Programm 2024

Active Internationalism

As a starting point for this discussion, we propose to orientate ourselves on a text from an anarchist meeting in Brussels in 2011. Even though certain circumstances have changed since then, it can still serve as a starting point.

The old internationalist tale

Having a fast look at the era of the first International and the revolutionary brotherhoods which in those days were able to stimulate and stir up a permanent insurrectional tension across the borders, tells us a lot about the paradoxal situation we are now living in. Never before have there been so many means of transport, travel and communication, never before were the curcumstances in different countries so much alike and yet it seems as if we, anarchists and revolutionaries, have never been so much attached to the stately borders. Paradoxaly it seems as if the globalisation of the domination goes together with the de-internationalisation of its declared enemies.

It´s not that all left-overs of the old internationalist tale have been swept away, but let´s be frank: it´s a dim situation. We don´t really get any further than solidary pats on the back and in the best case some sharing of experiences and projectualities. Simply having a look at the shameful lack of perspectives around the insurrections across the meditarenean (or, as you wish, around the revolt of december 2008 in Greece) is sufficient to become aware of this.

As the domination has transformed communication into a ware, into a numbning and alienating instrument, it has equally eroded the dream of the revolutionary internationalism. Today it seems as if the only internalitionalism present in anarchist circles is to be found on the worldwide web distributing passivity, by means of her endless stream of information which is un-understandable (because it´s been detached from its context and from all life), untouchable (because it´s meant to be simply consumed from the screen) and evaporating (because it drowns in the middle of a true databombarding). As well as deeply altering our whole concept of time and space. What was still news today, has already been forgotten tomorrow. And the faster the over there can reach over here through the information chanels, the lesser the over here seems able to dialogue with the over there. It goes beyond doubt that a renewed internationalist perspective is as well in an urgent need of developing a new way of experiencing and conceiving time and space. If not it is doomed only to flourish in the time and space frame of the domination. We could even make a parallel with the old International: in those days the nation-states were fully growing and the creation of an international space was at itself already a rupture with domination.

In which ways can internationalism, international revolutionary solidarity, become again a force which leaves behind its current technological and activist mutilation? We should confront this question again, unless one believes that the universal entrenchement of domination, requires a local microcosmic rooting of its opponents.

Not so long ago there were anarchists who attempted a new sort of International, a project which clearly crashed in a premature way. We think that the re-evaluation of internationalism doesn´t start by means of some sort of formal organisation (even if it declares itself informal), but through the conscious multiplication of opportunities, in discussion as well as struggle. Not only do we all know how important and stimulating the exchange of struggle experiences can be. If it is true that the social instability will contunue to increase during the coming times, and if it is true that the period of 30 years of peace on the european continent is coming at its end, it goes beyond doubt that the development of hypotheses has become of a current interest again. When reading those texts circulating inside of the antiauthoritarian brotherhoods during the times of the International, you could almost speak of an obsession for hypotheses, a permanent sensing (on theoretical as well as on practical terms) of the social horizon for opportunities to light the fuse and prepare the insurrection. Today, it is not only their revolutionary eagerness, neither their untamable enthusiasm which speaks to us, but also their courage to be wrong, to loose, to suffer a defeat (or rather, a series of defeats). When today one is not willing to bang ones head against the wall (which is a constant possible consequence of bringing the utopian desires inside the eye of the storm), can better occupy themselves with the pure comtemplation of the events. Because the complexity of the coming conflicts; the tension as it was described by some, between social war and civil war; the loss of language to express ideas and dreams; the profound and undeniable mutilation of individuals are no longer plain predictions, they have become facts. It´s up to us to find the courage to dream, to dare living the tension by trying to bring them to life, by elaborating them in revolutionary and insurrectional hypotheses; whether they sprung out of a situation which is ready to explode, or from a specific struggle which has lead towards the outcome of attack, or from a courageous attempt to insurge against the parade of slaughter and civil war,…

An example might clarify these words. The insurrections at the other side of the Meditarrenean have temporarily forced open the gates of Europe. Tens of thousands of people illegaly crossed the borders and many of them still with the sweet taste of revolt in their mouths. Regarding this completely new and unpredictable situation, it is not enough to take out our trusty recipes about struggles against closed centres, against borders. Armed with our experiences of struggle, we might have been able to really and concretely think about an hypothesis which could have, through those tens of thousands of people, actually brought the insurrection on the european continent. This counts as well for the period of insurrections in Tunesia, Egypt,…: which initiatives could we have taken to light the torch of the insurrection over here, or how, more modestly, could we have defended and supported the revolts over there? Why did we, aside from the symbolical, did not actually and definitively occupy the ambassieds of those countries and chased away the ambassadors which, especially in the case of Lybia, were actively recruting mercenaries to slaughter the insurgents in their own backyard? I suppose this immediately clarifies the need for an internationalist approach of possible hypotheses. Let´s take a different approach. How many times, during specific struggles, did we not bump into moments in which we were simply in lack of a sufficient amount of comrades (quantatively as well as qualitatively) to try out what seemed possible? We shouldn´t fool ourselves, during numerous insurrections in Europe, it was never only comrades living there who engaged! How many times could the tightening grasp of repression during a specific struggle (intesifed surveillance on the engaged comrades, pressure, limitation of freedom of movement and wasting time in dealing with the watchdogs of the state) have been solliced by the arrival and temporary stay of a few other comrades? I believe we should face these questions without aprioris and fear, and look for possible roads. We can imagine experimenting with international forms of coordination without grasping back to formal declarations, official congresses or, which is in some way the reverse of the medal, total secret conspiracy which only feeds the ghosts of the international of the examining inquisitors. Maybe we could, for example through a regular bulletin of correspondance, consider the development of a temporality and space of our own which is no longer dependant on the information channels which have the stinking smell of the power sticking on them.

Undoubtably much more is to be said about this issue. I am aware that this text is only throwing some rocks in still water, but here’s the hope that they can contribute to a discussion which dares opening up some possibilities.

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There is militarization, what to do?

For war to work in the first place, a lot is necessary: raw materials, extractivism, production facilities, laboratories, universities, weapons and war equipment, ammunition, fuel, infrastructure, software, logistics, as well as people who operate them, who obey, who kill on orders, who are trained for war.
Nationalism serves as the constant companion of war, on the one hand to provide the soldiers with a plausible reason for their existence in the trenches and on the other hand so that the homefront knows what their loved ones and friends kill and are killed for on the battlefields, and continues to work obediently to maintain the economy which maintains the battlefield.

All these things are not simply given per se, even if they are present in different forms in each area dominated by a state. Which means that war is not necessarily possible overnight (apart from the fact that it takes patriarchy, state, and capital to organize and manage all these things or to bring them into being initially).

Rather, as Emma Goldman once put it during the First World War, it is the military “preparedness” for the war itself that makes universal slaughter possible. Today, this preparedness is once again invoked and justified by wanting to avert war. Consequently, all proposals on the part of the rulers to prevent war – conversion of the economy to a war economy, reintroduction of conscription, expansion of the arms industry, billions for the military, etc. – are proposals that prepare and enable war.

If we want to help prevent slaughter and unhinge the world that produces it, the question arises once again, what answers can we find to disrupt or even interrupt this current militarization that is supposed to make the state and society prepared?

This discussion can go in many directions and as always, all those who participate are invited to come with their own thoughts and questions, nevertheless here are a few blocks of questions and topics from which we can start the discussion.

Why is there so little visible anarchist agitation against war at the moment? Have the anarchists come to terms with the current militarization? Is the topic too big, too overwhelming?

What is necessary for people to allow such a thing to happen to them in the first place? Going into the trenches on command, killing on command, etc. Could the fight against militarism also be a fight against the school? The fundamental place of rearing and state indoctrination, where belligerence will be implanted in the youth to make them ready for war?

What does war have to do with masculinity/being a man? To what extent is war a patriarchal institution par excellence that produces “the man” in the first place, and what could this mean for a struggle against war and patriarchy?

If the economy in Europe were indeed to be converted to a war economy, as is being demanded from various sides, what would that mean? Are there any ideas on how such an initiative can be countered? Especially if we take into account that in the past, wars have always served to enforce new technologies, modes of production, and ways of life, as well as to smash resistant and outdated ones for the state and capital. What does that mean when we think of the digital restructuring of society?

What about desertion and revolutionary defeatism? Do these proposals, which are mostly aimed at soldiers, have the potential to spur on fights against war and the existing order even before the outbreak of war? Or could this proposal also be addressed to the engineers and scientists who help to make war even more devastating with their inventions and discoveries?

Since war needs one thing above all else – energy – the question arises, what does militarization mean for struggles against the destruction of the environment? What if coal mining is brought back into full swing because it is suddenly “relevant to the war”?

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And if it does start?

For two years now, armament and militarization have been taking place on a new level. After some people in Ukraine who call themselves anarchists decided to join the Ukrainian military to defend their country, there are also people here who, when it comes to the question of war, counter: “But what would you do?”

And even if this question is usually not meant seriously, but a rhetorical evasion to justify one’s own position by supposed practical constraints, the question is an important one in view of wartime. Yes, what would we do if war broke out tomorrow in the area where we live? Especially when this “we” means anarchists who pretend not to want to fight on any side of the state.

What to do when the homefront has to be defended just as hard against the internal enemies as the front against the external ones? When the national fever boils over in the population? When there are curfews and squads of reservists and volunteers (including perhaps some who call themselves anarchists) move through the neighborhoods to prevent the looting of shops. When looters are tied to lampposts? When suddenly all those who are considered by the state to be men fit for military service are no longer allowed to leave the country. If there is forced recruitment? Perhaps also: What to do when former comrades suddenly mobilize to join the military and try to extort money and armaments from anarchists from other countries through moral pressure.

What is necessary to be able to continue at all in such a situation? This starts with very banal activities, such as distributing leaflets or pasting posters. And when do you decide to flee? What is necessary for this? Are there things (e.g. communication channels, etc.) that have to be organized beforehand because they are no longer possible or much more difficult to do once war breaks out, if so, which ones?

What could struggles look like under such conditions? Is there insurrectionary potential in such situations? How do we recognize it? What experiences and proposals are there?

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The following text was written by Stecco, a comrade who has been in the clutches of the Italian state since the end of last year, and was originally intended to serve as a contribution to a weekend of discussion against extractivism. As is the case with prison mail, the letter reached the event late. We are happy to take up Stecco’s ideas and to introduce them into our discussion.

CONTRIBUTION FOR TWO DAYS AGAINST EXTRACTIVISM IN BENCIVENGA SQUAT ROME1

INTRODUCTION

This modest contribution will have some limitations. The invitation that reached me to participate with a paper in this initiative has obviously come late. This delay is due to the timing of my arrest and the organization of the two-day event. In short, time is short. Not to mention that these weeks, as you will understand, are definitely dense in many ways. In addition, the lack of materials to work and study is definitely another not insignificant limitation.

Therefore, I want to warn those who are going to read these poor lines to consider these objective limitations of mine. I do not know if these few and meager notes that I have taken these days will allow me to put on paper reflections that are well thought out and useful for the initiative. I will try, and while reading the points/topics sent to me, I was able to realize my lack of means, but at the same time they reconnect with some reflections that appeared in my paper published in issue 11 of „The Days and Nights“ magazine, „The Sea Between Utopia and Power“. In a way, the themes touch on each other.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the comrades who worked on this two-day discussion and debate and, of course, for inviting me to participate.

For ease of reading and for my own work, I will address the issues in bullet points to be as concise and precise as possible.

I wish each and every one of you a good and fruitful discussion, work and a lot of practice.

Creating an imaginary through communication

Being imprisoned, even if you don’t want to, means watching TV. This instrument of domination, behind its images, the editing of certain channels and programs, shows how the theme of the event is constantly present in the petty propaganda of the State and capital.

The first example, trivial but exemplary, is a Christmas advertisement that is exactly emblematic of how this unhealthy system works. These days, a famous presenter can be seen on TV, in a commercial, naturally throwing away the „old“ smartphone and, uttering only the word „easy“, inviting people to buy the new model on sale for the holidays.

We all know that behind every technological gadget there is a long supply chain and complex logistics. Therefore, capital must necessarily have a global outlook and outlet. There is no independent country on this front. We also know that in order to sell such sophisticated items at an affordable price to the masses, the item must be made both accessible and presentable, but above all it must be deemed „necessary“. The role of the state, and not only of private individuals, is basically to make the life of the citizen a trap, since the use of these technological prostheses, for example, makes people’s lives more difficult, considering that today many basic services in daily tasks are inseparable from them. This science of communication was well explained in the 1930s by Edward Bernays in his famous text „Propaganda„. Today, these techniques are extremely effective and pervasive.

The other example – which is also emblematic for me – is the existence of a channel like Dmax, which is made in America but dubbed entirely in Italian.

This is also the essence of the extractivist mindset that we want to observe here. It tickles the imagination of its target audience, the white, macho male with a tendency to use violence to gain dominance and control. The shows range from tuna fishing to gold panning, and in the Italian version, there are woodcutters from the northeast who use huge machines to clear, cut, and bark entire forests in a matter of hours, creating havoc and slaughtering animals. Everything is stimulated, both in the editing of the images and in the choice of music, in such a way as to evoke the masculine and classical vileness of the colonialist, conquering mentality, where the use of the brain is relegated to the control of the mechanical arm.

Dynamics that a fine mind had observed as social psychology that strengthens the masculine imagination in stretching its member, in erecting the penis.

It is precisely through the technology of communication, which has been transferred to the competition between States, that this stimulation of the senses is now present in a massive way. Every state society, regardless of the dominant culture and religion, creates a bond with its subjects by eradicating any concept, any custom, any relationship of daily practice and conception of life proper to communities that, when they had or still have a margin of autonomy, practiced a relationship between man and nature that aimed at respect and balance towards what surrounds and nourishes them. Having broken this balance and suppressed resistance, they move on to the homogenization of minds by creating the most effective forms of influence and manipulation. The important thing is to make people believe that this process of extraction – in the various spheres of life – is irreversible and desirable. A dynamic that is accentuated when new resistances are formed in defense of the land, one’s autonomy, or for other reasons of social emancipation. So here is the creation of characters like Greta Thunberg, here are the sweet and encouraging words of Pope Francis on Sunday at the Angelus, here is the huge „repair“ machine of the „green“ world that creates the image of salvation, of the „happy island“.

I would like to add another aspect. A few years ago, the magazine Limes, which deals with geopolitical analysis, created a school for young analysts. Perhaps someone will remember Dario Fabbri, one of its main editors, who, with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, was constantly invited by television news programs and various broadcasts to give lengthy analyses, obviously with an Atlanticist and patriotic slant. We know very well that the outbreak of war tends to create a certain collective psychology of fear and anxiety. His figure is therefore propaedeutic to a certain work on the masses, considered ignorant, who need an expert but reassuring, cynical, pragmatic but also solving voice, whose purpose is to cut off the thinking of the listener, who is made powerless because he is led to delegate and thus to reason that it is his own state, his own rulers, who must defend and provide what is fundamental to „national interests“. And if this is the purpose, then the citizen demands that his own State has all the arguments to defend itself and to make its privileges prevail. To this end, a part of the acceptance is triggered that it is useful to have the territory gutted in the search for raw materials, useful to create defensive systems and to provide the energy to create them.

This is only one of the techniques, perhaps of a macroscopic nature, to create the acceptance of a certain type of intervention by the state and the private sector in the territories.

Creating Collaboration

When I was under house arrest in the winter of 2020, during the lockdown, I watched a play by Marco Paolini called Ausmerzen2 several times. „Aktion T4“ was the name of the euthanasia project created by the Nazi Party to eliminate surplus, useless mouths. The actor’s oratorical skills not only highlight the tragedy itself, i.e. the murder of hundreds of thousands of „eaters-for-free,“ those considered disposable: the „mentally ill,“ the handicapped, the epileptics, the depressed, the gypsies, but he also succeeds, and above all, in highlighting the regime’s ability to extract two things from its subjects. The most gruesome is the acceptance of parents to spontaneously bring their sons and daughters, „sick“ relatives, to the centers where they were to be treated. What interests us most, however, is the total silent cooperation of a wide range of workers. From the bakers who baked bread, to the bus drivers, to the nurses and nuns who, with syringes – symbols of medical progress – injected serums that were supposed to be curative and instead brought death.

The worker who oiled the mechanism for good was the family doctor, because he was considered the person in whom most of the relatives placed their trust. Does that remind you of anything? I give this example because during the show Paolini read what was later called the „shopping list“. In order to justify this silent slaughter – which continued even under the American occupation – and which prepared the ground for the later extermination camps, the Party asked the regime’s technicians and bureaucrats to calculate how much butter, eggs, bread, pasta, vegetables, legumes, etc., cost the healthy and „superior“ population (to maintain the „sick“ one) in terms of marks and kilocalories. Eliminating unnecessary mouths to feed means having more raw materials to meet the needs of the nation; all energy – including food – was needed for the expansion of the Third Reich. With this way of reasoning, even in the system in which we are immersed, we can go so far as to calculate scientifically — hence „undeniably“ — the fact that people do not deserve to be alive or to have a decent life. And today we are in a very, very similar dynamic. We are told that these things belong to a dark age, that we should rightly remember the tragedies and violence, but never the causes and mechanisms.

Today we are lectured in a sweeter and sometimes homeopathic way about how we consume energy, what we eat, how we produce the „terrible“ Co23. Everything is accounted for, centralized, and then spat in our faces as a moral and blackmailing reproach. If you don’t keep up with the imposed times and dictates, you are the victim of the pressure, you are considered retrograde, you are the symbol of the past that must be left behind because the future is „green“. But the mechanisms of blackmail and morality are given special technological tools. And here are the new smart meters, sensors, handhelds, domotics, etc. All the way to „social credit“ projects such as in the municipality of Fidenza. An inquisitorial-repressive dynamic, where those who are poor and have non-normal and „anti-social“ behaviors risk ending up outside the social consortium, remaining excluded from so-called „rights“. But the duties remain.

The energy decree, the deregulation of the gas market and the fourth round of money for the PNRR are the obvious pushes of the national capital in a certain direction. It is inevitable that young people will be pushed towards the study of those subjects that are useful for the formation of minds and hands that will feed this machine. The indoctrination of the freshest and most fertile minds is under way, and the school is the chief cog in this work. The need for wages, of course, creates the tendency to seek out those studies that will make it easier to enter the job market. In this way, the Andersian message about the „Promethean gaze“ is deflected, obscured. But this erasure of ethical reason must be traced back to the creation and conception of the place called the laboratory. It was in the Enlightenment that this idea had its greatest momentum. The holistic view of man and his environment is stifled. I don’t know how to get out of this trap of brainwashing, our criticism of war and technology, for example, within the universities, has produced bad results, and I wonder if the lever of ethical criticism – with which I fully agree – is the right one to shake these consciences.

Moreover, in the moral and blind prison of the laboratory, many have fallen who had certain definite ideas. In the book „Italian Scientists in the First World War“4 even our comrade, the chemist Ettore Molinari, editor of the manual „Health is in You“, got stuck in this two-sided monster that is the scientific approach to life. During the war he expressed his position, which was the same as that of most anarchists: defeatist, unpatriotic, following the motto „war on war“. But at the same time he continued to work for private individuals in the study of new substances useful for the ongoing massacre. There is in him the split between the ideal of emancipation and the ability to choose to block one’s passion, one’s self-denial, towards what is one’s intellectual work as a scientist. The ability to imagine beyond the blanket of the „neutrality“ of discovery is lacking. Observe its effects and applications. There are too few deserters from the laboratories, and those who do are considered obscurantist traitors. The anti-militarist and pacifist position of the French mathematician Alexandre Grothendieck is perhaps more unique than rare.

Breaking down the concept of progress

Another aspect to consider, and one that deserves its own space, is the concept of progress. Even within anarchism, some of our good and well-known comrades have underestimated or ignored important aspects of this concept.

The blindness of positivism, the fascination with innovation in various branches of science, which in leaps and bounds brought about an epochal change called the Industrial Revolution, these and other important factors obscure a part of social criticism that should be taken into account. Perhaps one of the few who saw certain dangers was the anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus. There is not only the class question to take into account, and in my opinion a comrade like Petr Kropotkin-with his cultural and scientific background-created a certain kind of thinking and assumptions that we should at least reevaluate today. It was believed, and is still believed, that if knowledge and the means of production are in „our“ hands, then certain technological drifts or uses will be controlled or stopped. Some of the debates that have arisen, for example, in the weekly magazine Umanità Nova, on topics such as medically assisted procreation, genetic engineering, vaccines, etc., are disconnected from a broader reflection on the relationship between man and nature, between the autonomy of one’s own health and the critique of the social roles of official medicine.

We find the same kind of deception in Renato Curcio’s recent books on AI, computing, cybernetics, etc. and how they relate to the world of labor.

His books are certainly interesting as class investigations into the relationship between technologies and labor, with first-hand accounts of, for example, the entry into Industry 4.0, but in all his books the conclusions he arrives at – in my opinion trivial and not very profound – are the usual monotonous questions about the means of production that must be in the hands of the working class, or whatever we want to call it. Not a word about the relationship between the existence of these technologies and how they are produced, by whom and where, and with what effects. No reflection on man and nature and their relationship, no overview or how a whole range of technologies are a problem in themselves and not just who uses them or for what purposes. We are afraid to go all the way with a radical critique, perhaps in part because we know that it would touch us very deeply, for fear of losing privilege or comfort. One is afraid to say that in order to reduce certain disasters and injustices, one must „sacrifice“ this model of life, which does not mean taking primitivist positions. In just a few decades, people have lost physical abilities, such as the ability to withstand fatigue, or mental abilities, such as the ability to memorize or calculate.

I think we should not be afraid to shake the imagination of those around us and make them believe that not everything will be golden, but at least that we are beginning to take a path that will put an end to certain disasters and poisons. Rolling back the consumerist, selfish culture that has been ingrained in us since childhood will require several ages, several revolutionary stages, and not just a confrontation with the enemy in the strict sense of the word. The field of thought also needs its battles.

Go back to them with a dagger in your hand…..

Some time ago I saw an Icelandic documentary called „The Laxà Farmers“5, a struggle that took place in Iceland in the 1970s in defense of a river considered sacred by the people. A river rich in salmon and very pure water, which was a sure source of food during the most severe climatic periods. The Icelandic state wanted to build a dam, if I remember correctly,

to produce electricity, even though the population was against it. When the dam was under construction, it was dynamited one night, causing it to collapse, and the river flowed again as it had originally. At the time it was not known who did it, the action remained anonymous, but the whole community claimed ownership, so it became „collective“ because it was understood as a self-defensive attack. The moral barrier between the legal and the illegal gave way.

Two important things emerge from the documentary; the first is the strong bond of the community, which meant that the secret of who carried out the sabotage remained that way for decades. The second is that one person in an interview says that a minority of those people were positively influenced by the internationalist struggles of the time. Anti-colonial, resistance, liberation, armed and emancipatory struggles, these struggles had the power to reverberate even in the „peripheral“ countries of the Laxà River. The sense of what was possible, of direct action against injustice, was palpable and seeped into the minds. Even in the minds of those who had always lived peacefully, but who, faced with the abuse of the dam, felt the need to react, even by illegal means. Today, the common sense of certain facts has changed. Not only in Italy, the state propaganda has worked to destroy these imageries.

Today there is a retreat of practices precisely – but not only – because of this constant denigrating attack on liberation actions. The noose of morality over violence also harnesses those who have healthy outbursts of anger and the desire to give the boot to those who ruin our lives.

I think that today, since struggles against the construction sites of big projects are not always possible, and sometimes they are even harmful because they limit the horizon of the struggle (see Valsusa), perhaps the classic tactics used in Europe against certain projects should be reviewed. One cannot continue to insist on ways that give little satisfaction and too many risks, since we now get jail and measures even for minor acts. It would be appropriate to discuss how best to proceed in certain contexts and how to intervene in certain types of struggles. For example, some of the anarchist assumptions made around the struggle against the cruise missiles in Comiso in 1983 would be worth revisiting. Not because they are disagreeable, but perhaps they should be re-discussed and re-analyzed today.

I always like to remember the cover of the first issue of the anarchist newspaper „Instead“, in which the person who drew it managed, with a very effective illustration, to show the faces of the exploited angry and determined to enter the house of the rich bourgeois, who, with his arthritic hands full of gold rings, is trying to resist the mob that, armed with various tools, is at his door threatening him with the just expropriation to which he is entitled. It is over, it must be over, the time of whistling streets, of colorful and dancing processions, or even worse, of an „opposition“ on social media; it is time to do our part, to help rebuild those images that give strength and determination, rightness in the search for those responsible. To return to them still with a dagger in our hand. (Here the quote is from the song „Mille anni / A Thousand Years“ by the hardcore band Ludd, about defending the earth, and it says, „Go back to those who exploit your fellow beings and poison the earth, go back to them with a dagger in your hand.)

That night in Laxà, the roar of the dynamite brought an entire community together around a single fact of concrete liberation, but also a demonstration of strength and unity against the state or the multinational corporation of the day. I have given this simple example because it is more reflective of the local context. The examples mentioned in the Call Sheet, such as the Farc, the Mend or the Mapuche, presuppose that at least one has the space, the means, a community with which to liberate a piece of territory and defend it with the appropriate means. I think that today in Europe the conditions are not yet right, that a lot of work needs to be done to create the right combination of factors so that these experiences open up possibilities here as well. They certainly need to be discussed and disseminated here as well, but sometimes I wonder if it is right to articulate them in an analysis dedicated to these lands called Europe. In this sense, I would like to propose a constant comparison with some experiences in Greece that connect the movement between the struggles in the city and the experiences in the country-mountains. The ZADs or the Hambach Forest have merits, but I wonder if this is where our best energies should be invested. That would be a matter for thoughtful discussion.

What we can say for sure is that anarchist informality continues to contribute. From France to Germany, from Canada to the United States, we get good practical and analytical insights, useful pointers because the social contexts are more similar to our own and therefore more understandable. But we should not forget that in Italy mining or energy projects are often located in places where the community is fragmented, sparsely populated, where young people have already left, an aspect that also needs to be evaluated and observed. See, for example, the struggle in Beigua in Liguria, or the situation in Basilicata. In Piombino against the regasifier is already a different context, but I don’t know if and how the comrades are acting from an anarchist and insurrectionary perspective.

The lessons of war

As for the links between science and war, the book I mentioned earlier about the role of Italian scientists is really a good historical reconstruction, in the early chapters, of how authoritarian cultures throughout history have used „progress,“ „discovery,“ for purposes of domination.

Today’s war in Ukraine shows us one thing in particular – certainly not new – but perhaps best kept in mind. This energy-consuming system is extremely delicate and indispensable. Whether it is for logistics, for the operation of laboratories, or whatever, touching this key (that of energy, ed.) gets any state into trouble. They cannot do without it, and the anonymous saboteurs in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, in general, show us this criticality. In France they have found ways to blow out the lights of entire industrial zones, in Canada pipelines. There is no lack of examples. We just have to look for what we are interested in, and looking at war and the resistance it generates is certainly something to keep in mind. Who is transporting, handling, processing these rare earths? Where are they coming from? Who is buying and selling them? How do we make the connection between them and the war? It is easy for us to understand, but for most the connection is not so obvious.

Do the women in Ukraine today, who are demanding that their sons, husbands, fathers, the anti-war movements there and elsewhere, limit their time at the front, see the connection that Ukraine is a resource-rich country and everything else is merely a show?

The homeland issue is just a useless smokescreen, somebody is getting rich and the nation is just an excuse. It is pure geopolitics and survival strategy of the power blocs and their attached masters.

In conclusion

One of our tasks, I think, should be to ask ourselves, first of all, how we can combine our often remarkable studies of the problems surrounding us – which we have shown over time through various works that we are capable of doing – with two things.

First, what to make of them beyond an emergency response perspective. Too often we get „distracted“ trying to respond successfully to serious events that obviously do not make us look away. There is the question of how, what, where our analytical work can lead us to build or otherwise foment an insurgent movement, a qualitative preparation to confront and attack, given the context and our obvious difficulties.

The other aspect is to gather our strength, to equip ourselves with new tools, to bring out of our circles the world we are fighting for, what we are glimpsing. Why are we anarchists today, how much effort do we put into making our ideas understood? Do we care that the people around us understand the other life we propose? We cannot, I believe, answer the world’s complex problems, but together we can certainly improve the directions we give to those we believe are our future accomplices. There is much work to be done to make our dreams understandable to those who, like us, are exploited among the exploited.

In these years of being on the run, I have walked a lot, seen many places, and always walked through them with a curious eye, always imagining how it could be different if we lived without states and without all the poisons of today. I fantasized, perhaps too much. My eye would erase from view everything that I considered a source of oppression. And often the dream remained of respectfully cultivated lands, crystal-clear waters, forests used carefully and judiciously, I could smell animals. They will not take from me the dream of believing that another world is possible and that this humanity can emancipate itself and free itself from its ugliness. I will not allow them to take away this perhaps romantic confidence I have in the necessary struggle for freedom and a life in harmony with nature and the creatures around us.

We have the dagger by the handle; it is up to us to know how to make use of the blade.

Luca Dolce aka Stecco

05/12/2023 Sanremo Prison

1 We publish this letter, which unfortunately reached us a few days too late for this event, as a valuable contribution to future discussions. We warmly thank Stecco for these words and renew all our solidarity with him. Daje forte!

2 It can be found on Youtube: https://youtu.be/1jXOmEdRjvQ

3 I recommend that you read – with a critical view – the reflections that appeared in the most recent issue of the magazine L’Urlo della Terra (I don’t remember the exact title or number).

4 Angelo Guerraggio, La scienza in trincea. Gli scienziati italiani nella prima guerra mondiale, Raffaello Cortina, 2015 (Science in the Trenches. Italian Scientists in the First World War)

5 It can be found on Vimeo at the link https://vimeo.com/67135714.

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Help, the mines are coming – or extractivism as a bottleneck of the global megamachine

The megamachine in which we are forced to live must constantly grow in order not to collapse. Nothing can exist outside of it. Everything is incorporated and, if possible, commodified. Anyone who thinks or hopes that the megamachine is currently reaching its limits and collapsing of its own accord is unfortunately underestimating its merciless instinct for self-preservation. Developments such as ongoing digitization, the upcoming expansion into the deep sea and the planned expansion into space can also be understood in this light.
And even if individual factions are again fighting more openly about which administrative model will prevail globally, we see once again that between these competing systems, the question is always „how?“, – how patriarchy, state and capital are managed.
As long as it is not clear which administrative model will prevail, “sustainability” is the order of the day in Europe, because there are no significantly relevant sources of fossil energy.
An attempt by the EU to compensate for this is called the Green New Deal. This amounts to plundering the environment even more intensively, which is advertised as a restructuring away from the “bad” fossil fuels to the “good” so-called renewable energies. As part of the Green New Deal, for example, the EU’s Critical Raw Material Act (CRMA) was passed in March of this year without much fanfare. This is sold to ensure access to the critical raw materials that are indispensable for the “energy transition”. In real terms, this will mean that even more plants, trees, waters, mountains, etc. – habitats will be destroyed, that land grabbing will become even easier, that it will be even easier to criminalize protests, that mines will be pushed forward in the deep sea or the Arctic and finally that many new mines will be opened in Europe.
In this discussion, it is invited to reflect on what perspectives of struggle could arise if the struggle against extractivism is understood not only as a struggle against environmental destruction, but first and foremost as a struggle against the proper functioning of this deadly system and the social relations it spreads, between humans, as well as with all other living beings.