We publish an article from Crimethinc.
On April 19, 2023, three anarchists were killed in battle near Bakhmut: an American named Cooper Andrews, an Irishman named Finbar Cafferkey, and a Russian named Dmitry Petrov, known to us until then as Ilya Leshy. People in our networks have shared undertakings with all three of these comrades over the years.
“Solidarity Zone” is a project that helps people repressed for anti-war resistance. Altleft talked to activists of the project about solidarity in the Russian society, forms of protest and the prospects of the end of the war. Questions were answered by participants that work in Russia.
I’m not surprised by the violence. I am not surprised because I know about the violence that occurs in Russia every day. Senseless cruelty is seemingly the norm for some Russians. I don’t have a ready answer to why this is the case. It’s worth asking sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists for an explanation.
The theory of the state is the reef on which the revolutions of our century have been shipwrecked.1 During the revolutions of the Arab Spring, the people brought about the fall of the regime, but the institutions of the state remained intact. Elsewhere the revolutions were drained in protracted civil wars. Everywhere that the old regime has seemed to be thrown down, it has found new sources of strength and risen again. What would it look like to finally break with this cycle?
In the past, insurrections have managed to defeat the state, rather than just a particular government. Insurrection is something more than a wave of riots, militant protests, blockades, occupations, and so on. It is the opening of a rupture, the search for that point after which no turning back is possible. If the revolutions of our time haven't defeated the state, we argue this is because there haven't been insurrections: there have been nonviolent uprisings, riots, armed struggles, and civil wars, but not yet insurrection.
Yesterday, on February 21, an extraordinary meeting of the Russian Security Council was held. As part of this theatrical act, Putin forced his closest servants to publicly “ask” him to recognize the independence of the so-called “people’s republics” of the Luhansk People’s Republic [LPR] and Donetsk People’s Republic [DPR] in eastern Ukraine.
Some claim, that anarchism opposes violence, as for anarchists means and ends meet. But only second statement is correct, wherease first is not. This because in anarchism violence is not only means, but in a certain sense a goal in itself.
With this, I do not mean childish boasting about hanging last bourgeois to guts of last priest or anything like that. Destruction of class enemies as individuals is not a revolutionary goal. As Kropotkin wrote, one may hardly avoid some excesses from side of most angered people, but obviously it is goal of anarchists to minimise them.
In order to land rights, the State is not required that he committed an illegal act! What dangerous activities for the state, the more it bites back. But repression and armed violence on human beings have never stopped the attack on the state and the desire to destroy it. It never once did not succumb, is resisting the enemy to drive into a trap.
Any power to suppress and discredit these people's protests (and not a political clown opponents during the election) enlists the aid of the nationalists, who are always ready for small investments "in the case of the nation" to do all the dirty robot.
Sometimes it is disguised as a blunt attack, and sometimes, as happened today, under the guise of "comrades in the struggle" to get into, and to embroil the most to discredit protesters.
In Conversation with Raoul Vaneigem
Hans Ulrich Obrist: I just visited Edouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, who have written an appeal to Barack Obama. What would your appeal and/or advice be to Obama?
I know very little about the anti-fascist movement, except, of course, the facts that there is no movement of one of the official leader, that there are comprised of people of different political and philosophical views that the movement uses different methods of dealing with "fascism", including through direct clashes with the "fascists". I have a familiar anti-fascists from St. Petersburg. Some of them, 4 November 2009 by a small group went against the Russian march with a banner "Nationalism in the trash." They are heroes. And make me the warmest feelings.
The bourgeois parties, their structure reproduce the capitalist class society, ie on one side are professional politicians (top of the Party), on drugoypartiyny basis (ordinary members) consisting of employees. At the time when the labor movement took over the party form of political struggle, it took over as the political form of class rule and has played this social form, ie therefore support of the bourgeois class society.
Tatiana Vorozheykina: "Much more important for the modernization of the diverse, strong and weak self-organization processes and people trying to change their position and type of interaction in their circle, and with authority. Supermodernizatsionnymi projects should become self-development projects in housing, the support of trade unions, environmental movement, the movement to protect cultural monuments, fighters sealing buildings and so on.
Recently, a libertarian movement in Russia has developed a tendency to criticize his colleagues from the position of "correct revolutionary", "a truly proletarian principles" and "the true position of libertarian communism." Moreover, such critics tend to last several years is not involved in active political activities. They assign themselves the role of censors and try to make out that the comrades who spend most of their time to organize actions and other events dealing with something not very necessary and even harmful to the libertarian movement.
This material does not express the views of members of Autonomous Action. Moreover, some statements are disputed. However, the article is written by a publicist, who is very close to our positions. Recent events (attacks on cops in Primorye, Perm, finally, in Kyrgyzstan) force us to pay close attention to the processes taking place here and now before our eyes.
June 11th is the International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason & All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners. This action day has a long history, it was organized first time 20 years ago in 2004. In the first year, we managed to paint a graffiti to wall of one of the most guarded objects of Moscow,...
Anarchist group ANA Regensburg hosted my online-presentation on 16th of May 2024, in which I discussed tactics of anti-war activism in Russia, and reasons why the anti-war movement has not been able to make an impact to change the course of events yet. Cases of anarchists repressed for anti-war...