Head-on war is the mistake we make time after time There is a way around it, way to outflank technology, short circuit “energy crisis”: retreat & silence cunning courage and love
Diane di Prima, Revolutionary Letter #58
Diane di Prima, famous beat poet, radical, anarchist, activist, died at age 86 on October 25, 2020. One of the better tributes to her was an interview with her daughter, Dominique di Prima, on CBC radio in Canada:
Below, we share a selection from Diane di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters May 1968 – December 1971. The full collection of letters may be found here. A collection of her work entitled The Poetry Deal is also available online here.
We share a statement from leftist youth of azerbaijan against the war over nagorno-karabakh. Its english translation was passed onto to us by the notbored.org collective, whom we warmly thank.
Anti-War Declaration of the Leftist Youth of Azerbaijan (1)
“Our enemy is not an Armenian; our enemies are the people in power.”
The most recent escalation of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh region(2) once again shows the degree to which the system of the Nation-States has been surpassed by today’s realities.
With the Earth still spinning around, with the Sun still shining bright, Oh Lord, grant everyone’s wishes to make both ends meet: To the wise man give a wisdom, to the coward give a horse, To the happy man give some money … But please do remember me as well.
With the Earth still spinning around, Oh Lord, Thy Will Be Done! He, who is hungry for power, make him eat his fill, He who is liberal, give him a break at least, until the end of the day. Give repentance to Cain… But please do remember me as well.
I know, you can do everything, as I trust you and your wisdom, Just like a soldier killed in battle believes he is living in Paradise, Like every ear believes Your Soft Speech…. As we do believe ourselves, though we know not what we are doing.
Oh Lord my God, you’re my green-eyed ONE, With the Earth still spinning around: Something the Earth finds very strange indeed, Even though, there is still time and fire to travel in space, May you grant everyone’s little wishes…. But do remember me as well. May you grant everyone’s little wishes …. But do remember me as well.
Bulat Okudzhava, François Villon’s Prayer
The essence of politics can be subsumed in the question: what are individuals capable of when they meet, organize, think and take decisions? In love, it is about two people being able to handle difference and make it creative. In politics, it is about finding out whether a number of people, a mass of people in fact, can create equality. And just as the family exists at the level of love to socialize its impact, at the level of politics the power of the State exists to repress its enthusiasms. The same prickly relation exists between politics as a practical, collective way of thinking through the issue of power with the State as the instrument for its management and regulation, and the issue of love with the unbridled invention of Two and the family as the fundamental unit of ownership and egotism.
Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love
The politics of sex and sexuality is often read purely ideologically. Patriarchal-state oppression is to be countered by sexual liberation; in both instances, sex is appropriated politically, to be given form in political thought and institutions. Yet human sexuality escapes both. It can never be fully politically instrumentalised and efforts to do so can only produce aberrations of desire and relations of control. If this is perhaps obvious under totalitarian regimes (whether State-socialist or liberal-capitalist), it is no less the case under regimes of “free-love”.
If how we love is not politically irrelevant, nor free of political power, it cannot be equated with it without destroying love. And the violence of reading love politically is the drama of Dusan Makavejev’s brilliant film, WR, Mysteries of the Organism (1971).
For Makavajev, the “body” and “sex-sexuality” are not to be read as manifestos, but as fragile “adventure playgrounds”. (Raymond Durgnat, cited in Richard Porton)
In gratitude to the CrimethInc. collective (13/10/2020) for reminding us of this work, we share their recent celebratory post dedicated to the film.
From the CrimethInc. Collective (15/10/2020), a reflection on the chilean uprising …
Chile: Looking Back on a Year of Uprising – What Makes Revolt Spread—and What Hinders It? The Fight for Dignity and the Campaign for a New Constitution
October 18, 2020 marks the one-year anniversary of the revolt in Chile. In Chile, the US, and beyond, we stand at the intersection of a pandemic, an economic crisis, and growing uprisings against the police. In this tangled situation, demands for police abolition erupt in a context in which many people imagine that only increased police intervention can manage this moment of crisis.
Sovereignty’s gradual slide toward the darkest areas of police law, however, has at least one positive aspect that is worthy of mention here. What the heads of state, who rushed to criminalize the enemy with such zeal, have not yet realized is that this criminalisation can at any moment be turned against them. There is no head of state on Earth today who, in this sense, is not virtually a criminal. Today, those who should happen to wear the sad redingote of sovereignty know that they may be treated as criminals one day by their colleagues. And certainly we will not be the ones to pity them. The sovereigns who willingly agreed to present themselves as cops or executioners, in fact, now show in the end their original proximity to the criminal.
The revolutionary potential of abolitionist demands
Andrew Lee,
The most recent cycle of revolts against anti-Blackness and policing in the United States carried over a slogan from the protests in the wake of Trayvon Martin murder in 2012: “Black Lives Matter!” Alongside it, a new demand was voiced: “Abolish the police!” A statement of fact followed by a statement of intent.
Anarchists, as Amedeo Bertolo so clearly expressed, act and think within the permanent tension between anarchy as ideal and as lived. The mistake is to believe that this tension can be surpassed, set aside, in a finally realised anarchy, or worse, stultified in fixed sub-ideologies which are of interest only to an anarchist priesthood. The truth is rather that the tension should be assumed as irremovable, as irremediable, but that it is precisely here where freedom and equality lie.
To share, an essay for reflection …
Who do the passionate communards of our time work for?
(An earlier translation of this piece was published with anarchist news. We share this translation, with changes).
I will become a worker: such is the idea that stops me, when the mad rages push me towards the battle of Paris – where, however, so many workers continue to die while I write to you! Work now, never again. (1)
Rimbaud
Since 1871 – the year in which the “accursed poet” wrote this letter -, it was not necessary to be a “diviner” to see the obvious: the masses of workers who fought on the barricades in Paris continued to work. That “wildcat strike” in front of the Versailles authority was, in turn, a new job that produced new obligations and condemned them to perpetuate work in saecula saeculorum. Such a profound reflection, in the midst of a necromancing trance, probably prompted Rimbaud to ask himself the question: who were the passionate communards working for?, thereby prophesising a system of domination based on direct democracy as the axis of political-social management, which ensured the permanence of the authority and the continuity of work.
If everyone were able to look closely within themselves, they would realise that everyone from below is mad, that we are all mad, and that we live, from below, in a very secret madness which allows us, from there, the most unfamiliar boldness, of leaps and connections with others and the world. And so we feel, from below, but with clarity, the condition of the insanity of normality, the simplification and the misery of the organisation and of the social life in which, from above, everyone participates. So, what happens above is that we act as if we believe in it, when in that sense we know (from below) that we are leading a life of fiction and acting in poor play (real life), supported only by the “fear of living” which was established in the beginning of time (with History) of each and everyone. There lies the true utopia, the place without a place for desire, while the ordinary ideal utopias, which want to marry Reality, are therefore condemned to be located in the Future, the space of the dominant illusion which is called Reality. But the real utopia is here, now, in me where I am no real person. And it may be that the only difference between the ones and the others is in the degree of faith, insofar as each one identifies with his real (fictitious) personage and becomes, consequently, insensitive to the divine madness which runs through us, from below, between the flesh.
“En la hora de nuestra muerte”
If someone asks, … why the attempt to de-realise Reality, or does it even makes sense, it must be answered, first, that Reality is both a product of and a support for Power that weighs on the living and on us as people and it endeavours to close off possibilities of life and reason; and, secondly, that, despite the oppressive and crippling effect of that Power, it is clear that Reality is never as made and as sure as we are supposed to believe, as evidenced by the very fact that Fathers, Priests of the Soul, Statesmen, the Media, vulgarised Science are daily determined to demonstrate the fatality and completeness of Reality, or, that Reality is all that there is.
But this is a lie, and it is not necessary to go looking for reasons or justifications for the war: because for the love of the truth, that is, the discovery of falsehood, reasons are not lacking, right?
“Presentación”
Agustín García Calvo, Contra la realidad: Estudios de Lenguas y de cosas
The rigid, the ready—made, the mechanical, in contrast with the supple, the ever-changing and the living, absentmindedness in contrast with attention, in a word, automatism in contrast with free activity, such are the defects that laughter singles out and would fain correct.
Henri Bergson, Laughter: An essay on the meaning of the comic
While little known outside of the world’s Hispanic cultural-geographical spaces, Quino’s comic strip character “Mafalda” was a lesson in rebelliousness throughout the 1960s and early 70s in Latin America and beyond. Ironic, sardonic, questioning, disobedient, Mafalda upended the hierarchy of ages, challenged the authorities of the family and adults, crossed the divide between public and private, and mocked and cried the tragedies of her time. She was for many young people (and not only) a taste of “anarchy”.
“Quino” (Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón) died last September 30th. From the seemingly endless collection of his drawings and sketches, we celebrate his work with a modest selection of Mafalda strips and more … sharing his, our, laughter.
…
Mafalda is not just a comic book character; she is perhaps the character of the seventies in Argentine society. If, when trying to define her, the adjective “rebellious” has been used, it has not been by homogenising herself in the fashion of anti-conformism at all costs: Mafalda is truly an angry heroine who rejects the world as it is. To understand her, it is convenient to draw a parallel with another great character whose influence is not alien: Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown is North American, Mafalda South American. Charlie Brown belongs to a prosperous country, to an opulent society in which he desperately tries to integrate himself, begging for solidarity and happiness; Mafalda belongs to a country dense with social contrasts, which despite everything would like to integrate her and make her happy, but she refuses and rejects all offers. Charlie Brown lives in a childlike universe of his own, from which adults are rigorously excluded (with the exception that children aspire to become adults); Mafalda lives in a continuous dialogue with the adult world, a world that she does not esteem, respect, that she renders hostile to her, that she humiliates and rejects, claiming her right to remain a child who does not want to take over a universe adulterated by her parents. Charlie Brown has evidently read the Freudian revisionists, and is searching for a lost harmony; Mafalda, in all probability, will have read Che. In reality, Mafalda has very confused ideas about politics, she cannot understand what is happening in Vietnam, she does not know why the poor exist, she does not trust the State and is worried about the presence of the Chinese. There is only one thing she clearly knows: she is not satisfied. She is surrounded by a small court of much more “one-dimensional” characters: Manolito, an integrated altar boy of neighborhood capitalism, who knows with total certainty that the primary value in this world is money; Felipe, quiet dreamer; Susanita, beatifically ill with a maternal spirit, drugged by petty bourgeois dreams. And then Mafalda’s parents, who, as if it were not hard enough for them how to accept the daily routine (resorting to the pharmaceutical palliative of “Nervocalm”), are burdened, in addition, with the tremendous fate of having to take care of the Rebel. Mafalda’s universe is that of a Latin America in its most advanced metropolitan areas; but it is in general, from many points of view, a Latin universe and this makes Mafalda much more understandable to us than so many characters in American comics. Furthermore, Mafalda is, in the last analysis, a “hero of our time”, and this should not be thought of as an exaggerated definition for the character of paper and ink that Quino offers us. Nobody today denies that the comic (when it reaches levels of quality) is a testimony of the social moment: and in Mafalda, the tendencies of a restless youth are reflected, which assume the paradoxical aspect of a childish opposition, of a psychological eczema in reaction to the mass media, of a moral urticaria produced by the logic of the geo-political blocks, of an intellectual asthma caused by atomic fungi. Since our children are preparing to be – by our choice – a multitude of Mafaldas, it seems prudent to treat Mafalda with the respect that a royal character deserves.
Quino is a classic who was ahead of his time, by addressing the transcendent in the everyday, to unveil and reveal to us the great drama of modern man’s consciousness, who has to compete to earn a living and, at the same time, to cope with existence having immediate information about the tragedies that move us and the disasters that surround us. Mafalda is Quino’s conscience and therefore ours. For this reason, of all the explanations that I have heard or read about Mafalda, that of Julio Cortázar …, “What I think of Mafalda is not important. What is important is what Mafalda thinks of me”, seems to me without a doubt the most accurate. It is she who explains the lasting success and permanent youth of that Mafalda who looked at the world with the astonishment of the child and the thought of the adult, and who was also the critical conscience of her time and continues to be of ours.
Hong Kong in revolt: an interview with Au Loong-Yu
To celebrate the publication of his new book, Au Loong-Yu joins us to talk about the origins, scope and legacy of last year’s Hong Kong rebellion.
When a group of protesters staged a sit-in at the government headquarters of Hong Kong in March 2019, little did they know that their actions would kick off the most significant wave of struggles in Hong Kong’s history. The sit-in was in opposition to the anticipated implementation of the “Fugitive Offenders amendment bill,” more commonly known as the Extradition Bill, that would give Beijing the power to extradite Hong Kong residents and visitors to the mainland. Protesters feared that by subjecting Hong Kong citizens to the mainland’s draconian legal system the bill would effectively end the post-colonial policy of “one country, two systems.”
As protests intensified, hundreds of thousands took to the streets. Global media became captivated by the protesters’ pitched battles with the police and their impressive array of new street tactics that have since inspired protesters around the world, from Chile to Rochester, New York. Even as the bill was rescinded and the media’s attention went elsewhere, protests continued, stopped only by the outbreak of COVID-19 at the start of the year.
In his new book, Hong Kong in Revolt: The Protest Movement and the Future of China (Pluto, 2020), labor campaigner and author Au Loong-Yu charts the origins of the movement, explores its internal dynamics and reflects on its significance for the future. To celebrate the book’s publication, ROAR associate editor Kai Heron interviewed Au about the protests and the future of struggles in China and Hong Kong, now wracked by the effects of COVID-19.
It may be deemed an exaggeration to say that mutual aid, as theorised and practised by anarchists, is both the distillation of perennial human practices of care underlying/surviving/resisting forms of centralised appropriation and domination, and the most important basis for contemporary anti-capitalist politics (in the broadest sense of the expression). Protest, insurrection, without the fabric of networks of mutual aid, fail; temporary “emergency assistance”, without roots or longevity in peoples everyday lives quickly shades into charity.
For this reason, we do not tire of sharing accounts and testimonials of mutual aid, and we congratulate the CrimethInc. collective for continuing to publish such accounts in this our times of pandemic.
Solidarity, Direct Action, and Self-Determination: Kasa Invisível
An Occupied Social Center Becomes a Hub of Mutual Aid in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
(28/09/2020)
Through interviews with the founders and participants, we explore how an occupied social center and housing collective in Brazil has continued to function as a hub for mutual aid through the pandemic. This is the third installment in a series exploring mutual aid projects around the world in the era of COVID-19.
Beyond the liberation of desire
With the Earth still spinning around, with the Sun still shining bright,
Oh Lord, grant everyone’s wishes to make both ends meet:
To the wise man give a wisdom, to the coward give a horse,
To the happy man give some money … But please do remember me as well.
With the Earth still spinning around, Oh Lord, Thy Will Be Done!
He, who is hungry for power, make him eat his fill,
He who is liberal, give him a break at least, until the end of the day.
Give repentance to Cain… But please do remember me as well.
I know, you can do everything, as I trust you and your wisdom,
Just like a soldier killed in battle believes he is living in Paradise,
Like every ear believes Your Soft Speech….
As we do believe ourselves, though we know not what we are doing.
Oh Lord my God, you’re my green-eyed ONE,
With the Earth still spinning around:
Something the Earth finds very strange indeed,
Even though, there is still time and fire to travel in space,
May you grant everyone’s little wishes….
But do remember me as well.
May you grant everyone’s little wishes ….
But do remember me as well.
Bulat Okudzhava, François Villon’s Prayer
The essence of politics can be subsumed in the question: what are individuals capable of when they meet, organize, think and take decisions? In love, it is about two people being able to handle difference and make it creative. In politics, it is about finding out whether a number of people, a mass of people in fact, can create equality. And just as the family exists at the level of love to socialize its impact, at the level of politics the power of the State exists to repress its enthusiasms. The same prickly relation exists between politics as a practical, collective way of thinking through the issue of power with the State as the instrument for its management and regulation, and the issue of love with the unbridled invention of Two and the family as the fundamental unit of ownership and egotism.
Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love
The politics of sex and sexuality is often read purely ideologically. Patriarchal-state oppression is to be countered by sexual liberation; in both instances, sex is appropriated politically, to be given form in political thought and institutions. Yet human sexuality escapes both. It can never be fully politically instrumentalised and efforts to do so can only produce aberrations of desire and relations of control. If this is perhaps obvious under totalitarian regimes (whether State-socialist or liberal-capitalist), it is no less the case under regimes of “free-love”.
If how we love is not politically irrelevant, nor free of political power, it cannot be equated with it without destroying love. And the violence of reading love politically is the drama of Dusan Makavejev’s brilliant film, WR, Mysteries of the Organism (1971).
For Makavajev, the “body” and “sex-sexuality” are not to be read as manifestos, but as fragile “adventure playgrounds”. (Raymond Durgnat, cited in Richard Porton)
In gratitude to the CrimethInc. collective (13/10/2020) for reminding us of this work, we share their recent celebratory post dedicated to the film.
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