level within the exploited of society. Anarchist action should not therefore aim at organizing and defending the whole of the class of exploited in one vast organization to see the struggle from beginning to end, but should identify single aspects of the struggle and carry them through to their conclusion of attack. We must also move away from the stereotypical images of the great mass struggles, and the concept of the infinite growth of a movement that is to dominate and control everything.
--The relationship with the multitude of exploited and excluded cannot be structured as something that must endure the passage of time, i.e. be based on growth to infinity and resistance against the attack of the exploiters. It must have a more reduced specific dimension, one that is decidedly that of attack and not a rearguard relationship.
--We can start building our struggle in such a way that conditions of revolt can emerge and latent conflict can develop and be brought to the fore. In this way a contact is established between the anarchist minority and the specific situation where the struggle can be developed.
7. THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SOCIAL: individualism and communism, a false problem
--We embrace what is best in individualism and what is best in communism.
--Insurrection begins with the desire of individuals to break out of constrained and controlled circumstances, the desire to reappropriate the capacity to create one’s own life as one sees fit. This requires that they overcome the separation between them and their conditions of existence. Where the few, the privileged, control the conditions of existence, it is not possible for most individuals to truly determine their existence on their terms. Individuality can only flourish where equality of access to the conditions of existence is the social reality. This equality of access is communism; what individuals do with that access is up to them and those around them. Thus there is no equality or identity of individuals implied in true communism. What forces us into an identity or an equality of being are the social roles laid upon us by our present system. There is no contradiction between individuality and communism.
8. WE ARE THE EXPLOITED, we are the contradiction: this is no time for waiting
--Certainly, capitalism contains deep contradictions which push it towards procedures of adjustment and evolution aimed at avoiding the periodic crises which afflict it; but we cannot cradle ourselves in waiting for these crises. When they happen they will be welcomed if they respond to the requirements for accelerating the elements of the insurrectional process. As the exploited, however, we are the fundamental contradiction for capitalism. Thus the time is always ripe for insurrection, just as we can note that humanity could have ended the existence of the state at any time in its history. A rupture in the continual reproduction of this system of exploitation and oppression has always been possible.
http://www.anti-politics.net/distro/download/some-notes.pdf
http://translationcollective.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/some-notes-on-insurrectionary-anarchism/
http://www.reocities.com/kk_abacus/kka/NTINSUR.html
Insurrectionary anarchism is not an ideological solution to all social problems, a commodity on the capitalist market of ideologies and opinions, but an on-going praxis aimed at putting an end to the domination of the state and the continuance of capitalism, which requires analysis and discussion to advance. We don’t look to some ideal society or offer an image of utopia for public consumption. Throughout history, most anarchists, except those who believed that society would evolve to the point that it would leave the state behind, have been insurrectionary anarchists. Most simply, this means that the state will not merely wither away, thus anarchists must attack, for waiting is defeat; what is needed is open mutiny and the spreading of subversion among the exploited and excluded. Here we spell out some implications that we and some other insurrectionary anarchists draw from this general problem: if the state will not disappear on its own, how then do we end its existence? It is, therefore, primarily a practice, and focuses on the organization of attack. These notes are in no way a closed or finished product; we hope they are a part of an ongoing discussion, and we most certainly welcome responses (interesting responses will be printed in the next issue of Hot Tide). Much of this comes from past issues of Insurrection and pamphlets from Elephant Editions (see the Insurrection Page on our website or write us if interested).
1: THE STATE WILL NOT JUST DISAPPEAR; ATTACK
--The State of capital will not “wither away,” as it seems many anarchists have come to believe--not only entrenched in abstract positions of ‘waiting,’ but some even openly condemning the acts of those for whom the creation of the new world depends on the destruction of the old. Attack is the refusal of mediation, pacification, sacrifice, accommodation, and compromise.
--It is through acting and learning to act, not propaganda, that we will open the path to insurrection, although propaganda has a role in clarifying how to act. Waiting only teaches waiting; in acting one learns to act.
--The force of an insurrection is social, not military. The measure for evaluating the importance of a generalized revolt is not the armed clash, but on the contrary the amplitude of the paralysis of the economy, of normality.
2. SELF-ACTIVITY versus managed revolt: from insurrection to revolution
--As anarchists, the revolution is our constant point of reference, no matter what we are doing or what problem we are concerned with. But the revolution is not a myth simply to be used as a point of reference. Precisely because it is a concrete event, it must be built daily through more modest attempts which do not have all the liberating characteristics of the social revolution in the true sense. These more modest attempts are insurrections. In them the uprising of the most exploited and excluded of society and the most politically sensitized minority opens the way to the possible involvement of increasingly wider strata of exploited on a flux of rebellion which could lead to revolution.
--Struggles must be developed, both in the intermediate and long term. Clear strategies are necessary to allow different methods to be used in a coordinated and fruitful way.
--Autonomous action: the self-management of struggle means that those that struggle are autonomous in their decisions and actions; this is the opposite of an organization of synthesis which always attempts to take control of struggle. Struggles that are synthesized within a single controlling organization are easily integrated into the power structure of present society. Self-organized struggles are by nature uncontrollable when they are spread across the social terrain.
3. UNCONTROLLABILITY versus managed revolt: the spread of attack
--It is never possible to see the outcome of a specific struggle in advance. Even a limited struggle can have the most unexpected consequences. The passage from the various insurrections--limited and circumscribed--to revolution can never be guaranteed in advance by any method.
--What the system is afraid of is not these acts of sabotage in themselves, so much as their spreading socially. Every proletarianized individual who disposes of even the most modest means can draw up his or her objectives, alone or along with others. It is materially impossible for the State and capital to police the apparatus of control that operates over the whole social territory. Anyone who really wants to contest the network of control can make their own theoretical and practical contribution. The appearance of the first broken links coincides with the spreading of acts of sabotage. The anonymous practice of social self-liberation could spread to all fields, breaking the codes of prevention put into place by power.
--Small actions, therefore, easily reproducible, requiring unsophisticated means that are available to all, are by their very simplicity and spontaneity uncontrollable. They make a mockery of even the most advanced technological developments in counter-insurgency.
4. PERMANENT CONFLICTUALITY versus mediation with institutional forces
--Conflictuality should be seen as a permanent element in the struggle against those in power. A struggle which lacks this element ends up pushing us towards mediating with the institutions, grows accustomed to the habits of delegating and believing in an illusory emancipation carried out by parliamentary decree, to the very point of actively participating in our own exploitation ourselves.
--There might perhaps be individual reasons for doubting the attempt to reach one’s aims with violent means. But when non-violence comes to be raised to the level of a non-violable principle, and where reality is divided into ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ then arguments cease to have value, and everything is seen in terms of submission and obedience. The officials of the anti-globalization movement, by distancing themselves and denouncing others have clarified one point in particular: that they see their principles--to which they feel duty-bound--as a claim to power over the movement as a whole.
5. ILLEGALITY; insurrection isn’t just robbing banks
--Insurrectionary anarchism isn’t a morality on survival: we all survive in various ways, often in compromise with capital, depending on our social position, our talents and tastes. We certainly aren’t morally against the use of illegal means to free ourselves from the fetters of wage slavery in order to live and carry on our projects, yet we also don’t fetishize illegalism or turn it into some kind of religion with martyrs; it is simply a means, and often a good one.
6. INFORMAL ORGANIZATION; not professional revolutionaries or activists, not permanent organizations
From party/union to self-organization:
--Profound differences exist within the revolutionary movement: the anarchist tendency towards quality of the struggle and its self-organization and the authoritarian tendency towards quantity and centralization.
--Organization is for concrete tasks: thus we are against the party, syndicate and permanent organization, all of which act to synthesize struggle and become elements of integration for capital and the state. Their purpose comes to be their own existence, in the worst case they first build the organization then find or create the struggle. Our task is to act; organization is a means. Thus we are against the delegation of action or practice to an organization: we need generalized action that leads to insurrection, not managed struggles. Organization should not be for the defense of certain interests, but of attack on certain interests.
--Informal organization is based on a number of comrades linked by a common affinity; its propulsive element is always action. The wider the range of problems these comrades face as a whole, the greater their affinity will be. It follows that the real organization, the effective capacity to act together, i.e. knowing where to find each other, the study and analysis of problems together, and the passing to action, all takes place in relation to the affinity reached and has nothing to do with programs, platforms, flags or more or less camouflaged parties. The informal anarchist organization is therefore a specific organization which gathers around a common affinity.
The anarchist minority and the exploited and excluded:
--We are of the exploited and excluded, and thus our task is to act. Yet some critique all action that is not part of a large and visible social movement as “acting in the place of the proletariat.” They counsel analysis and waiting, instead of acting. Supposedly, we are not exploited alongside the exploited; our desires, our rage and our weaknesses are not part of the class struggle. This is nothing but another ideological separation between the exploited and subversives.
--The active anarchist minority is not slave to numbers but continues to act against power even when the class clash is at a low level within the exploited of society. Anarchist action should not therefore aim at organizing and defending the whole of the class of exploited in one vast organization to see the struggle from beginning to end, but should identify single aspects of the struggle and carry them through to their conclusion of attack. We must also move away from the stereotypical images of the great mass struggles, and the concept of the infinite growth of a movement that is to dominate and control everything.
--The relationship with the multitude of exploited and excluded cannot be structured as something that must endure the passage of time, i.e. be based on growth to infinity and resistance against the attack of the exploiters. It must have a more reduced specific dimension, one that is decidedly that of attack and not a rearguard relationship.
--We can start building our struggle in such a way that conditions of revolt can emerge and latent conflict can develop and be brought to the fore. In this way a contact is established between the anarchist minority and the specific situation where the struggle can be developed.
7. THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SOCIAL: individualism and communism, a false problem
--We embrace what is best in individualism and what is best in communism.
--Insurrection begins with the desire of individuals to break out of constrained and controlled circumstances, the desire to reappropriate the capacity to create one’s own life as one sees fit. This requires that they overcome the separation between them and their conditions of existence. Where the few, the privileged, control the conditions of existence, it is not possible for most individuals to truly determine their existence on their terms. Individuality can only flourish where equality of access to the conditions of existence is the social reality. This equality of access is communism; what individuals do with that access is up to them and those around them. Thus there is no equality or identity of individuals implied in true communism. What forces us into an identity or an equality of being are the social roles laid upon us by our present system. There is no contradiction between individuality and communism.
8. WE ARE THE EXPLOITED, we are the contradiction: this is no time for waiting
--Certainly, capitalism contains deep contradictions which push it towards procedures of adjustment and evolution aimed at avoiding the periodic crises which afflict it; but we cannot cradle ourselves in waiting for these crises. When they happen they will be welcomed if they respond to the requirements for accelerating the elements of the insurrectional process. As the exploited, however, we are the fundamental contradiction for capitalism. Thus the time is always ripe for insurrection, just as we can note that humanity could have ended the existence of the state at any time in its history. A rupture in the continual reproduction of this system of exploitation and oppression has always been possible.
http://www.anti-politics.net/distro/download/some-notes.pdf http://translationcollective.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/some-notes-on-insurrectionary-anarchism/ http://www.reocities.com/kk_abacus/kka/NTINSUR.html
(A)
Homepage:
http://translationcollective.wordpress.com/
Comments
Hide the following 16 comments
Thank You For Posting
01.05.2011 15:53
I personally find many revolutionaries around me - even some of the seemingly most hardcore 'anti-capitalist' and 'blac bloccers' - give me strange looks when I suggest 'such and such' an action based on tried and tested tactics of comrades around the globe, particularly in Athens, Chile and Mexico. My comrades then say things like, 'but thats taking it too far!' or 'I don't want anything to do with that, I have a job/house/family/freedom to risk if I do that'.
Then I ALMOST end up back tracking and ALMOST say sorry for suggesting - what the media dubs - 'extreme' actions. Then I usually go home, or to a library, look on the 'net, find some 'riot porn' or newspaper articles about the latest parcel bomb in Greece or IED in Chile, or attack on police with guns, and I yearn to be fighting alongside our brothers and sisters who are doing it, right now, today and yesterday, tomorrow and on and on...
It's true we shouldn't have Martyrs, particularly as our enemies have done that over the hundreds of years when they wage their Imperial/Elitist/Aristocratic protectionist or expansionist wars: therefore doing away with the idea of Martys is good...
Having said that, I do admire the strength and revolutionary resolve of our brothers and sisters that have fallen in the struggle or who are serving massive and soul strangling prison sentences, and I write their names on walls and I sing songs about them and I follow news of their court cases and I, well, I yearn to be fighting along side them but not because they are or are not Martyrs, but because they are my anarcho-brothers and sisters and are laying, or have laid, their lives on the line for the insurrections happening all over the world, particularly in the places I just mentioned.
Then I ask myself, what is it with our comrades that are hesitant or blatantly AGAINST 'turning up the heat', or 'intensification of tactics'?
The answer I usually and most commonly arrive at is this: people are scared to fight to the death or are frightened of a massive prison sentence, whereas I am not, not at all.
Infact, if I had the means, I'd be planning and carrying out 'intensification of tactics' tonight or tomorrow, on my own if necessary. I do not have the means at present and I am not certain I ever will.
That isn't to say I dont have 'things to risk', as I certainly do.
But the fight to crash the system is more important to me compared to whether or not I'm paying rent to a landlord, or if I have a wage or a bus pass or laptop or even five pounds in my pocket. Some of my most active periods as an insurrectionist have occurred during times in my life when I have had nothing, not even a home or a penny to my name. Indeed, when I was in prison years ago I militantly confronted the system head on and was noted for being 'anti-authoritarian' and was punished accordingly, solitary confinement, beaten by guards and 'underminded' at almost every turn by the officers in charge of my incarceration.
Also, I am not saying that my brothers and sisters have not become entrenched in fright and fear of murder by the state or life imprisonment by chance or because they have lead 'sheltered' or overly 'borguoise' lives...
On the contrary, comrades come in all shapes and sizes as we all know. Rather, I think the reason many comrades are hesitant or fearful of 'intensification of tactics' is because of the power of the media and miliatry backed system to condition people to believe we cant win and even if we try we are doomed to failure as the police and secret services are 'better at it' than us...
The power of state sponsored propaganda can never be overlooked when I wonder to myself why my brothers and sisters put down my ideas for 'intensification'.
The other question I inevitably ask myself is, 'is this hesitant/fearful comrade an undercover pig or a government spy?' Because it is a natural question to ask if suddenly someone I believed was 'hardcore' turns around and tells me to 'put down that hammer' or 'molotov' and attempts to 'guide' my perceived (by them) naivety towards the tactics they 'accept' as 'normal'. ie, smashing a bank window is 'fine', although blowing the bank up is 'not good'.
I am from a place where we recently uncovered an undercover MET cop, so please don't think I dont know what I'm talking about when it comes to being followed, spied on and the rest, as I certainly do and I have many years experience of spotting cops and spies, indeed, I'm sure they are monitoring what I am writing right now - such is the power, yet again, of the systems tentacles to bring about massive amounts of paranoia into the anarcho-insurrectionary movements. So lots of the time I spend being just that, paranoid about everyone around me.
Then I think, 'well, if I'm paranoid, so must everyone else be, too' and then I am back at square one, trying to ascertain who is up for 'intensification of tactics'.
Ultimately, the major issue that jumps out at me, after all I've touched on so far, and bearing in mind I think about these topics EVERY SINGLE DAY, is this: once a comrade does an action that I feel is 'intensification', then I will follow suit, but I'm very sad to say, I will probably do it alone, as I just don't know who to trust anymore...
No Surrender.
One Of The Exploited, Oppressed and Very, Very Angry
Guns and Bombs and ting
01.05.2011 17:12
The power of anarchism lies in its humanity and in the imaginative vision of those that will inherit the world. Taking up arms would surely undermine this humanity and kills the imagination.
If people see armed struggle as a logical progression to the tactic of property destruction then we should all be worried.
This isn't about a moral high ground. This is about a respect for life. Even the lives of those murdering and pillaging the globe right now, regardless of how much we would like to string them up.
cliche guevara
Blowing up the bank
01.05.2011 17:58
1. The unexpected and innocent punter who might just wander past at the time. No outcome is ever certain and whatever precautions you take, there is always this possibility. I reject the state's callous and anti-human notion of "collateral damage". It is incompatible with class struggle.
2. As has been said many times before, you can't blow up a social relationship. Trying to do so is almost certain to be counter-productive in the task of DESTROYING that social relationship (capitalism and its still frisky ancestor, patriarchy).
3. There would, of course, be great emotional satisfaction in blowing up the bank but it does not stand up to any rational analysis of our goals and how to achieve them. We do need to think how we can become a genuinely revolutionary force rather than just a nuisance, but this ain't it.
4. What is suggested is a road down which the state is ever eager to beckon us, because they know the ground and know they can win on it. If we show a disinclination to trot down this faux revolutionary path to be destroyed, they plant agents provocateur amongst us to urge it on us. I'm not saying you're one of those, OOTEOVVA. What you say sounds like it comes from genuine and justified rage. But how are we to tell the difference between the agent provocateur and the person who suggests the same rage-into-failure tactics sincerely? The outcome would be the same in the longer term, whatever the immediate differences.
5. It needs to be remembered that the forces ranged against us aren't worried about "collateral damage". They don't give a shit and don't care who they injure or kill.
Stroppyoldgit
This is exactly the 'problem' i find...
01.05.2011 19:23
Who said anything about killing anyone, except a mention of gun attacks on police in news stories from around the globe? who spoke of people walking by and being killed? not me, only you two...think about it....think about it long and hard........you are the embodiment of everything that frustrates me as an insurrectionist and doubtless you will not be supportive of many of the actions which I do support, thats fine. But without an intensification of tactics, ie, if we dont destroy the very physical tentacles of the system, the banks, cop shops, prisons, corporate HQ's, four-by-fours, deforesting machinery, motorways, planes, airports, ships and other 'crap', we are all fucked and then what do you expect to happen?
Nothing, thats what. The elites will carry on and the poor will walk into complete totalitarianism without even a fart of insurrectionary action in their direction.
Also, without wanting to take this too personally, as doubtless you are also 'revolutionaries' with your own opinions and histories and experiences on the many front lines over the decades, you both come across as ticking the 'too scared/hesitant to act to protect own interest' box. I'm assuming you both have mortgages, and please, without wanting to offend you, correct me if I'm actually wrong.
@stroppy old git, i have read many of your comments before and have sometimes nodded my head in agreement - in fact i think I even know you personally, your language on screen matches that of a guy I know round these parts who has said similar things - and I hold nothing against you. But I will say this mate, without the violent destruction of the tentacles of capital and state, the entire 'global society' , in which we are the enslaved, is doomed to fuckeries for ever more.....
Isn't it that simple, really?
More dialogue and genuine responses welcomed, although I'd personally prefer 'ting' and other blatant, evidently 'not your real voice', classist 'jargon' be avoided, cheers.
No Surrender
One Of The Exploited, Oppressed and Very, Very Angry
alienation....
01.05.2011 22:11
As stroppyoldgit alluded to, to adopt really violent tactics would be to overlook the fact that ordinary people will be caught in the middle like they always are in arms based power struggles.
If we really want to transcend this fucked up situation in the west we can't perpetuate the irrational view that we are on the brink of totalitarianism and need to blow everything to fuck before its too late. Instead we need to find a way to convey a sense of empowerment to other ordinary folk like us. This doesn't have to mean handing them a molotov and sending them to RBS, there are other ways.
I also think people need to start moving away from this holier than thou view towards activism thats developed. I don't have a mortgage or a gilded existence but even if I did so what? Everyone has to make comprimises and I'm sure you will have at some point too. Whats the point in focusing on such abrirtary aspects of peoples lives? How do you ever expect the movement to grow if you peddle this prescriptive 'activist' style existence? The more I read on here the more I'm starting feel like a doctrine is forming...isn't it just lazy hierarhical politics cloaked in revolutionary rhetoric?
cliche guevara
Learn from history
01.05.2011 22:41
Indymedia, do not allow yourselves to be exploited by agent provocateurs
Converter
People who advocate violence are naive fantastists
01.05.2011 22:58
Or not, maybe?
Just be sure that the violence you engage in is a/ morally justified, b/ strategically expedient (there are lots of examples where violence is morally justified but in reality, strategically, totally backfires), and guarantee us the violence you engage in will c/ never accidentally hurt innocent people, d/ will never accidentally hurt us, and e/ prove to us that you're not dragging us into a battle we're likely to lose and that you and your techniques will absolutely definitely win?
Anarchist
Bullshit
01.05.2011 23:14
And, on a minor point, use of words like "conflictuality" (main article) sounds like a load of pretentious, pompous bullshit
Arsene
Differences and between Greek and British culture
01.05.2011 23:37
To get to the point, when admiring the techniques and modus-operandi of Greek anarchists, please understand one massive difference influencing the viability of insurrectionary strategies in different cultural environments - Greece was saved from a Fascist Junta by an uprising started by radical groups (Athens Polytechnic etc); Britain was (at least in the perceptions of most British people) saved from Fascism by the people working in alliance with the military and with the State.
Like or not, these blunt realities of political history have a massive influence on what radicals can achieve in the UK and "direct translation" between these 2 cultures is simply not possible (no matter how emotionally appealing that idea might superficially be).
Word Up
unless im mistaken
02.05.2011 00:54
if you guys and girls dont want to talk about that constructively, instead of doing exactly what i said my comrades are already doing, then why dont you buzz off?
and just to come back at some of your evidently ill thought out responses, :
- i said if i was wrong about the mortgage assertion, then correct me, i actually said correct me if im wrong. which you did, but then you carry on with a silly - if i do say so myself - attempt at a blind character assassination.
- I haven't said anyone should be killed. I actually haven't said that, at all, not once, never. I talked about the destruction of physical tentacles, ie.property.
- I didn't say Greek campaigning was the be all and end all of insurrectionary violence, which it obviously isnt as people are fighting with varying anarchic-tactics, all around the globe, and I take my cues from multiple campaigns
- I dont feel isolated by my views or beliefs, my so called 'revolutioanry comrades' isolate me with their hesitation or outright disagreement - which I find perplexing, as they are calling for revolution, but wont fight for it - and therefore YOUR ATTITUDES ISOLATE ME as I try to come to terms with my own anger and revolutionary resolve to fight on
- Just what exactly are you lot doing on a comments page about anarchist insurrection when the original piece was intended to be, QUOTE, "part of an ongoing discussion" and from the perspective of, quote, "analysis and discussion to advance...."....."Insurrectionary anarchism" and is supposed to , quote, "spell out some implications that we and some other insurrectionary anarchists draw" from the problem we face within the insurrectionary movements.
Therefore my comments are completely inline with what the original author had intended, whereas your lots seemingly are just about isolating me further.
- also, i would never admit or not admit what i ahve or haven't or was willing or not willing to do on an IM site! I was not born yesterday - although you may believe I was! - and value my security much more than telling you lot what i am capable of or not capable of!!
"check yourself before you wreck yourself", I think the song goes.....
PS and just calling yourself an 'anarchist' at the bottom of your comment doesn't neccesarily make people believe one hundred percent that you are representative of anyone other anarchists than yourself....
PPS we are millions, by the way, literally millions, im just unfortunate to be in a place where we are evidently only a handful.....
PPPS I would seriously advise the genuine comrades to look at the archive published by sheffield Indymedia detailing comment sleft by people using 'dodgy, questionable and unreliable' IP addresses, ie government computers based in government buildings, heres the link to get you 'newbees' started,
No Surrender
One Of The Exploited, Oppressed and Very, Very Angry
Oh the irony
02.05.2011 06:47
I spose it's "One of" who gets to decide which "comrades" are "genuine" and which are not - presumably on the basis of whether they support his or her take on insurrectionary anarchism?
No Surrender
Signal
Mortgage?
02.05.2011 08:23
It's true that OOTEOVVA said nothing about killing people. But (s)he did talk about "blowing up the bank", and as soon as you do that there's the risk of death or injury to the innocent punter walking past. I'm certainly not opposed to damaging the oppressor's property and their tools of extraction and destruction, but you need to 100% certain that's all that's going to be damaged and not someone else's life or health.
Stroppyoldgit
If
02.05.2011 09:38
"The force of an insurrection is social, not military. The measure for evaluating the importance of a generalized revolt is not the armed clash, but on the contrary the amplitude of the paralysis of the economy, of normality"
then it is surely sending out the wrong message to head your notes with the image of a machine gun - the anarchist "broken rifles" would be much more relevant.
Ashe
What a prick
02.05.2011 10:58
You sir, are a fucking muppet, at best a deluded fantasist and at worst a police provocateur...... FUCK OFF
Anarchist
@ 'anarchist'
02.05.2011 17:42
also, you're clearly sexist, classist and down right incapable of arguing on topic, instead turning to name calling. pathetic, mate, completely pathetic.
also, 'anarchist' i stated that i go and look at stuff on the net when people such as yourself put me down me and make me feel isolated. i never said i dont go on actions, believe me, i do, plenty of them, i simply pointed out i look to other comrades that are active in times of loneliness and almost dispair at the state of this 'movement ' around where i live......if you actually read what i said, its a balanced and reasoned point......whereas you are clearly unbalanced by what ive said, makes me think you're not an 'anarchist' at all.......maybe even a gateway.303 pig.....
correct me if im wrong and once again, if anyone actually has anything 'decent' to say about the movement and the issues 'we' face, then go ahead, but plesase dont think you are getting anywhere with this 'you're a muppet' 'fuck off' stuff, its blatantly childish and almost 'counter'revolutionary.
No Surrender.
One Of The Exploited, Oppressed and Very, Very Angry
Stroll on
03.05.2011 19:42
The inconsistencies in your feeble discourse are so plentiful it'd be tedious to point them all out, but, as just ONE extra example, no I did not put you down and make you "feel isolated", it was YOU that said you feel isolated before I even joined this thread. All your other arguments are equally illogical, equally factually inconsistent and equally poorly-informed. And it is definitely not "childish" to tell a self-evident agent provocateur to fuck off and troll some other website.
With today's leaks about the Tories considering a major gear-change in the cuts and privatisation programme, the radical movement in Britain may well be on the verge of its first significant success in decades, so no surprise the agent provocateurs are trolling Indymedia to try and fake-up evidence that radicals are just violent nutters and thugs
Anarchist