On the happy occasion of a new year, we share the chapter, “Merry Crisis and Happy New Fear” from the Invisible Committtee’s To our friends. (The full text can be found on line at the Anarchist Library).
Over the course of the last year or two, numerous initiatives have emerged in spain (and more recently in greece) to organise and federate anarchist groups into larger, more embracing and therefore, it is assumed, more effective political agents. Among the many examples, one finds the catalan based Procés Embat and the initiative that emerged in Madrid under the name of Apoyo Mutuo.
Giorgio Agamben‘s reflections on sovereignty and the state of exception as mutually interdependent concepts in western political thought and practice are fundamental tools in the understanding of the contemporary “war on terror”, as this has been assumed in various countries, and most recently and explicitly in france, after the november 13th attacks in Paris. With the declaration of a state on emergency in the country, close to three thousand searches have been conducted without judicial warrant, 360 people have been placed under house arrest, and 287 people held in prison under provisional detention, with none of these actions leading to prosecutions for terrorism. (Periodico Diagonal 24/12/2015) Indeed, in the wave of arrests, dissidents of any stripe have become the targets. And with a ban on all public protest, it is politics itself which is suspended.
We share below, in translation, a chronicle written by Agamben for Le Monde (23/12/2015) …
On the 17th of December, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a young tunisian street vendor is harassed by the police in the small town of Sidi Bouzid. He lacks the proper authorisation to sell and his goods are therefore confiscated. In desperation and in response, before the local administrative building of the province, he douses himself with petrol and sets himself alight. Bouazizi will die on the 4th of January of the new year, but the revolt sparked in his country by his act will bring the 23 year old dictatorship of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali to an end on the 14th of January.
Photographs by Ilyas Akengin
Varto, Semdinli, Cizre, Nusaybin, Beytussebap, Bismil, Silvan, Tusba, Sirnak, Gever, Derik, Silopi, Diyarbakir: these are names of martyred towns and villages of eastern, largely kurdish, turkey. They mark points in a cartography of terror carried out by the turkish state/the Erdogan-AKP government, against its own people. Their populations have been systematically subject to military sieges, curfews, arbitrary arrests, selective assassinations (e.g., Tahir Elçi, head of the Diyarbakir Bar Association), and collective armed State violence.
We share below a reflection by Marina Sitrin on the “anarchist/libertarian” character of many contemporary social movements. While not referring to themselves as anarchist, the movements, in their practice, and ultimately, in their self-understanding, share a great deal with older anarchist movements. This affinity in practice and thought invites those who insist on anarchist political identity to reflect upon the relevance of such affirmations and the way in which anarchists must engage politically.
Originally published in Dissent, the article is part of the magazine’s special issue of “Arguments on the Left.” (Fall 2015) To read its counterpart, by Sheri Berman, click here.
We share below a translation of a journalistic report by Ines Morales Bernardos and published in Periodico Diagonal on the creation of collective, self-managed autonomies in greece, in the wake of the December 2008 popular uprisings.
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We share below a documentary/political intervention “The potential to storm heaven”, covering the popular uprising in Athens and greece, following on the police murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos in 2008 (posted on anarchistnews.org), and from Ross Domoney, video of protests this year in Athens remembering the 6th of december …
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When I see that young people are in the process of losing their old common values and absorbing the new models imposed by capitalism, running the risk of dehumanising themselves and being prey to an abominable aphasia, to a brutal absence of critical capacity, to a factious passivity, I remember that they were the characteristics of the S.S. – and I see spread over our cities the horrible shadow of the swastika.
Pier-Paolo Pasolini, Scritti corsari
In the world Empire of our times, talk of a “clash of civilisations” (or of “war of religions”, or of any post-colonial variations on the theme), can only function as an ideological obfuscation of our catastrophe. Capitalism is today in effect global, that is, its mechanisms of domination and exploitation, and its apparatuses of subjectivation, leave no corner of the globe untouched. Yet the geography of this Empire is not uniform; its uneven development is planned to the greatest possible degree to secure the conditions of appropriation and accumulation. “Land grabs” in Africa are paralleled by debt driven consumerism and hedonism in the centres of universalising networks of power. Capitalism demands a common subjectivity, while incapable of satisfying the explosion of desires that it leaves in its destructive wake.
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Against democracy: An anarchist criticism
While all societies make their own imaginaries (institutions, laws, traditions, beliefs and behaviors), autonomous societies are those that their members are aware of this fact, and explicitly self-institute … . In contrast, the members of heteronomous societies attribute their imaginaries to some extra-social authority (i.e. God, ancestors, historical necessity).
Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society
An anonymous translation is now available of a book from Spain – a book which was used as evidence in trials against arrested anarchists during the various moments of Operation Pandora, as proof of their criminality: the crime of being anarchists. To put the text in its political context, we begin with a statement released by the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth on the original Operation, followed then by the book, to be shared, distributed and debated …
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