Against War

Posted on February 24, 2022 by Julius Gavroche

Soldier! The Enemy is in Minsk, not Kiev!

(Pramen, 21/02/2022)

Putin, with his imperialist ambitions, threatens to invade Ukraine. Lukashenko is ready to support his Kremlin master by sending Belarusian soldiers to war in another country. The attempts to pump patriotism into the Belarusian society, though passing, are very modest. Soldiers will have to die for the Russian tsar.

But, as before, every soldier has a choice. Even if that choice here and now seems improbable. At critical moments, we all show great determination. Russia’s war for influence in Ukraine is not a war of Belarusian soldiers. Dictator Lukashenko and Emperor Putin are the true enemies of the peoples of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

They want to throw you as meat to the front lines, to show the power of a man who will never appear on this front. Courage and comradely spirit are unknown to him and his entourage.

Soldiers, in your hands is a weapon that can free you and your comrades from useless bloodshed and war. Revolt against the officers and the greedy politicians. If anyone should perish in all this conflict, it is the Belarussian dictatorship and the Russian empire!

For world without wars, dictators and empires!
Anarchists of Belarus

___

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Against Annexations and Imperial Aggression

Posted on February 22, 2022 by Julius Gavroche

A Statement from Russian Anarchists against Russian Aggression in Ukraine (Published in English by the CrimethInc. Collective and Libcom.org)

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.

It is quite obvious that this is a step towards the further annexation of these territories by Russia—no matter how it is formalized (or not formalized) legally. In fact, the Kremlin ceases to consider the LPR and DPR part of Ukraine and finally makes them its protectorate. “First the recognition of independence, then annexation”: this sequence was already worked out in 2014 in Crimea. This is also clear from Naryshkin’s stupid reservations at the meeting of the Security Council (“Yes, I support the entry of these territories into the Russian Federation “).1 Since the meeting, as it turned out, was broadcast on tape [rather than live], and these “reservations” were not cut out, but left in—the hint is clear.

Continue reading →
Posted in News blog | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Twenty-First-Century Fascism: Where We Are

Posted on February 13, 2022 by Julius Gavroche

Enzo Traverso on post-fascism in times of pandemic. (New Politics/Verso Books Blog)

Over the past decade, the world experienced a notable increase in far-right movements. The ghosts of the 1930s seemed to be reawakening and a neo- or post-fascist wave extending its shadow over multiple continents. It reached its peak between 2016 and 2018, with the elections of Trump and Bolsonaro in the US and Brazil and, in the middle, the clash between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron in France. Many far-right parties entered EU governments and some “exceptions” came to an end, with the appearance of Alternative für Deutschland and Vox on the stage of German and Spanish politics. Authoritarian, nationalist and xenophobic governments emerged everywhere, from Putin’s Russia to Modi’s India and Erdogan’s Turkey. The world was turning dark: neo-fascism, post-fascism, right-wing populism? The debate over what to call it remained open, but everyone understood that fascism was now more than a realm of historical scholarship; it was one again a question on the contemporary agenda.

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Leave a comment

If only there was no war?

Posted on February 9, 2022 by Julius Gavroche

From Pramen, Anarchism in Belarus (28/01/2022) …

After the Russian occupation of Crimea and the deployment of troops on the territory of Donbass, part of the Belarusian opposition decided to give up trying to get rid of Lukashenko. The fear that Belarus might lose its independence became more important than the desire for freedom. At that time, many Belarusians began to ask what these Ukrainians had achieved – the loss of territories, the hybrid war with Putin, the economic ruin, and all for the sake of some abstract rights. And only now we are finally coming to the truth that the Lukashenko regime is not a protector of peace. It is rather the opposite: the dictatorship believes that there is some strong leader who knows better what is good for the people. And such a high ego is extremely dangerous for everyone.

Anarchists have never welcomed wars because they distract the population from the real problems that surround us on a constant basis. Instead of striving for freedom, the populace begins to discuss the successes of advancement on the front lines. The place of international solidarity is taken by nationalism, which has turned brothers, sisters and comrades into mortal enemies. There is nothing progressive about war. War is the triumph of a misanthropic ideology of power. Today, as always, war is the business of the rulers, except that ordinary people die in it. In a patriotic trance, or simply for the money.

Continue reading →
Posted in News blog | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

International Anarchist Statement on Covid 19 Pandemic

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Julius Gavroche

February 7, 2022

No one is safe until we are all safe

The Covid 19 pandemic has impacted every aspect of human life. It has had a devastating effect on people’s physical and mental health, social relations and communities, our livelihoods, and freedom to move about. It has also significantly curtailed our ability to organise effective political protests and strengthened the hand of the State.

The Covid 19 pandemic has impacted every aspect of human life. It has had a dev-astating effect on people’s physical and mental health, social relations and communities, our livelihoods, and freedom to move about. It has also significantly curtailed our ability to organise effective political protests and strengthened the hand of the State.

It has highlighted the fundamental problems of global capitalism and its need for continued growth and profit. The State’s support for those goals, has been behind the origin, spread, and tragic consequences of the disease. The need for revolution has never been so apparent.

However, as we struggle to fight back, the weaknesses of the working-class movement have also been revealed. We have seen a mounting death toll, health services overwhelmed, key workers treated as expendable, and the economic costs borne by those least able to afford it, yet resistance has been negligible. Nevertheless, the pandemic has also brought out actions and sensibilities that are key to social transformation: solidarity, mutual aid, self-organisation, and internationalism.

Covid-19 and other zoonotic diseases that have emerged over the last few decades are caused by the spread of global capitalism. As capitalism takes over more and more land for logging, mining, and agribusiness, wild animals are losing their habitats and coming into contact with humans, creating the potential for diseases to ‘spillover’ from other species to humans. This situation is exacerbated by the demand for exotic animal meat by the growing middle and upper classes around the world.

Continue reading →
Posted in News blog | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Jacques Rancière: Seven rules to help with the diffusion of racist ideas in france

Posted on January 24, 2022 by Julius Gavroche
Photograph by Philippe Lebruman published in Sud Ouest

With french presidential elections upon us (and with other european elections scheduled for this year), we share a short, but timely, piece by Jacques Rancière, on the less than surreptitious ways in which racism is played upon and promoted in contemporary “liberal democracies” (very recently re-published with Acta.Zone, 15/12/2021)

…

In this column published in Le Monde in 1997, Jacques Rancière ironically described how the media and politicians from various backgrounds contribute to the dissemination of racist ideas and offered them “seven rules” in order to continue to reinforce the theses of the extreme right.

His text, published more than 20 years ago, seems particularly relevant to us a few months before a presidential election which already promises to be saturated with racist ideas, by incessant polemics and obsessions with an extreme right assured of benevolent or pseudo-indignant media coverage.

Rancière’s text reminds us how much the far right owes to the French bourgeoisie and its political and media relays, objective allies that have always been there, which year after year allow it to extend its hegemony by validating its themes, its lexicon, its obsessions. It points to the hypocrisy of those who, every five years, present themselves as the last rampart against the coming fascism, while creating the conditions that allow it to prosper, and reinforces the idea that only popular, anti-racist and anti-capitalist self-organisation will make it possible to stop the current process of fascistisation.

The following text is part of the volume, Les Trente Inglorieuses to be published by La Fabrique in January 2022.

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Leave a comment

No escaping the state: the story of Lovett Fort-Whiteman

Posted on January 22, 2022 by Julius Gavroche

From Roarmag (13/01/2021), a reflection on the limits of the State as a vehicle for anti-racism, by William C. Anderson.

The life of a Black radical who fled state violence in the US only to find it under a different name in the Soviet Union shows the state is never the solution.

To be free, to walk in dignity—for these precious privileges some men will go anywhere, sacrifice anything.

Homer Smith

Black America is not guaranteed much, if anything, under the category of citizenship. It has never prevented us descendants of enslaved Africans from falling victim to repression, exclusion and constant infractions. Our supposed rights are rarely rights at all. They are bendable and disposable terms that are in constant need of defense. In the US court system, which is systematically structured against us, many have sought to strengthen — or at least maintain — protections which are supposed to be guaranteed to citizens. Rights around voting, food, housing and other necessities are always retractable because the white supremacist state has never completely legitimized Black citizenry.

This sort of alienation has been a radicalizing force for many Black people throughout the history of the US. It can inspire people to push for better conditions to varying degrees ranging from reformist to revolutionary. The life of Lovett Fort-Whiteman, an early Black communist who migrated to the Soviet Union, represents the latter and complicates the former in many ways. However, the underappreciated complexities of his life demand that we question much more than just the US state; it forces us to think more critically about race, place and statism more largely.

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Anarchism” is just a name- a review of Anarchism and the Black Revolution and The Nation on No Map: Black Anarchism and Abolition

Posted on January 22, 2022 by Julius Gavroche

From Freedom Press (13/01/2021), a review of two recently published essays: Anarchism and the Black Revolution, by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin (Pluto Press) and The Nation on No Map: Black Anarchism and Abolition, by William Anderson (AK Press).

In Summer 2017, as white nationalists prepared to march on Charlottesville, Virginia, the FBI announced its intention to tackle a new and growing menace to public order: a domestic terror movement with an explicitly racial ideology and avowed antipathy towards police. The threat was not the fascist resurgence that would soon leave anti-racist Heather Heyer bleeding to death under the wheels of a Dodge Challenger; or 11 gunned down at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018; or 23 murdered at the El Paso Walmart shooting in 2019. It was the more amorphous and ill-defined threat of ‘Black Identity Extremists’. It is difficult to say with any real certainty who these extremists were. Certainly not the black political establishment who, since the Civil Rights era, had capitalised on moral outrage to cement positions of power and privilege within white supremacist society; nor the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement that, in the years since the 2014 police killing of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri had been calling rallies, fighting for accountability within the law, and demanding reforms; nor even the mass of people who turned to the streets in outrage, each time another black person had died as a result of police contact. Black Identity Extremism did not name an organisation, real or potential, so much as a fear – perhaps the fear – constitutive of white American society: the fear of black resistance.

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

For Elza Soares (1930-2022)

Posted on January 22, 2022 by Julius Gavroche

Não tenho medo de nada. Temos que ensinar o medo a ter medo de nós./I am not afraid of anything. We have to teach fear to be afraid of us.

Elza Soares

For her courage and resistance, for her rebellious artistry, for her voice that spoke and sang for those who did not, or could not, as few others have, for giving form to forbidden passions, for Elza Soares …

Continue reading →
Posted in Poiesis | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Shane Burley: Building Communities for a Fascist-Free Future

Posted on January 12, 2022 by Julius Gavroche
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Burley_break.jpg

(From Roarmag magazine online and the 2021, 11th paper issue of Roar Magazine)

The challenge for antifascists today is to build the capacity to act as a buffer for marginalized communities and the movements fighting for a new world.

On August 17, 2019, a coalition of antifascist and progressive groups in Portland, Oregon organized a rally to protest a Proud Boy event planned in the city. The rally had a carnivalesque atmosphere created by PopMob — an antifascist group of concerned Portlanders which seeks to “resist the alt-right with whimsy and creativity” — and brought on a diverse range of organizations, from labor and religious groups and civil rights groups like the NAACP to more militant organizations like Rose City Antifa.

During the protest, the latter, along with autonomous black bloc organizers, acted as a buffer between the crowds at the carnival and the hundreds of Proud Boys amassing at the other side of the waterfront park both groups were occupying. This created a collaborative environment in which militant antifascists joined forces with a coalition of civic groups and successfully worked in concert to confront a common enemy: the crowds were safer because of the militants, and the militants had a sharper edge because of the hundreds of people standing at their backs. This type of coalition means that each group can bring their own unique strategy, tactics and identity, and find that by maintaining their own distinct piece of the larger whole, the entire project becomes stronger.

Over the past five years of far-right confrontations we have seen coalitions and collaborations — and at times also an overlap in membership — between a wide range of left-wing and community groups, including progressive religious groups, Black Lives Matter organizations, migrant support groups and traditional radical left groups — and more militant antifascist groups, and they have been able to pull numbers by working together. The public itself has grown accustomed to taking action from their participation in mass movements like Black Lives Matter, Occupy and even more liberal and conflicted events, like the 2017 Women’s March. This means that antifascist groups have a trained base for organizing in their communities, a base that can adapt more quickly to coordinated actions like rapidly assembled demonstrations to counter far-right mobilizations.

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment