Petrol, Printer Ink… READ
Petrol, Printer Ink… PRINT A3
Petrol, Printer Ink… PRINT TABLOID
Contents
Introduction 2
“Whoever Reads This is an Idiot” 4
The State’s repression machine lashes out against the phantoms of its waking nightmare
Hate Speech and Fire Against the State! 15
A closer look at some spontaneous combustions which have aroused the interest of the police dogs, and a few exemplary words of analysis from the uncontrollable elements in Munich and beyond
The Nightmare Continues… 34
A little chronology of attack since the arrest of N and M in February 2025
From the Dungeons of Democracy to the Prison Society 43
“From the life of a prisoner” – words by N
———-
Introduction
[…]we enter a vicious circle with mournful calls to a miserable bartering with the State one wanted to fight.
When individuals find themselves alone at night, no longer supported by “collective strength”, the arms of Morpheus transform the imprisoned comrades one wanted to support, to whom one wanted to express one’s solidarity, into a real nightmare with no escape.
So! Should we no longer show solidarity to imprisoned comrades given that it serves no end?
Never! A movement that is not capable of looking after its comrades in prison is destined to die, and that at a high price under atrocious torture.
The reflection must be made in other terms. What does it mean to express revolutionary solidarity? Basically the reply is not all that difficult.
Solidarity lies in action. Action that sinks its roots in one’s own project that is carried on coherently and proudly too, especially in times when it might be dangerous even to express one’s ideas publicly. A project that expresses solidarity with joy in the game of life that above all makes us free ourselves, destroys alienation, exploitation, mental poverty, opening up infinite spaces devoted to experimentation and the continual activity of one’s mind in a project aimed at realising itself in insurrection.
A project which is not specifically linked to the repression that has struck our comrades but which continues to evolve and make social tension grow, to the point of making it explode so strongly that the prison walls fall down by themselves…
– Daniela Carmignani, Revolutionary Solidarity
(Elephant Editions), translated by Jean Weir
In the lucid words of Daniela Carmignani from three decades ago we are reminded that another nightmare is possible, disturbing the sleep of the social order, its guardians and loyal flocks.
Something just so nightmarish has been haunting Munich in the last several years. In May 2024 the German media reproduced one more in a running series of exasperated welps from the cops: “They set fire to power lines and construction equipment, telecoms antennas and electric vehicles; railroads are also the target of their attacks, as are geothermal pipelines. The identity of the perpetrators and their origins remain a mystery. Like ghosts, they leave no exploitable trace and no statement claiming the action. Who has an interest in attacking the critical infrastructure of Greater Munich? This is the question security services have been asking themselves since the series of attacks began at least three years ago. The damage caused so far is approaching the €20 million mark.” This article was in reference to a startlingly high frequency of unexplained fires which have been causing incalculable disruption to the routine of voluntary servitude in this Bavarian smart city.
At the same time, there have been written words – especially in the form of the street paper Zündlumpen distributed in the city, and subsequently a bit all over the place – which have lucidly and remorselessly attacked the fundamentals of modern society, on behalf of an outrageous idea of freedom, earning the ire not just of the cops but of almost the entirety of the ‘movement’ as well. In February 2025 two comrades, and M, were snatched by plainclothes cops, separated, subjected to forcible DNA extraction, and locked up in the cells of the German democracy under the pretext of charges and suspicions pertaining to these otherworldly phenomena. This is only the latest move in an absurd and useless investigation which the cops have been running since at least 2022. However nothing is finished: spontaneous combustions continue to multiply, and there is no reason to believe that the rebels in that territory or anywhere else, have been persuaded to shut their mouths.
The German media and cops hypothesise the serious problems they’ve been faced with as the activity of the ‘extreme Left’. But the question is, the extreme of which “Left” exactly? The one which, in Germany, issued communiqués urging an abandonment of sabotage of railway lines due to the danger this would presumably pose to the armament of the Ukrainian State (whoops, I meant national liberation forces)? Perhaps the other side of things who write declarations of the correct position of the (mythical) ‘international proletariat’ whilst denouncing the ‘immaturity’ of those who act without permission ‘before the time is right’? Is it that Left which eagerly made total-compliance with the totalitarian lockdown regime a front of its activity, in Munich and elsewhere slandering papers like Zündlumpen as ‘social darwinist’? Perhaps the greatn police inquisitors refer to a ‘radical arm’ of the same Left who demanded ‘green pass’ QR codes to enter longstanding ‘combative’ social centers, or who spent those days indulging in speculation about the ‘fascist’ and ‘accelerationist’ motivations for attacks on the electricity grid and telecoms network which are the supports for exploitation and social control today?
What is under the repressive eye in greater Munich now is precisely not an extreme opposition to this society, one which takes its values like ‘democracy’, ‘tolerance’ and ‘equality’ and brings them to a logical and ‘militant’ conclusion. No, what we are confronted with in these pages are fragments attesting to a happy abandonment of this society: a thorough desertion of its laws and norms, its ‘debates’, its rules, morality, its ‘common sense’, its conception of what is possible or ‘real’ or realistic!
This alchemy of printed words and petroleum does not make catalogues and rebuttals of the problems of the economy and the state but makes problems for them. It does not exert pressure to “stop climate change” or “stop war”, but makes its own war, ‘re-wilds’ the social atmosphere in a rebellion which can never be militarised, one determined to breathe fresh air in a climate polluted beyond repair by fear and obedience.
As such, this revolt belongs to no one in particular.
These acts words and ideas have emerged from the desire to live passionately and violently against the comatose reality imposed on everyone by statisticians and strategists, and that desire is not, and could never be, the property of any group or class or social category. It is quintessentially anonymous, and for this exact reason is completely unintelligible, real lunacy actually, to any who thinks in the terms of headlines or spreadsheets. It can only be made the full possession of living breathing individuals, including – but by no means limited to – anarchists.
But it is as one such anarchist that I write these lines. Someone who has been moved by every dimension of the chaos which has been unleashed on sleepy Bavaria. For many comrades it has been a veritable revitalisaiton of thought in a time when singular and uncompromising ideas are sinking into the mud of technological derealisation. Hearing of each action has joyfully thrown aside the resigned anarchism of realists and doomongers who infest our little ghettos today. It has woken up the dreams of many of us, who have anxiously awaited every communication, and been enthusiastic to spread and discuss everything since the beginning. In the midst of lockdown, I recall the anarchist library Acrata (formerly located in the center of Brussels) stayed open every week in defiance of the measures, gathering comrades and interested people to pour over every word of Zündlumpen they could get their hands on.
I am reminded of the fact that the publication Brûler les foyers du virus technologique – consisting of a french translation of ‘If Not Now, When?’ from Zündlumpen #64, (which is reproduced here pp. 22-24) alongside news of sabotage of masts and rail lines in Munich and elsewhere in 2020 – was brought to the attention of the Besançon cops when the anarchist Boris was under round-the-clock surveillance, and was spotted “giving this zine to passers by”. He was under surveillance at the time because he was a suspect in two incendiary attacks on telecom’s masts in the Besançon region which he would later claim responsibility for.
These are just two glimpses into the ways in which comrades internationally have tried to spread to each other (and even to ‘passers by’) fragments from the subversive experiment in Munich.1 Most of this story will always remain unwritten – and it is irritating if inevitable when a fragment of it turns up in the semi illiterate notes of the cops – but the examples attest to how events in Munich have become incorporated into the subversive projects of many comrades. The good news, bad examples, scurrilous writings, have become an instrument in uncompromising struggle wherever there have been impatient searchers for rebellion.
The same is true in reverse. Whether we consider the many pages of Zündlumpen dedicated to solidarity with Boris after the subsequent attempt by the state and medical authorities to imprison and murder him, or the arson of at the Bauer drilling site (complicit in the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline in so-called Canada) (see below p.22), a heightened sensitivity to outbreaks of revolt elsewhere has invariably inclined to further stimulus for attack in Munich. This mutual awakening of thought and action is a solidarity of quality of exactly the kind that Daniela Carmignani, another intransigent rebel who haunted Munich, is describing. One which “stimulates the continual activity of one’s mind in a project which realises itself in insurrection.”
It is that kind of solidarity – of earnestly distributed zines, long walks and discussions, fly-posted provocations, multiplying smoke signals – which really can pass through walls, defy the scientific scrutiny of movement-managers and police inquisitors alike, and haunt this world we want no part of with ideas which have no place in it.
an anarchist in London
1 Author’s note: a task in which the projects Sans nom (sansnom.noblogs.org) and Act For Freedom Now! (actforfree.noblogs.org) have been indispensible. We must also acknowledge here the efforts the anonymous publisher of the english Zündlumpen Anthology (vulpinebadgers@riseup.net) and make reference to the new U$A distro project A Million Earthworms who take responsibility for its distribution in that territory.