TOTW: Inititiation and Anarchyland

There are some pretty clear ways Anarchy acts as a space of initiation. Facing death (even if not particularly consciously) while fighting cops in the streets, understanding your simultaneous power and powerlessness in the face of the state and institutions, finding elders to learn from, and perhaps even discovering something that feels like community, family or home, however fraught all those words and concepts might be.

The Mohawked Salamanders Burn Down the Salamander’s School

The Mohawked Salamanders Burn Down the Salamander’s School

From en.squat.net, original from Attaque in French
Why We Attacked the Zad
Notre-Dame-des-Landes (France)

The Zad was our pirate ship, the mother of all Zads. It emerged in a time with no way out and it was as if the world became a little more bearable. Like a brief glimmer of light, a possibility breaking through the thick, sticky fog of our future. For those of us who lead full and busy lives, off the beaten track, it was the knowledge that there would always be a place to welcome us if we were on the run. A place where the state would never come for us. A place where we would always find allies to feed us, to clothe us, to hide us in the folds of its hedges.

Michèle Bernstein Has Forgotten to Die

from partisanhotel.co.uk by Clodagh KINSELLA

& (in lieu of an interview) a film called On the Passage of Michèle Bernstein Through Time

Michèle Bernstein tells me over the viral winter of 2020, when we plan to meet in Normandy but never do. The problem is not with her memory: she quotes verbatim her book reviews for Libération, where she was a literary critic forty years ago. She can remember minor details about others who themselves forgot not to die and, at eighty-nine, has become the de facto guardian of the Situationists’ legacy.

Occupy Wall Street/Occupy, ten years on

from Autonomies

The act of remembrance is not for us, as we so often repeat, one of simple commemoration, nor of retrospective evaluation: was an event, a movement, a revolt, a revolution, significant? The question begs criteria, criteria of what is politically and socially important, which is in turn judged according to “measurable” changes in what exists.

Science Fiction as Protest Art (Part II): Dystopias of Domination

from the commoner by Javier Sethness.

This is the second entry in a three-part response to Thomas Wilson Jardine's December 2020 essay, ‘Cyberpunk: An Empty Rebellion?’ In this section, we will briefly examine around twenty instances of dystopian “capitalist hells” in speculative fiction, whether literature or films. See our final installment for an analysis of alternative and anti-modern utopias, together with the dialectic between dystopia and metaphorical heavens in Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson's novels and the Deus Ex game universe.

The protest art made by Soviet utopian sci-fi writers last century, and many of the producers of speculative and visionary fiction who have followed them since, share a common concern with the infernal nature of capitalism, whether openly or by implication. In this sense, Thomas Wilson Jardine is surely right to warn that media corporations cynically exploit these ‘rebellious’ themes for profit and self-aggrandisement. At the same time, the unfortunate existence of this dynamic in no way delegitimises the righteous concerns raised by speculative artists throughout history to the present.

Burn the State Database

Athens, Greece: Anarchist place (steki) at the Agricultural University : Burn the State Database

The case of the 14 comrades of the occupation of the rectorate of the Polytechnic university does not only concern them, but all the fighting parts inside and outside the faculties. This is because it is an upgrade on the part of the state, in terms of the ways of methods and repression.

The 2nd degree trial of Marios Seisidis

From Act for Freedom!

On 17/9/21 the second degree trial of anarchist comrade Marios Seisidis will take place at 1 pm at the Loukareos Courts (Athens,Greece)

On Friday 17/9/21, at 1pm on the 6th floor of the Loukareos Street Courts, the second degree trial of comrade Marios Seisidis continues for the armed robbery of the National Bank of Solonos Street in 2006.

Arson of an Enedis vehicle

via attaque

A former dictator once said that communism is the soviets plus electricity. This image shows how compatible his worldview was with today’s society. The passage of time has shown us how false the promises of technical progress were. But the “empowerment” of workers, who no longer need foremen because they have them in their heads, or citizen involvement in the management of the “common good” are increasingly used as instruments of social pacification.
Instead, we prefer the equation “anarchy is fire plus freely and temporarily associated individuals”.

The Local Kids: Issue 7 – Summer 2021

from The Local Kids

Population management is now supposedly the responsibility of everyone. Obedience to the state has been dressed up as solidarity. More surveillance is called freedom. All in the name of a return to normal life that appears as a mirage in the desert. Should we rehash for the umpteenth time a comparison to 1984? Its author might have thought that it takes a continuous and considerate effort to see what’s right in front of your nose; can we truly say that? Is it difficult to see what’s going on? Or is it that we speak different languages and will find no common understanding of life?

Anarchy is Ecology w/ Peter Gelderloos

from The Poor Prole's Almanac

The relationship between ecology and anarchy is often considered a specific niche of anarchist thought. In this conversation, we talk about the need for anarchy to be centered on ecology and agro-ecology. How do we build resilient networks under capitalism that are centered around foodways and supporting our ecology?

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