From the CrimethInc. Collective …
Belarus: Anarchists in the Uprising against the Dictatorship: An Interview
Starting on the night of Sunday, August 9, in response to an election widely deemed to be rigged, a massive protest movement has broken out in Belarus against Aleksandr Lukashenko, the strongman who has ruled the country for over a quarter of a century. Police have arrested thousands of people, firing live rounds and murdering demonstrators. From Sunday to Tuesday, Lukashenko’s government apparently shut down the internet and landline telephones in hopes of dampening the protests, while claiming that the blackout was the work of forces outside Belarus. Belarusian opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanouskaya was detained and apparently forced to read a script declaring that Lukashenko had won the election and urging people to “obey the law” and stay away from street protests before fleeing to Lithuania. Despite this, the protests continue. In a context in which the state has cracked down on every form of political opposition, anarchists are among the only organized groups still capable of participating in street demonstrations. To understand the events that are unfolding, we interviewed multiple anarchists from Belarus.
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Colectivo Situaciones: Complete works
The posting by the online website lobo suelto! of an archive of the writings the argentine based Colectivo Situaciones, is the occasion to return to the “theoretical” work of this group and its “reflection” in the 2001-3 insurrection in the country. The importance of this work for the understanding of events in argentina, and beyond, justifies our choice in sharing this material, especially with those not familiar with either.
If we place “theory” and “reflection” in quotation marks, it is because the collective saw its intellectual work as immanent to situations of struggle, as something which created cognitive-aesthetic realities which could animate effective and radical political interventions.
The events in argentina confirmed the death of older, anti-capitalist forms of militancy; the question then was to try to grasp from within what was taking shape as new forms of political opposition.
The archive (below) is in spanish and therefore to assist those not familiar with the writings of the Colectivo Situaciones, along with the introductory text to the archive, we also share three essays by the group, as well as an interview. For further writing by the group, the text 19 & 20: Notes for a New Social Protagonism is also available online. And we close with two documentary films by Fernando Solanas dedicated to the crisis of argentina and the dignity of those who resisted.
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