From lundi matin #299, 09/08/2021 …
On July 25th, in the evening of a day of demonstrations, Tunisian President Kais Saied dismissed the prime minister, temporarily suspended parliament, lifted the immunity of its members and announced that he would take a number of decisions by decree, by resorting to article 80 of the Tunisian constitution (also very close to article 16 of the French constitution).
To justify this coup, it was necessary to mobilise the usual and hackneyed propaganda of “imminent peril”: young demonstrators from working-class neighborhoods would be paid by officials or opposing parties to take to the streets and sow disorder. No need to look for more details or precisions, the refrain is well known. It is a question of disqualifying the numerous protest movements of recent months, of denying those who demonstrate their own capacity to act and to evacuate all the demands and targets by crushing the debate under the generic question of corruption.
While the editorialists gloss over whether to speak of a coup and wonder what could remain of a “democratic transition”, we publish the translation of this short but luminous intervention by Nidhal Chamekh of July 28th.
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A moss-like anarchist manifesto
A legend tells us that Christian soldiers took the city of Béjar in spain from its Muslim-Arab inhabitants in the 12th century by disguising themselves with coverings of moss, enabling them thereby to enter the city gates by surprise.[1]
Our task is more modest, sharing only transgressive affinities with the legend.[2] Though we are sceptical of manifestos, they can nevertheless serve to distil images and thoughts. These of course can only be the consequence of momentary inspirations.
What follows finds its animus in an essay by bryologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, entitled Gathering Moss, passages of which we also share below.[3] From moss then we gather a few ideas on what a contemporary anarchist politics might be.
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