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Title: Litanies Author: Alfredo M. Bonanno Date: 2017 Language: en Topics: religion Source: Negazine — 1 — 2017. https://archive.elephanteditions.net/library/negazine-en-1
All religions have lists of words, often barely comprehensible, that are
repeated ad nauseam by the faithful in order to beseech deliverance from
their god. These lists are drawn up and perfected by professionals who
study the best way to blunt the brains of their flock.
The aims of such repetitions vary and of course have nothing to do with
the god to whom they are addressed, who, not existing in any known shape
or form, doesn’t give a damn about so much wasted breath. The first aim
is to let the devotees’ minds loosen their perception of their
surroundings, giving them the benefit of a kind of cheap ecstasy that
relaxes the nerves and helps them to endure oppression, in whatever
form. The second is to stimulate a collective feeling when more than one
person is present, as these litanies are hardly ever recited by one
devotee alone, though this should not be excluded in absolute. The third
aim is to establish contact with the divine but given that, as
previously mentioned, this doesn’t exist, the contact is reduced to the
act of repeating the same words obsessively over and over.
All this, along with other aims that I cannot recall right now, but
which could be gone into by the benevolent reader, is to let the sound
of the words prevail over their actual meaning. After all, it is the
intonation of the litany that one hears, not the concept relayed, which
obviously only exists as an intensification of the absurd. Like any
other music that is intended to lull people to sleep, it must be
repetitive, monotonous, predictable and comforting to allow thoughts and
perceptions of things to fly low until they fade away and finally
disappear. Strange as it might seem, the unification and repetitive
modulation of the litany produces dumbing down effects far more easily
than one might imagine. The practitioners of any religion, i.e. the
officers of the god being prayed to, know this very well and take
advantage of it one way or other, to prepare the attention (so to speak)
of the believers for the discourse that they want to channel their way.
Whether preaching or a sermon, a summons to faith or fierce threats, it
makes no difference, the listener’s ears must be captured and the brain
dazed before the new words appear, often violently in contrast to the
previous chanting.
But why are you talking about litanies in an anarchist journal, one
might ask.
I’ll explain right away.
Anarchist comrades do not recite litanies together, at least not yet,
but some of them draw up lists, which are devoutly sought, read,
solicited, identified, discussed; they are applauded and used as tools
to promote the anarchists’ self-satisfaction. So, not litanies but
lists.
But lists of what?
Lists of attacks that have already been carried out or could be carried
out in the future. And this is just the best case scenario.
Even the writer of these lines, presumptuous as a scowling Cerberus with
three heads, committed this sin from the mid-seventies onwards by
drawing up the Proletarian Chronicle, a list of all the attacks on
manifestations of power in the bimonthly journal Anarchismo. Along with
the two comrades with whom I began the undertaking (note to the reader
and also for my wounded heart: in actual fact my comrades were not two
but only one, Tito Pulsinelli, as the other, Vito Messana, was a man of
the secret services under the name of agent “Meta”, as we discovered
forty years later), we thought that this list could be helpful to spread
both the action and the model employed in the operation, etc. This might
have made sense at a time when there were so many comrades disposed to
act, so many things being done, such great confusion and lack of
clarity. Which is not an excuse, I just want to say that I wouldn’t do
the same today.
Explaining why is not easy but that is what I am trying to do.
At the present time, a list of attacks being carried out can only
apparently be an impulse to act. Yes, it can fill the vacuum left by our
demolished and afflicted conscience. Well, someone might say (actually,
many, as I can see when I am moving around), at the end of the earth, it
doesn’t matter where, someone is acting against power by attacking it in
its interests, its structures, its technological components and
everything else. My turn will come, of course it will, the little
comrade says, holed up in their eternal doubts as perpetual preparer of
the next action in the near future, always still in the making. For the
moment it is enough for me to know what is being done, everywhere, even
at the end of the earth, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care about
differences of background, about the fact that the conditions are
radically different from one place to another, it’s enough for us to go
forward heads down. It’s enough to simply read this long list, it cheers
me up and makes me feel proud to be an anarchist.
The same kind of bitter reflection could be made concerning another kind
of list, one specifying all the actions of attack possible: burning a
police station, sawing down a high voltage pylon, pulling a policeman’s
beard and so on.
Why did I write “in the best of cases”? Because sometimes among the
actions of attack these lists also include sad manifestations of dissent
called presidi [sit-ins], a horrid word of military origin that
anarchists, along with many of those who borrow other people’s words,
use without noticing. Let’s say, a full-blown presidio with a giant
sheet carrying the words “let’s destroy prisons.” I have discussed the
meaning of such initiatives elsewhere, here I just want to repeat that
prison is a total institution, which in order to exist requires
structural and economic connections spread throughout the territory. Are
we sure that we know these connections, do we know who the contracted
suppliers are, which power plants provide the energy, where the water
tanks are located and everything else? Or are we only able to write
“let’s destroy prisons”, which would be the same as saying “let’s
destroy society”, since society as it is today cannot exist without
prisons? Do we really think that we can suggest the slogan “let’s
destroy society” to the poor unfortunates who find themselves behind
bars, as that is what we are saying to them? Under such conditions
wouldn’t it be better just to stay at home and read our manuals for
becoming the perfect anarchist? Something similar, if not the same,
could be said about other events.
Perhaps it would have been better to have drawn up another kind of list,
one containing the tools required for a planned action, in plenty of
detail so as to avoid unpleasant surprises or sudden blocks because the
lighter to light the fuse is missing? Including the maps required in
order to reach the objective, the distance from the nearest points of
repression, timing, possible escape routes, the number of participants
required, a thorough discussion on the significance of the action, a
decision about who should take the lead and give the appropriate orders
in the event of things not going as planned (yes, I’m talking about
“command” and “orders” and I confirm that I am an anarchist and I repeat
that I hate windbags), and everything else.
This would be a good list to draw up and one that I would read with
interest, but I’d never publish one like this in any of our papers,
journals and so on, because it only concerns the comrades who have
decided—after finding and choosing themselves on the basis of reciprocal
affinities—to carry out a precise action of attack.
If we want to dirty our pages with technical topics, well, let’s do it
by going into detail about some action which, due to its complexity, we
consider deserves to be gone into in depth, and publish the experience
of comrades who have lived (attention to this word) such an action, not
just heard about it by reading lists. For example, in Italy, between the
end of 1977 and 1989 1200 high voltage pylons were cut down. A few of
these actions ended up in these blessed lists. But do you really think
that was what triggered the proliferation of such actions, which I not
only agree with but believe are good for one’s health, being a question
of night walks in the countryside? At the time the above-mentioned
journal published an article in which one method (among the many) was
examined, explaining how you can cut down a pylon without making any
noise and without any specialist technical equipment, cheerfully sawing
away. I was tried and sentenced for that article, but that’s not the
point. I believe, given some of the reports in the local newspapers at
the time, that this effort of the pen had not been in vain. But, of
course, it wasn’t a sudden inspiration resulting from a list.
Let’s leave litanies to the priests of every kind.
AMB
April 2017