TOTW: Assassination Politics

Illustration from the French newspaper Le Petit Parisien in which the anarchist Matteo Moral kills an arresting guardsman and then himself

People are murdered every day, yet assassinations of public officials are rare events. A lot of murders are crimes of passion. It would seem that hatred of public officials does not stir the passions to such a degree that attempts against their lives would be more common. This old essay, which hasn't aged well, proposes a harebrained scheme to make a pool of money to incentivize and reward such assassinations. Anarchist have attempted against the lives of leaders, without guarantee of success, and at the cost of their own life, or their freedom. Have anarchists changed their mind about the utility or desirability of assassinations? Has the cost-benefit calculus changed? Are they no longer capable or willing to carry them out? Are they now more unfeasible, unethical, or undesirable than before?

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Nice try, FBI

dont even think about it

Most assassinations are of people willing to die and this is much more the case now because it's very hard to get away with unless u are living in a war zone. Most anarchists I know don't fetishize dying a martyr and convince people not to do it. Which U see as largely positive. But the consequences of people being discouraged from murder suicide would be much less assassination.

There have been 200+ assassinations since the 2000s in areas that aren't in war zones and approximately 65-70% of assassins were not caught, got away with it, and live to tell the tale. So, I wouldn't say it's any harder to do now and get a way with it than prior the 2000s. Who do you mean by most?

By "war zone" areas, were you alluding to assassinations that occurs less in western and/or wealthier nations where it may be more difficult to get away with assassination? It comes off to me that by "war zone" you were really meaning wealthier and/or western areas, but without saying so, as it'd may sound western-centric . You seem to hold the idea from somewhere that it's more difficult than usual to assassinate someone, from how I understand what you wrote, but I don't know where? I don't know how you came to the conclusion that most assassins are willing to die and that assassination have been becoming very harder to get away with it more than ever before because? It's unclear to me where you go that idea that it's harder to do now? An assassination is still an assassination even if the assassinator commits suicide afterwards.

When I say warzone aim talking about places where the government is fighting some sort of opposing government force often times mafias, drug cartels ect. I think a very large potion of the global South has this problem. I think being destabilized by imperialism and having governing structures destabilized to prop up someone useful to US interests is very effective at creating countries conductive to warfare.

So I think a massive part of living in the global South is ha inf stability took away and living in a place where different governing structures are constantly warring with each other is a big part of living in the global South.

But yeah everything I say is extremely western centric. When I state opinions I talk about what's relevant to my life. I don't talk about what's going on or how to do anarchy in places far away for me because I would have no idea because U know very little.

So when I state opinions it's what applies to my life not what's true for the whole world.

I haven't seen much of USA behind the ongoing conflict in Myanmar that has an involvement by the Thailand soft junta government (and with some factions now fighting against it in a few border provinces). Same for Iran, Syria and Turkey being behind Hamas and Hezbollah. And let's not talk of all the armed factions of the Global South now being discretely backed by China.

Imperialism has no brand. But sooo many flags.

I mean the USA has been doing sanctions since 2003 economically depressing countries is great for cultivating civil war.

I mean yeah obviously I am aware countries other the USA do imperialism. I never would claim otherwise. Very absurd thing to think I believe

Smaller dictatorships aren't justified by the big guys' imperialism. Otherwise you end up justifying small fascist regimes in the name of "anti-imperialism"?

Sanctions aren't blockades or embargos... just a way for the US government to at least give themselves good PR, that they're no longer putting their money on "bad guys". Especially when they no longer have a reason to support foreign dictatorships as per anti-commie Containment policy.

That was also a first wave of sanctions in response to Myanmar's repression of ethnic minorities, and increasingly anti-democratic governance.

US got surprisingly "hands off" over Southeast Asia since the Vietnam debacle... and that's actually where they get criticized; not over actual imperialist actions but over relative inaction, over Myanmar's coup and current civil war (unless there's some CIA black ops we should know about) and Thailand's more discrete, related democratic collapse. The most they'll do are occasional stupid Navy charades in South China sea to show their muscles, and defending a shit banana republic country like Philippines.

politicians are like cogs in a machine. killing them doesn't stop the machine from working, it just gets more cogs.

on the other hand, the continuing assassinations of abortion doctors certainly has had an impact on access to abortion (even before the reneging on roe v wade)...

so campaigns of violence seems more effective than the one offs that anarchists are more likely to do (as far as i can tell).

"politicians are like cogs in a machine. killing them doesn't stop the machine from working, it just gets more cogs. "

Noooo, but there's a priest class of capitalists and without these around you wojldn't have big development projects, big tech hype, etc. So yea, there are cases where getting rid of some VIP cap can effect serious change, even if not collapse the whole system overnight (duh).

certainly not for the reasons given in that article, and that's not that many, and none of those were by anarchists

The prerequisites for assasination politics are in place now, anonymous crypto and prediction markets, including death pools. But they aren't happening the way the author hoped. Why not?

It's not happening because there's no such thing as perfect encryption and anonymity, and because the pretense that this whole scheme can be plausibly legal and therefore tolerated, specially if it has the intended effects, which it wouldn't, is a legalistic delusion on par with that of "sovereign citizens". Also, think of the hordes of people willing to kill for money already hired by the different branches of the military and other agencies with licenses to kill.

Nowadays people live less violent and more prosperous lives thanks to Leviathan. That's why there are less political assassinations and less political violence.

That's true, but at the expense of the environment, and in the longrun the overpopulation implosion.

a monopoly of violence at the expense of freedom

Weeell, if a majority of meak people in democracy decide that their type of subservient freedom is preferable to "the jungle", that's just the lowest common denominator a majority of weak Leviathanic minions prefer. What, violent insurrection by a minority of honest anarchists will work? It is better to live as a strong individualist and let the foolish hordes lose their personal freedoms. Why sacrifice your own happiness and freedom to liberate a majority of stupid sheeple who will only recuperate the same after a helluva lot of slaughter. and that always ends up being women and children, not the rich white men who run the show. More critical thinking required please!

I'm all for killing fascists, but killing fascists does NOT change the underlying system that led to their birth AND development. For example, if someone shot Biden right in the fucking eyeball right now, people would just put a different guy in his place, because his base hasn't changed. There's still a state, a two-party system, a moral panic, and whatever else is wrong with this excuse for a country.

Treating symptoms does NOT cure the disease, but it DOES make it more manageable, at least for a while. Is it worth it to risk your life on treating symptoms? Well, that depends on how much it is bothering you, how much effort it would take to do so, and how much you're willing to lose to treat the disease OR the symptom. Leaving the analogy aside, sometimes it's a better use of your time, sweat and blood to endure the pain for now, and use that saved energy to achieve something greater in the end, that will positively affect more people.

There's ALL sorts of ways you can fight back against oppression, and killing people is just TOO risky, and doesn't achieve much. Blowing up shit, robbing, hacking, etc, will achieve much more, because they are attacking the source, so the effects of those are MUCH much broader. Killing one guy might make some people grieve for a while, but they still have their resources to retaliate with, and to support themselves with.

Kill Biden for all I care, but don't you DARE blow up the white house, or cut our party's shady funding from shady corporations!

If it scares the shit out of the anarcho liberals and makes them high tail it away from anarchy do it, like do whatever you can to make that happen.

What I been thinking for years, yea. Do something the anarcho-liberal weaklings won't put up with, and ZAP, they'll just vanish into thin air. It's just plain stupid to be scared of whatever will be the authorities' retaliation and bullshit PR as when you're really anarchist you understand that as part of a war... as all states are built on warfare and some sot of military chain of command. It's more obvious in more "backward" non-Western countries.

There was never an anarchist consensus about this topic, it’s always been divisive. To measure how opinions among anarchists have changed across time, a longitudinal survey would have been needed. Next best thing would be a comparative meta-review of texts from different decades.

Since these actions are typically carried out by lone individuals, whatever considerations they took do not necessarily reflect the ethics and desires of other people who preferred not take that action.

Lastly, to assert that there was either a decrease or an increase of these actions, first they would have to be tallied and presented.

"attacking an ICE facility is way cooler than an assassination imo."

Unfortunately it accomplished nothing of substance and motivated nobody to do anything to ICE facilities since. In fact the detention facilities have gotten worse (not due to WvS's actions, however).

"Detention camps are an abomination," van Spronsen wrote. "I'm not standing by."

Sadly "standing by" is all that has happened since.

An assassination could have accomplished way more.

RIP, WvS.

In Summer 2019, I was part of DC's portion of the pushback against Donald Trump's attempt to unleash a wave of urban house and apartment raids by ICE. Trump wanted to deport whole familes so it was called the "Family Operation." Goal was about 25,000 folks deported plus anyone surrounding them ICE could catch.

Trump kept self-doxxing this, running his mouth about what weekends ICE would be out and at least dropping hints about what cities. In DC, we mobilized on each of those weekends, putting out patrols on foot and bike that would signal rapid-response units if so much as a shadow of ICE was spotted. My own role was bike scouting. I rode for miles, checking back streets and apartment-heavy areas, looking for ICE's vehicles but finding none. Our mission was to descend on any raid with everything we had, get word out to the whole community so they could mobilize, and defend those targetted by ICE from capture. Probably would have been counter-siege of ICE while those under attack shut their doors and held out (ICE often is not allowed to kick doors!), then forcing ICE to negotiate their own escape. This would be especially effective if the local cops did only a halfway job of defending ICE's marauders. For DC cops to vigorously defend a street and apartment sweep by Trump's minions would have been incredibly costly for them, and this would be true in most of the "sanctuary cities" targetted by Chump.

We never saw a raid, ICE held back every time fearing urban raids in Latinx neighborhoods at times they were expected would blow up into urban riots and battles. ICE knew we were waiting for them and didn't want to walk into a trap. They knew damned wll Trump's flapping lips were letting us set up on them. The problem was, we had to get lucky every time, Trump and ICE only had to get lucky once. Each named weekend the scenario repeated itself, thankfully Trump's own mouth kept providing the intel we needed to get our defenses ready. I am proud to have been part of this, but in truth we were fighting a holding action.

Then we got the big break we needed: Van Spronsen went on offense against ICE at the price of his own life, targetting the motor pool at an ICE hellhole with incendiary weapons. He gave his life but killed ICE's morale. It was only a week or two after (I forget the exact interval) that the "family operation" was scrapped as ICE's morale had been smasheds and even Trump had to concede it was too risky.

We held the arrests to something like 24, one thousandth of the intended targets. We might have been able to win without Van Spronsen's Sacrifice, buy maybe not. I will forever honor him as a warrior who gave his own life to save migrant lives. Of all of us who fought in Summer 2019 against the sweeps and roundups, nobody did more than him.

Look you shitass moderator. Luke is claiming the dip was from their strugglismo and not from the fucking pandemic. The numbers do not lie. ICE actually published the deportation numbers but I will not link to that here. Here is a relevant one too. https://www.npr.org/2023/01/07/1146510281/ice-deportations-report-immigr...

The NUMBERS have only GONE UP. This is the fucking point of the comment you deleted.

WHY DO YOU FUCKING IGNORE THE MATH?

FUCK YOU TO THE MODERATORS THAT DELETES COMMENTS THAT ARE IMPORTANT.

RIP WVS

giving information is different from just making a claim. here you give a link. any actual thing that you're referring to would also have been acceptable (like, ICE stats, etc), which is why this calm and even-tempered post from you is staying up.

thecollective .4

OooOooh nOooo thecollective wants us to be "acceptable" with information like ICE stats or they will delete us from their vEry important aNarchIst webblog that is tOotally not full of articles and comments that are "making claims"!

We should never try to assassinate acceptability politics from anarchy!

no, you don't have to give the ICE stats, just to at least refer to what your claim is based on, so that at least someone else can go look at what you're presumably basing your claim on.

thanks for the opportunity to clarify my point.

thecollective .4

The program that we halted in 2019 was NOT all deportations nor did I ever claim it was. Rather, it was a punitive Trump operation aimed at sowing fear and terror in long-established migrant communities especially in "sanctuary cities" such as they supposedly are. The plan was to target last known locations of about 25,000 migrants who had escaped ICE's grip for a massive wave of urban roundups. Trump hoped that even more migrants would be arrested as they objected to the roundups. Instead this pogrom was met with enough force and power to shut it down.

25,000 may be a drop in the deportation bucket, but preventing house to house immigration sweeps and raids is HUGE. As far as I am concerned, this is a "by any means necessary" issue, as was stopping the spread of Trump's family separation program that was meant solely to deter migration with the "we will take your kids away" message.

There is no way that the covid pandemic arriving in the US in early 2020 could have reduced deportations the PREVIOUS YEAR. What it did do was kill people held in ICE/CBP dungeons in 2020.

The intent of past assassination attempts was mostly within the framework of "Propaganda by the Deed," which according to Zoe Baker's "Means and Ends," was often based on insurrectionary anarchist theory. A not insignificant condition for the development of said theory was that the wouldbe insurrectionists were often illiterate. The "deed" was considered a superior form of propaganda to the "word" because of this condition. Thus, anarchists were interested in acts that would be understood as anti-authoritarian, instructive, reproducible, and demystifying. Assassination with bombs, guns, and knives was one of these deeds that was thought to demonstrate the vulnerability of the ruling class and could be relatively easily carried out by the oppressed with accessible training and equipment.

Another part of the context was that similar deeds were already being carried out by Russian nihilists and apparently Irish ...nationalists or something.

We don't live in that context anymore and the results from the context such ideas were developed in weren't very encouraging. Anarchist terror during the Russian revolution of 1905 doesn't seem especially encouraging either - at least how it is depicted in Paul Avrich's "The Russian Anarchists"...

If we go to more recent times, like with the Greek and Italian anarchist and/or nihilist "cells" (CCF, etc.) or a few other examples, I still don't see a lot of encouraging results. Even stuff like the Marfin Bank arson in Athens, 2010 seems to have had shitty results. There's a decent case to be made that even minor stuff like smashing windows during protests does much good as a form of propaganda.

There was a time not too long ago where I think there was more to hope for from this model of propaganda. I remember a documentary that I think Crimethinc still distributes called "Breaking the Spell" having decent consequences. But I think the takeaway is that the act itself is a much smaller contribution to the propaganda's results than the way the act is reported, celebrated, denounced, etc. I mean, that's obvious. The equally obvious problem in our situation now is that creating for our acts positive and widely distributed interpretation seems almost impossible.

What we need are more badly written and printed booklets for sale whose profits do not sustain the anarchist writers so they have to take soul-crushing work and end up peeing on their own poop.

This all depends on how you are quantifying results. With most of your examples you can easily argue that the consequences were a plus to the anarchist movement itself. As for like "concrete gains from the state," not so much sure. That said, there are situations where anarchists have the backing power for this sort of violence and do win gains, an obvious example would be the pistoleros gangs in Barcelona.

Moving on, Marfin is a bad example here. The deaths in the bank were accidental and this happened pretty much at the same time as the movement against austerity was being defeated. So the timing compounded the reaction in the Greek anarchist movement. This reaction was intense and not good. It's really clear in hindsight that just moving on no matter how callous that seems would have been the far better choice. It calls into question how easy it would be to psy op any movement if it can scramble the Greek anarchists at a huge height (2010ish)

On another note, the name Marfin always made me laugh cause it sounds like a cabbage patch character. Like starvin' marphin or barfin' marphin

That first part is a really good point. I tend to think of propaganda coming from anarchists and directed towards non-anarchists, but it’s totally valid to measure success by boosts to anarchist morale or ambition or whatever.

My grammar was all fucked up so I don’t know if what I was saying made sense.

I feel this is relivant:

“Oh Leon,
How I wish our paths had crossed on our unique journeys in life. Maybe the dust of our bones will someday mingle in the world ahead, but our cosmic spirits of rebellion have always been kindred. If I were trapped on a deserted island, which is where we appear to be in many respects, you would truly be someone to have around. Honest. To the point. Unwavering. An open book of freedom. Motivating. Willing to deal with the hard stuff that most are too chicken-shit to do. People like you, even within the realm of anarchists, are hard to come by these days, times of embraced psychic mutilation and emptiness in servitude to flattened identities within the machine of deadness. Where are your kind to be found now? ….those who’s thirst for life and freedom….for anarchy, can never be quenched. If there are other dimensions beyond this life which give you special power that we cannot attain or understand from our mortal positions, could you help us out? May you be a muse to inspire those free-spirits born into this dead world, a world that vampiricly feeds on the nectar of life. From your work, even grander pieces could be created, perhaps even collaborative and improvisational endeavors in the pursuit of the living art of life and death. It could be a real bang. We would have a blast.”

the opening from
“Blood Splatters Thicker Than Ink: A Letter To Leon F. Czolgosz”
by Invecchiare Selvatico
from the book Black Blossoms At The End Of The World

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