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Title: Never Again Unarmed
Author: Haris Hatzimichelakis
Date: 2012
Language: en
Topics: Greece, insurrection, conspiracy
Source: Retrieved on March 17, 2013 from http://325.nostate.net/?p=6503

Haris Hatzimichelakis

Never Again Unarmed

To begin with, I must make it clear that I consider this trial to be yet

another theater of war, and the present political statement — because

this is a political statement and not an apologia — is yet another act

of enmity stemming from the camp of revolutionary forces. I have already

taken responsibility for membership in the Fire Cells Conspiracy

Revolutionary Organization. Therefore, as a proud member of the Fire

Cells Conspiracy, but also as a revolutionary and an anarchist, I view

the occasion for my “apologia” as a forum in which to spread

revolutionary discourse and explain my political positions regarding

revolutionary war.

I would first like to talk about the institution of justice: from feudal

regimes, in which justice was personified by an absolute monarch who

possessed legislative as well as executive and judicial power, to the

modern Western capitalist states, which upon adopting the separation of

powers devised by Montesquieu subsequently divided up those three

aspects of domination and made them independent. The institution of

justice, as repository and executor of the law, represents one of the

fundamental pillars of domination as well as one more institution of

unfettered exploitation and oppression.

Clearly, justice was and will continue to be based on class. It’s enough

to see how the individuals who constitute the institution deal with

petty criminals, drug addicts, and the pariahs of this society, whom

they annihilate by sentencing them to years and years in prison as

effortlessly as they eat their breakfast. But whenever some politician,

judge, or businessman gets into trouble — with double the prestige and

special weight — they get out of it unscathed and use their excess

arrogance to condemn the ultimately substantive or baseless prosecutions

carried out to tarnish their reputations. So while they all live

prosperously and enjoy a certain prestige, 12,500 prisoners are crowded

together in conditions that animals wouldn’t even put up with. Most of

these prisoners are locked up due to the intensification of violence

within the same class — the lower class. On the one hand, this

intra-class violence is being produced by the increasing economic

inequality infesting a large portion of the population, while on the

other hand it is a result of the institution of property, which forms

one of the strongest cornerstones of capitalist domination. The

institution of property — its structure and its particular

characteristics — gives rise to the expansion of a complex network of

social behaviors and exploitative values that extend completely

throughout the social fabric, as well as a kind of petty authority found

in most of the oppressed social sectors and bred by the reproduction

from below of predominant models of behavior. Thus, as a consequence of

this institution, the predictable feelings of insecurity also emerge,

accompanying a consumerist frenzy — which is the main component of the

modern Western capitalist world — and generating the continual

accumulation of consumer goods by the petty bourgeoisie, mostly bought

on credit. Economic inequalities ultimately manifest themselves in the

form of intra-class criminality. Property owners fear this criminality,

so they ask for more police, security systems, and protection. In this

constant demand for security — which on the one hand makes the social

fabric become more and more conservative, and on the other produces a

society of security and surveillance reigned over by the police — the

institution of justice finds its raison d’être.

The willing guardian of the existing order, the modern goddess Themis,

is a ragged and deplorable figure that assumes the “sacred” duty of

punishing transgressors of the law — individuals who come from a social

fabric torn into a thousand pieces. To clarify my own position on this

point, I want to say that I have nothing to do with petty criminality or

crime committed within the same class. Instead, those practices are

thousands of light-years away from my code of values. Of course, this

isn’t out of any respect for the institution of property, but rather

because I view precaution as a basic structural element of every action.

When the oppressed — instead of opposing the capitalist system, which is

the source that produces inequality — find an alibi for eventual

assaults and robberies in the exploitation they themselves suffer and

the isolation to which they are condemned, they generally treat their

own as enemies. In my opinion, they are feigning blindness and putting

on an act when it comes to their inability to understand the true

magnitude of the problem, the true perpetrators of capitalist crime.

However, justice as an institution doesn’t operate on just one level,

reproducing exploitative relationships while isolating and marginalizing

still more of the already excluded social sectors. Its most repugnant

and hostile role focuses on the repression and criminalization of social

revolutionary struggles and processes. From the hangings of

prerevolutionary Russia; the severe sentences inflicted on radical

strikers during the vigorous period of workers’ struggles in America;

the years and years of solitary confinement in sunless white cells in

the dungeons of Peru, Argentina, and elsewhere; to the antiterrorist and

mask laws [1]; the carte blanche to publish photos of comrades charged

in different cases; the numerous arrest warrants; the criminalization of

friendly and comradely relationships in political cases, especially

during the last two years; as well as the crushing sentences of

countless years in prison imposed on the guerrillas of the RAF, the

Revolutionary Cells, and the 2 June Movement in Germany, the Red

Brigades in Italy, Action Directe in France, the MIL and ETA in Spain,

the IRA in Ireland, and 17 November in Greece; innumerable examples — or

better said, experiences — illustrate the way bourgeois justice

confronts the political enemies of every regime and order. The

institution of justice uses any dubious contingency and any legal

technicality when it sees itself opposed by those who negate the system.

Justice forms an inseparable and essential part of the system,

representing it and at the same time serving as one of its fundamental

pillars.

The fine line of historical memory — by way of this first trial for the

case of the Fire Cells Conspiracy Revolutionary Organization — cuts

across my own path through revolutionary space-time, while the past

meets the present in a courtroom. For my part, I must therefore state

that I am totally against everything this trial represents and against

the institution it serves. In addition, I am going to spend my entire

life fighting with all my strength for the destruction of that

institution and the destruction of the predominant behavioral and

relationship models it reproduces. Naturally, as a revolutionary and an

anarchist I am not fighting for an improved and incorruptible justice or

for more favorable treatment. The sole objective of everything I’ve

mentioned is to once again emphasize that institution’s villainous role

in the global crime called capitalism. Perhaps the following words of my

comrades-, brothers-, and sisters-in-arms express it better:

We combat their justice not simply because it is unjust, but because it

expresses the system’s code of values, which is antagonistic to our own.

And no objective court or judge can settle that conflict. It’s our

values against theirs. Professionals of the law have no place in our

conception and view of the world. And if someone asks us: “So then what

do you want?”, we will answer: “We want to hang the managers of this

system from the walls, not to replace them by establishing a ‘purer’

concept of justice (objective courts, fair laws, reasonable sentences),

but merely to assume the unyielding ‘duty’ of settling accounts as an

honorable act in itself.” Fire Cells Conspiracy

It’s very clear that an institution that equates laws imposed from above

with justice as a universal value is, to revolutionary forces, an a

priori enemy that deserves to be completely destroyed. Such laws derive

from a certain code of values, from a quite specific ethic, and

therefore cannot be objective. Rather, it is the subjectivity of values

that intrinsically leads to the subjectivity of justice. Courts, judges,

prosecutors, and all those who serve justice as an institution represent

the modern code of values. In other words, they are a product of

predominant morality itself. And in opposition to that predominant

morality, which confines the law to a perpetual struggle between

objective axioms of good and evil, which doesn’t recognize a conception

of justice that is continually fluctuating and being redefined, and

which finally hands a caste of judges and prosecutors — to whom it

attributes a quasi-divine dimension — the responsibility to oversee and

administer laws imposed from above, I propose taking justice into our

own hands. Revolutionary self-justice, as an honorable and unmediated

practice, finds the human dimension in law and doesn’t recognize

anyone’s right to impose their will on my life.

Courts ultimately operate within the framework of a de jure prosecution

of criminal cases as defined by the logic of the system. However, the

real criminals right now are the very supporters of the

bourgeois-democratic regime, and the real global crime is none other

than the capitalist system itself.

The capitalist system is based on the exploitation and oppression of

human beings by other human beings, and its goal is the continuous

production — on the backs of the overwhelming majority of the world’s

population — of profit and wealth for a tiny caste. Capitalism has been

represented by totalitarian and fascist regimes as well as by the

bourgeois-democratic model we presently find throughout the entire

Western world. Bourgeois democracy, as the representative expression of

capitalism, is the political system that asserts and maintains its

extensive domination from behind a liberal facade. It is a system based

on the promise of carrying out the will of the people as an inviolable

condition. This is of course a false condition meaning that once every

four years the masses go to the ballot boxes, where they elect which

scum will best play the role of everyone’s mediator, leader, and

specialist. They then hand that scum the reins to their own lives in

exchange for a betrayed conscience or, in the best of cases, some small

favor. It is a system whose foundations are laid by the magnificent

cooperation between businessmen, contractors, shipping magnates, judges,

and reporters, as well as their interrelations with the world of

politics. In every case, people from these branches of professional life

are the ones who fill political leadership positions. It is very clear

that the political system is structured this way in order to defend the

interests of the haute bourgeoisie and is therefore tailor-made to suit

the capitalist regime. Bourgeois democracy is not the will of the

people. It is the science and technique that power uses in order to not

be perceived as oppression. The interests of the dominant classes

continue to govern without displaying the overt brutality of absolutist

regimes. But whenever barbarous violence is replaced by vulgar mass

media propaganda, whenever alienation chokes off any response, whenever

silent consensus fills the void left by fear of repression, democracy

claims its share in a brutality that is no less obscene even though it

is concealed and refined.

Concurrently, bourgeois democracy has the tendency to spread

exploitative and authoritarian relationships throughout the social

fabric. It thus creates a society whose only function is to reproduce

predominant morality and the structural elements of the capitalist

regime. Getting rich quick, the desire for — or obsession with — social

ascent, the depiction of alienated and decadent behavior as ideal models

to follow, consumerist mania, acquiescence, egoism, and self-interest

all constitute the results derived from a society based on spectacle and

illusory capitalist prosperity. All these social behaviors and many

others, replicated by a giant mass of subordinates, create a complex

network of authoritarian relationships that guarantee the stability of

capitalism.

The rise of a middle class and its consolidation as the prime expression

of the social body prefigured the social stupor and lethargy of the

spectacle. The teeming arrival of immigrants at the beginning of the

1990s (with the fall of the Eastern Bloc and its socialist regimes)

created a new social class that replaced Greek workers as a productive

base. It’s worth pointing out that this migratory wave was mainly the

result of the plundering of resources from countries in the Middle East,

Africa, and Latin America. A globalized economy needs a modern

globalized proletariat. The exploitation suffered by the so-called

underdeveloped countries, with their cheap labor, horrific living

conditions, and abundant natural resources, guarantees the opulence and

progress of the Western capitalist world. It is an opulence that —

incapable of being maintained via “legal” means — gives rise to

imperialist wars that simultaneously lead the populations of those

countries to even more extreme degradation. And so the desperate begin a

journey — with no guarantees of success — toward the Western

metropolises, where they arrive by the thousands.

The ever-diligent middle class took the opportunity offered by the

existence of this new productive base, which — combined with the barest

guarantees of economic profit resulting from their, at least apparent,

social status — helped them ascend to become a class of small

proprietors and employers. This form of petty authority, mated to an

episodic acquiescence and the nocturnal emissions of consumerism that

accompany out-of-control lending, was the spark that ignited the

creation of a colorless, odorless, and completely submissive social

sector. The betrayed consciences of large portions of the population;

their embrace of the idol Mammon; the ideologization of inaction; and of

course the idealized portrayal of a modern, robotized, sheep-like

lifestyle devoid of any trace of responsibility, initiative, or

individual will; were reflected in thousands of passive spectators who

gave up their last vestiges of dignity and began to simultaneously

maintain and strengthen the capitalist machine.

However, over these last few years we have seen the most decisive turn

in the history of capitalism. The greatest financial crisis the economic

world has ever known, which is in fact a crisis of the hyperaccumulation

of capital and hyperinflation in the financial sector, has made the

weight of the financial sector unsupportable to the state machine.

Threatened by the fall, economic interests are once again putting the

squeeze on the productive base, on the great mass of wage-earners, and

on the middle and lower classes, with the aim of salvaging their profits

and surviving. Social inequalities are thus widening even more, since

the middle class — that product of the twentieth century — is losing

those privileges (especially those of an economic nature) that were

created to form an effective trench between the powerful and the lower

classes. The changes to the social fabric at a structural level, but

also to material living conditions due to the economic crisis and the

constantly adjusting conditions of oppression that accompany it, are

radical. In Greece, the presence of the IMF — an entity whose name is

intertwined with bankruptcy and tyranny over problematic economies

around the world, some characteristic examples of which would be

Argentina or, more recently, Hungary and Ireland — signals the beginning

of a new era with regard to the limits of the capitalist model. In the

name of perpetual capitalist progress, and with the objective of saving

the interests of banks and business conglomerates, an entire array of

social benefits — which were used in the past as the price paid for

generalized inaction itself — is being abolished in Greece. The new

reality being shaped is ushering in totally miserable conditions similar

to those prevailing in countries on the capitalist periphery. The

apparent opulence of the last 20 years is falling to pieces, revealing

the naked misery of the capitalist regime as well as the absence of

imagination of most of the population, who betrayed their consciences in

exchange for a few meager material guarantees and the dream of social

recognition.

Moving on to the matter of how, in my opinion, revolutionary forces must

handle a situation like the one I described, I should first clarify

certain points regarding my own political position as well as the way I

view the current social reality. From the first moment of its activity,

the Fire Cells Conspiracy made it clear that it understood repression

not only as a condition produced by domination but simultaneously as a

set of social behaviors reproduced from below and woven throughout the

entire social fabric. That’s because the survival of capitalism doesn’t

just require the powerful to impose exploitative rules. It also needs

the actual oppressed to accept them. However, acceptance of the

degrading conditions of modern slavery requires an alienated and passive

social body. As an organization we therefore promoted revolutionary

conscience as both the motive force of subversion and a weapon against

capitalist power. One might view the capitalist development resulting

from the economic crisis as materially guaranteeing the conditions of

survival for an enormous sector of the population, but that view in

itself isn’t responsible for the misery of our lives. Oppression is

implanted and forms an integral part of capitalist structures and the

statist model, no matter what the conditions may be. Even in times of

outward prosperity and neoliberal consensus, it is not the essence

itself of exploitation that changes, but only the terms under which it

is imposed. As Guy Debord said: “The problem isn’t that people live more

or less poorly, but that they live in a way that always escapes their

control.” Regarding revolutionary action and practice, at this level it

doesn’t matter to me personally whether conditions are “ripe” or whether

social consensus remains equivalent to passive indifference.

In every instance it is a certainty that conditions of instability and

political polarization are completely desirable, since they oblige that

enormous mass of those who take part in nothing, as well as the

permanently indifferent, to take a position. It’s also no coincidence

that the now indispensable condition to ensure the so-called social

peace is political stability, which in turn guarantees the normal

functioning of the system.

Within this context, the role of revolutionary forces consists of

radicalizing rebellious minorities, organizing them into a solid

revolutionary front, exposing the alienated behavior that breeds

submission and indifference, damaging the enemy within, sowing

insurrectionary violence, and ultimately creating a polarization clearly

oriented toward subversion. Naturally, to realize such possibilities —

in other words, to bring into existence the collectivization of

consciences toward a common direction — the individuals who take part in

the process must above all and before everything possess individual

conscience. The main issue is therefore each person’s individual

responsibility regarding how and to what degree they view their own role

in the continuation of capitalism, as well as their combined enthusiasm

and urgency for conflict with the existent, with the goal of totally

pulling it down from its cross.

Our weapon in such a project is none other than polymorphic action,

understood as political propaganda, marches, talks, discussions,

occupations, sabotage, expropriations, and armed struggle as well.

Self-organization; antihierarchy; unmediated ways to take action, far

removed from the typical party and politicking identities; horizontal

structures; collective decisions; equality; solidarity; subversive

thinking; and of course the revolutionary ethic — these are some of the

features that the anarchist/antiauthoritarian milieu already possesses

right now.

Within that milieu, I personally created my political identity,

developed my revolutionary conscience, found comrades, collectivized my

negations, matured politically, and participated in struggles that had

different characteristics and objectives. And it was ultimately the

anarchist milieu that marked my path as a revolutionary, which led me to

make decisions that I am proud of and continue to honor even to this

day. In detail, briefly reviewing my history as part of the

revolutionary forces, I’ve been in the anarchist milieu since 2005. This

political milieu brings together individuals and collectives with

diverse points of view, different conceptions of struggle, and distinct

attributes. Nevertheless, it focuses on an antiauthoritarian,

antihierarchical worldview and self-organized structures, and its goal —

obviously — is anarchist revolution.

Therefore, by meeting people and gradually forming my political

identity, beginning as a schoolboy and then as a university student, I

took part in all kinds of political activity. The student marches of

2005; protests during the European Social Forum; the rallies against

educational reform in 2006 and 2007; the massive riots and school

occupations; solidarity with political prisoners (talks, demonstrations,

etc.); my participation in the self-managed social center at the

Polytechnic, which developed many different types of activities inside

as well as outside the university; and of course the revolt of December

2008—those were the events, among many others I’ve possibly forgotten,

that defined my trajectory within the anarchist milieu. All those

experiences of struggle, as well as the comradely relationships I

developed with people as a result, the difficulties and the successes,

the victories and the defeats, the losses and the endings, the attitudes

and the ruptures, the adoption of values and the political alliances —

all that, as a continuous and full experience, has determined my

revolutionary identity and established my political convictions.

With the passage of time and the acquisition of valuable experience, my

revolutionary thinking was being shaped and I was becoming aware of the

range and nature of the choices open to me. I finally arrived at the

decision to dedicate my energy and potential to urban guerrilla war and

the Fire Cells Conspiracy, a decision I am proud of and certainly won’t

apologize for. The moment I chose urban guerrilla war as the expression

of political struggle that advanced the revolutionary worldview as I

understood it was a crucial one to me. It deepened my critical thinking,

allowed my activities to evolve, and functioned as the factor that made

me more complete and fulfilled on a political as well as an existential

level.

But before talking about urban guerrilla war, I would like to say a few

things about revolutionary violence as an inseparable part of the

overall struggle. As an anarchist and a revolutionary I don’t

acknowledge any of the false distinctions between legal and clandestine

action. Of course, neither do I embrace the prevailing propaganda that

anxiously seeks to take advantage of every combative and insurrectional

expression by stuffing it into the framework of bourgeois democracy. In

addition, the defense of “speech” often corresponds to the condemnation

of “action.” This is no more and no less than the same prevailing

propaganda taking shape, leading to invisibility, inactivity, and

ultimately the disappearance of every form of response. Obviously, by

not recognizing the political or moral legitimacy of the system, I don’t

accept its restriction or limitation of my actions in any way. In the

end, the limits of struggle aren’t established from above, but are

instead framed and determined by our own revolutionary ethic, as well as

by the goal of total destruction.

Revolutionary violence is just and necessary — just according to my own

principles and code of values, and necessary for the simple reason that

those who have power have never given it away willingly and without

bloodshed, and they never will. “Violence is the midwife of every old

society pregnant with a new one,” wrote Marx. And revolution is a

violent process of overthrowing the existent. Since revolutionaries are

enemies of the system in its totality and all its expressions, it would

be inconceivable for them to operate within the reformist pacifist

framework of the system itself. Casting a brief glance at the global

history of subversive movements, we realize that every great and

essential change has been brought about solely and exclusively through

violent processes and struggles. I thus not only accept but also prefer

any collective or individual form of expression of revolutionary

violence, on the condition that it is in accordance with an ethical

standard, as a method for the spread of the revolutionary objective.

By the spread of the revolutionary objective, I mean when revolutionary

activity contributes to the revolutionary process by breaking the

state’s monopoly of violence, radicalizing consciences and responses,

and of course managing to cause damage to the enemy. Revolutionary

violence causes damage to the enemy, whether through massive riots or in

the form of guerrilla attacks, that yields a very tangible and material

certainty and is in no way insignificant or valueless. This material

certainty doesn’t just operate on the level of an unproductive

symbolism. It also speaks to losses in material and human potential that

are valuable in themselves. A destroyed bank is a bank that doesn’t

function, a torched police car means one less police car, bombed

courthouses are useless courthouses, a thrashed riot squad is a riot

squad incapable of doing its work properly the next day, etc. A

radically rebellious movement must speak the language of attack,

permanent mobility, and continuous evolution. And the language of attack

and revolutionary war is measured by casualties. That certainly doesn’t

mean it doesn’t recognize the symbolic value of an action. Far from it.

I understand the tremendous role played in tactics by dialectics, which

should nevertheless go hand-in-hand with the effectiveness and results

of the damage.

Another consequence of violent revolutionary processes is the

radicalization that results from the appropriation of such practices by

more and more people. And that appropriation materialized on a massive

scale precisely during the revolt of December 2008, when thousands of

different people from different social sectors met on the streets,

bringing a quite distinctly insurrectionary and violent outlook with

them. The radicalization of the broad revolutionary milieu since that

December becomes obvious when one considers the growth and

intensification of actions by guerrilla groups as well as the more

general and widespread enthusiasm for conflict and confrontation.

Therefore, the essential role of violent methods in the deepening and

sharpening of subversive struggles and in making them stand out as an

incipient threat to domination also becomes obvious. Acts of war in the

urban environment demonstrate the regime’s role as enemy, produce a

polarization that is indispensable to the broad revolutionary

perspective, reveal the vulnerability of the system’s centers of power

as well as the possibility of carrying out effective attacks against

that system, and finally create a continually tense situation of

pressure and political unrest that acts as a destabilizing factor to the

regime. That destabilization in turn functions as a crucial tool in

favor of the revolutionary objective.

In the end, revolutionary violence breaks the state’s monopoly on

violence and repression. The legitimization of violence exercised from

above, combined with the attempt to vilify as well as condemn rebellious

violence exercised by the oppressed against their tyrants, is one of the

system’s most potent propagandistic weapons. The bourgeois-democratic

state — as capitalism’s political representative — cements its power

with exploitation, oppression, and therefore violence, which is either

visible and direct or remains concealed yet just as ruthless. In

Prometheus Bound, the famous tragedy by Aeschylus, the State and

Violence are portrayed as sister deities who together chain the Titan

Prometheus to the rocks of the Caucasus Mountains for revolting against

the domination of the world by Zeus. Almost 2,500 years separate us from

the message of that important work, yet it still continues to be

relevant. Violence and the fear of repression on one side, with

propaganda and the creation of consensus on the other, constitute the

most essential authoritarian bipolarity of the modern regime. And

additionally, how could a political system that suppresses every notion

of human essence and dignity in the name of profit; that annihilates and

murders in the streets, police stations, prisons, workplaces, and on the

borders of land and sea; that packs people together in modern

concentration camps; that actively participates in or supports

imperialist wars and chemical weapon interventions in countries on the

capitalist periphery; that constructs a police society of control and

surveillance in the name of security; that promotes the values of

egoism, apathy, indifference, money cultism, snitching, malice, etc.; be

based on anything else but violent imposition?

The expression of violence by domination is always morally legitimized.

Conversely, when the victims of that continuous and relentless process

stop seeing themselves as victims and begin to rebel by claiming the

role of executioner for themselves, they are called criminals,

extremists, lunatics, hoodlums, and terrorists. The concept of

“terrorism” has a particular connotation today. And how could it be

different when the “war on terror” is nothing more than an ideological

weapon serving world domination and its need to gravitate toward fascism

and conservativism?

But what does the term “terrorist” mean? Louise Richardson, in her book

What Terrorists Want, defines the term thusly: “terrorism simply means

deliberately and violently targeting civilians for political purposes.”

If we accept the definition of this academic, whose studies are being

used by the Defense Ministry as well as by American intelligence

services, then a terrorist can only be someone who willingly aims to

hurt the civilian population in the interest of a political end. When

has the Fire Cells Conspiracy or any other revolutionary organization

targeted the civilian population? The answer is, of course, never!

Precaution is a structural element of urban guerrilla war and

revolutionary violence. The only reason why the term “terrorism” is

being used with the quite particular connotation implied by this case is

in an attempt to denigrate our political struggle and drain it of any

content, an attempt to portray the individuals who take part in or

support such practices as crazy, demented, bloodthirsty criminals who

attack everyone, no matter whom.

Now, if we examine the etymology of the term “terrorism,” we see that it

derives from “fear/terror-power/state [2].” We should therefore conclude

that a terrorist is whoever manipulates and administers the power of

fear, always with political ends. So the crucial question is: who is the

recipient of the message of terror? Because if it concerns a large

portion of the population, as explicitly stated in the penal code I am

being judged with, then the terrorist is the politico-economic elite,

due to the violence — which is integral to its existence — that it

exercises over the body of the oppressed. But if the recipient of terror

is the politico-economic elite and its centers of power, then I will not

refuse but instead proudly wear the “label” of terrorist.

That’s because the spread of fear — the fear of revolt, the fear of

radical action, and the fear of urban guerrilla war reflected in

everyone who consciously forms part of and directly supports

authoritarian institutions — and ultimately terror throughout the enemy

camp is not only a desirable condition but, in my opinion, also

indispensable to the interests of revolution. In 1794, Robespierre

defined terror as “justice: prompt, severe, and inflexible.” And terror

caused by the actions of revolutionary forces and directed against the

regime’s order is nothing less than the result of our combative

politics. It is the justice of revolution.

The quintessence of this combative politics is urban guerrilla war and

armed struggle as specific expressions of revolutionary violence, whose

characteristics I analyzed earlier. It is organized and orchestrated

attack on the established modern politico-economic order. It is partly

and firstly a political choice of rupture, and partly a process of

self-realization and self-evolution for the revolutionary herself. The

political choice of rupture consists of direct opposition to the regime

in the form of radical practice as the transmutation of our

revolutionary discourse. Consistency; organization; mortal wounds

effectively and precisely inflicted on centers of power; the spread of

anarchist discourse and the new nihilism as the culmination of a

critique of weapons, in which weapons don’t necessarily mean guns and

bullets, but any methods used by individuals that most appropriately fit

the situation; as well as the propagation and promotion of revolutionary

practices; constitute the structural elements comprised by urban

guerrilla war. On the other hand, as a process to be carried out for its

own sake, urban guerrilla war represents a proud choice and a dynamic

attitude that proposes total and direct rupture with the existent — a

choice that speaks the language of revolution in the present tense. It

is an essential evolutionary step, since it breaks away from meaningless

routine and offers the revolutionary an opportunity for constant and

coherent revolutionary activity.

Urban guerrilla war — and armed struggle in general — is a historically

affirmed practice, recognized as a means of struggle for different types

of subversive movements and politico-ideological approaches as well as

distinct points of departure. It represents an expression in the process

of birth and development, part of polymorphic revolutionary movements

that — as everyone can easily realize — interact with the unique

conditions existing in every era and are the native product of

sociopolitical processes occurring at specific historical moments.

It is therefore natural that armed organizations scattered throughout

the world and the course of history would possess distinct

characteristics and political viewpoints unto themselves, depending on

the factors I’ve mentioned as well as the decisive role of the

subjective factor — in other words, the essence of the people they

comprise. The same also goes for the Fire Cells Conspiracy. One of the

reasons why I took political responsibility for membership in the

organization was because I felt it was important to defend its history

and the choices it made. I won’t allow its name to be dragged through

the mud by supporters of the system who are eagerly attempting to drain

the organization’s struggle of any meaning, and I will naturally

continue to spread its particular discourse, ideas, and views.

The Fire Cells Conspiracy is an anarchist guerrilla group that, through

organized structures of attack, promotes the revolutionary objective. We

are part of a revolutionary project based in the present but with its

eyes gazing toward the future, toward the objective that is revolution.

It is an objective we place in front of us here and now, in the form of

direct action and constant activity. The Fire Cells Conspiracy struck

and strikes the prevailing structures of capitalism and bourgeois

democracy. Its attacks are directed at the complexes of power and at the

institutions that support the system. To us, precaution is a fundamental

and imperative condition of our activities. We care about damaging the

enemy and emphasizing its vulnerability via continuous acts of war. We

do so in an organized way and with particular coherency for the

production of our revolutionary discourse, which envelops and

accompanies our actions.

Without praxis, words are nothing. The harmony of the fist striking the

table, the sound of the explosion and the gunshot, are needed for the

magical recipe that — at a critical moment — brings together all the

potential of our defiance. Jean-Marc Rouillan

Praxis is the most sacred form of discourse. It simultaneously

determines and positions the political choices of individuals who shift

into action. Our very political choices are enemies of this world in its

entirety. Every aspect of domination and every relationship based on

exploitation are our enemies. And independently of whether or not some

invisible possibility for massive and widespread conflict appears, we

choose the logic of immediate and continual activity, with the goal of

satisfying and realizing our individual I and ultimately collectivizing

the means of revolutionary process — a process that will make society as

we know it collapse.

With this idea, the Conspiracy began to strike using incendiary devices

against car dealerships, banks, insurance companies, economic and state

services, politicians, ministries, parties, churches, military barracks,

prisons, pigs, systems of control and surveillance, reporters, and

fascist gangs. The themes developed in the organization’s communiqués

covered a wide and varied spectrum: the economic dimension of capitalism

and the role of economic centers of power; specific people who form the

democratic elite, as well as the role of the mechanisms in which the

military-police complex takes part; attacks on the military courthouse

in the Rouf neighborhood and military targets carried out on October 29,

2008 and November 2, 3, and 4, 2008, respectively; the role of

reporters, the mass media, and propaganda as a means to achieve

consensus as well as a process of alienation; the role of the pigs,

systems of control, and surveillance; repression as a process that

produces symptoms of fear and the creation of a police society; religion

and its role as an instrument that subjugates and denigrates life

itself; the international solidarity expressed by the attack on the

French news agency carried out on December 3, 2008 for the comrades

engaging in sabotage on train lines; and the attack on the Chilean

Consulate carried out on July 22, 2009 for comrade Mauricio Morales

Duarte, who died when a bomb he was carrying — meant to be placed at a

police barracks—exploded in his hands. The Conspiracy, acquiring and

sharing experiences while developing its political positions and

consolidating its focus, then decided to evolve and heighten the degree

of its activity. Thus, an attack on the apartment of Panayiotis

Hinofotis — old fascist and former interior vice-minister, as well as

part of the military during the junta — was carried out on July 11,

2009; an attack on the Ministry of Macedonia-Thrace was carried out on

September 2, 2009; and then there was the attack on the home of

Gerasimos Arsenis and Louka Katseli. Arsenis plagues an entire

generation of young people who curse his name, while Katseli is a loyal

representative of capitalism who plays an important role in the current

government.

Nevertheless, our political viewpoint as the Fire Cells Conspiracy is

that domination doesn’t emerge from one dimension of the centers of

power. Rather, it expands throughout all social structures and

determines all relationships and behaviors. In our communiqués we

therefore indicated these behaviors and attitudes as well as the

characteristics adopted by the social body, since meekly bowing your

head before the tyrants in exchange for artificial capitalist opulence

is nothing more than begging for crumbs off the table of the economic

elite.

We pointed out these behaviors precisely because it seems important to

us to emphasize that the survival of a system based on exploitation is

rooted not just in the imposition of a dominant model of government from

above, but also in social consensus from below — a consensus expressed

by way of indifference, inertia, fear, and alienation. When the

oppressed masses sell off even the last trace of their creative

conscience; when they are incapable of viewing their lives as the

consequence and result of choices they themselves have made; when, in

thrall to the drug of spectacle, they allow themselves to be lulled by

the idea of a televised utopia; when private life, egoism, the dream of

social ascent, and petty authority become ends in themselves; when

indifference is justified as a vital attitude; when demands are limited

to false, empty threats against the most weak; when fear is capable of

applying the brakes to subversive thought and practice; when intra-class

violence replaces conflict against the system of power; when choosing

the tyrant of the moment via the electoral process is perceived as

struggle; and finally, when passivity and submission find fertile ground

in which to put down roots; then the alibi of oppression is unable to

offer safe refuge to the choices and faults of the exploited. We

therefore refuse to see the social body as a perpetual victim that

deserves to be completely absolved of its sins.

Thus, we also profess anarchic individualism. Because we seek comrades-,

brothers-, and sisters-in-arms who are taking the road toward

revolutionary destiny, with conscience as their weapon. Because we know

that conscience and the revolutionary ethic are necessary conditions for

the creation of a healthy, anarchist, and revolutionary process as we

understand it. Because we consider revolution to be an individual matter

in the first place and a collective matter only later on, and that stems

from our belief that everyone is responsible for their choices, their

options, and their own vital position. Because we don’t accept that some

are capable of taking revolutionary action while others aren’t. Because

we don’t view ourselves as the vanguard of a struggle that the docile

masses must follow, but rather as individuals who participate in

processes of struggle — individuals who collectivize their negations and

convert them into practice here and now, with the aim of seeking out

those minorities who in turn will stride toward the revolutionary goal,

their weapon being hatred for prevailing civilization and hatred for the

structures and functions of society as we know it; rebellious

individualities who will walk together toward the destruction of the

existent, forming healthy and comradely connections while promoting the

values and principles of equality, solidarity, self-commitment,

autonomy, self-organization, and freedom.

This is the worldview proposed by the Fire Cells Conspiracy: ruthless

daily war on all forms of power; direct and total rupture, far beyond

the disorienting demands and complaints of the unions. We refuse to

reconcile ourselves with the current material conditions of life. We

don’t view our lives in simple economic terms, nor do we measure them in

statistics, and we therefore don’t talk about low wages, the lack of

social programs, or economic degradation. Instead, we make reference to

existential poverty, the decay of feeling and ethics, and generalized

alienation. We aren’t begging for more favorable conditions of slavery.

We demand to have absolute and final say regarding our lives, and we

transform that demand into praxis: yesterday, today, and forever,

attacking under the structured aegis of guerrilla war on everything that

attempts to repress, alienate, or corrode our desires and our ethic, our

integrity and our character. Ultimately, we want to spread and promote

this kind of action to all who — with honor, dignity, and bravery —

engage in revolution as a permanent defiance, as an endless voyage

toward clear skies.

I would thus like to address my arrest, which happened on September 23,

2009. An Antiterrorist Unit operation carried out at my home in Halandri

ended with four arrests. I, my cousin, his girlfriend, and another

comrade and friend were arrested as members of the Fire Cells

Conspiracy. In my home they found an explosive device under construction

that, according to the logic of modus operandi, became the evidentiary

proof connecting the arrestees with the organization. The complete

absence of evidence that could connect any other person apart from

myself to the presence of the device, much less to the organization, led

the pigs to cooperate with the mass media in the need to create the

farce of a safe house in order to have something to base their criminal

prosecutions on. The media began to disparage and gloss over everything,

taking about the dismantling of the organization and the widespread

arrests of its members. Obsessed with the insistence that this really

was a safe house, arrest warrants were issued for anyone who had left

their fingerprints at my place, even if they only visited once years

ago. In this way, apart from the first three preventive detentions,

other arrests followed. People were dragged in front of the examining

magistrates by masked members of the Antiterrorist Unit, even if only

for a fingerprint found on a lamp, a CD-ROM, a bathroom tile, or for

some other equally ridiculous but in no way less irrefutable evidence.

Nevertheless, things were very clear. The only one who knew about the

device was me. My social circle, my friends and comrades who came to see

me in the simple context of social relationships, cannot be responsible

for an object that was carefully hidden out of sight in my home, and

their presence there is obviously no proof that they were Fire Cells

Conspiracy members. Additionally, a safe house is a place with very

specific characteristics. It is a clandestine home with false ownership

information and a large quantity of weapons or explosives, and it is

used as a base of operations. Only a limited circle of people would have

access to such a house, not just anyone who felt like visiting. These

characteristics are far from those of my home, which is rented in my

father’s name and was visited by a stream of people, some of whom had

nothing whatsoever to do with the anarchist milieu. Also, the

prosecutorial mechanism itself had already shot down the assertion that

it was dealing with a safe house, since only certain people who left

fingerprints there were charged with membership in the Fire Cells

Conspiracy. Naturally, the selection wasn’t made on the basis of

objective evidence. The criteria were the people’s pasts, their

positions, or their political identities. I have taken political

responsibility for my membership in the Fire Cells Conspiracy

organization. Does this mean that the rest of the accused have something

to do with the organization simply because they know me? I have likewise

made it clear that the device was mine and that its presence in a legal

home was of a preparatory nature and my own personal mistake. So a

social visit is enough to sentence other defendants for explosives

possession? When you go visit one of your friends or acquaintances, do

you poke around to see if they are perhaps hiding something on their

bookshelves? I don’t think so. This is simply a matter of a convenient

circumstance to justify the criminal prosecution of revolutionaries, but

also people who have nothing to do with the struggle, tossing everyone

into the same sack on the basis of ridiculous accusations.

The case of the Fire Cells Conspiracy represents the beginning of a

series of proceedings and events that signal the repressive

counterattack of the state and capitalism against the advance and

radicalization of the combative current within the anarchist milieu that

has taken place during the past few years. The rising tide of more and

more attacks on targets and symbols of domination, carried out by groups

and collectives that constitute the new urban guerrilla warfare — groups

with different political viewpoints and analyses, but with a shared

project of struggle — in turn obliges the repressive mechanisms to

evolve their means and methods in order to apply the brakes to the

development of revolutionary forces. If we make a brief review,

especially of the period after December 2008 and the peace that came

once the revolt had calmed, we can see that the young comrades who had

gotten involved in those processes chose to continue down the path of

fire instead of withdrawing into submissive tranquility. Concurrently,

the already extant guerrilla infrastructure intensified its action,

creating an intricate complex of combative groupings that were

simultaneously renewing and increasing the degree of revolutionary

commitment. This intensification of revolutionary action led, quite

logically, to a parallel intensification of repression, since the state

machinery was recognizing the danger of revolutionary practices,

especially during a period characterized by political instability.

Revolutionary war means damage on both sides. Thus, during the last

one-and-a-half years, a series of cases and events has provided the

setting for repressive policy. A few obvious examples include the act of

putting a price of 600,000 euros on the heads of comrades S. Seisidis,

M. Seisidis, and G. Tsironis shortly after our arrests; the widespread

preventive detentions prior to protests; the raids on social centers

carried out under ridiculous pretexts; the arrest and imprisonment of

combatants without there being a shred of evidence against them; the

Revolutionary Struggle arrests and the climate of antiterrorist

hysteria; the criminal prosecutions launched against the circle of

intimates, friends, comrades, and family members of combatants Nikos

Maziotis, Pola Roupa, and Costas Gournas, who took political

responsibility for their membership in Revolutionary Struggle; the

murder of Lambros Fountas, member of the same organization, during

preparatory activity for an operation; the shooting from behind of Simos

Seisidis and the subsequent amputation of his leg; and of course the

arrests of the other brothers, sisters, and comrades from the Fire Cells

Conspiracy Revolutionary Organization.

Therefore, it can easily be seen how the generalized proceedings in the

framework of our case are part of a quite widespread repressive project

directly targeting revolutionary forces and their actions. Our response

to a plan like this can be nothing other than the even further

intensification of our actions, returning blow for blow as much as

possible with still more vigor and effectiveness.

This is also the position expressed by the Fire Cells Conspiracy. For

that same reason, it has recently developed its revolutionary worldview,

even further increasing the degree of its action and discourse, and

striking various targets located in the metropolis with devastating

explosive devices. The attacks on the National Insurance building,

Parliament, the preelection rally for former prime minister Kostas

Karamanlis, the apartments of Mimis Androulakis and Marietta Giannakou,

the offices of Chrysi Avgi, the immigrant concentration camp on Petrou

Ralli Street, Korydallos Prison, and the Thessaloniki Courthouse, as

well as the 14 incendiary packages sent to embassies and international

agencies, the package sent to then justice minister H. Kastanidis, and

the blow struck against the Athens Court of Appeals in the heart of the

metropolis, were the essential dialectics produced by the Conspiracy

while I was already locked up. The deepening of its practice but also

its discourse, to me represents an example of integrity for any

guerrilla infrastructure that truly desires to promote the revolutionary

objective. It is the direct rejection of the logic of victimhood, the

rejection of a life of fear and anxiety, the focusing of your own

strength on the intensification and spread of your actions, and

ultimately the permanent heightening and continuation of urban guerrilla

war and revolutionary war, far beyond conformities and reconciliations.

If anyone believes that I am going to have even a minimum amount of fear

in the face of bourgeois justice, they are mistaken. If they think that

I am going to beg them, on my knees, for more favorable treatment, they

are most certainly deceiving themselves. I know full well that the only

ones who are intimidated by seeing our absolute questioning of their

world and our absolute disdain for the power they possess are you

yourselves. Because our persona, as well as the persona of every

dignified combatant and every combatant who doesn’t back down, consists

of revolutionary character — a revolution that will be the beginning of

the end of the monstrosity you support with your lives; a revolution

that will crush, overthrow, and eliminate society in its present form.

I am therefore making it clear that my arrest and imprisonment in the

cells of democracy in no way mean the end of my revolutionary

activities. Instead, my goal is to keep converting my negations into

practice, spreading and promoting positions — mine as well as the

organization’s — on struggle, urban guerrilla warfare, and revolutionary

war. I have thus also taken political responsibility for my

participation in the organization. Because the coherency of and pride in

my decisions obliges me to. Because it is important to me to defend and

portray the organization’s history and decisions clearly and publicly.

Because I don’t want to allow any maggot reporter to build his career on

its name and reputation, attempting with crude and vicious assertions to

disparage, ethically disdain, and drain the content from its political

action. The political legacy that an arrest or a trial leaves in the

collective conscience of revolutionary forces is also important to me.

I firmly believe that urban guerrilla war and armed struggle have not

been defeated, nor is that going to happen. The dismantling of a single

organization, the arrests or even the deaths of its members, is not

enough to extinguish the flame of permanent insurrection that burns in

the eyes of those who declare themselves in favor of revolutionary war.

The analyses that claim the defeat of guerrilla war, translating it into

sterile numbers, lack any historical dialectic. As long as the legacies

of each project remain alive in the memories of revolutionary movements

and combatants, armed struggle will never be defeated. Our organization

will never be defeated! And as the organization itself said in the

communiqué for the mailing of incendiary packages to embassies and

international political figures: “The Conspiracy will never be stopped,

because it isn’t simply an organization. It is a current of ideas, and

ideas cannot be stopped.” As long as we continue to combat the existent,

firmly and without interruption; as long as we do so in practice through

our daily struggle, independent of and despite the cost of supporting

the choices that make us proud; as long as we refuse to lower our heads

and submit; as long as we keep fighting; the commitment to revolution

will continue stronger than ever!

To conclude my political statement, I would like to dedicate with all my

heart — to my comrades, brothers, and sisters, together with whom I walk

and will walk along the path marked by dignity, freedom, and revolution

— this excerpt from Tasos Livaditis:

16. And on the first night a man who had lost his face entered the cell

and he left the lamp he was holding on the floor.

17. And his shadow grew against the wall.

18. And he asked: where have you hidden the weapons?

19. And no one knows whether that was haphazard, or perhaps meant to be

answered

20. He put his hand on his heart.

21. And then he struck. Then another man who had also lost his face

entered and he too struck.

22. And the men who had lost their faces, they were many.

23. And day broke. And night fell.

24. Day forty.

25. And there were times he feared he was losing his mind.

26. and he kept a little spider in the corner, which he would watch

tirelessly and patiently weaving its web.

27. and every day they would break it with their boots when they came in

28. And she would begin again every day. And again they would break it.

And she would begin again.

29. Until the end of time.

NOTHING HAS ENDED. THE WAR CONTINUES.

LONG LIVE THE FIRE CELLS CONSPIRACY.

LONG LIVE THE INFORMAL ANARCHIST FEDERATION/INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY

FRONT.

LONG LIVE ANARCHIST REVOLUTION.

[1] ”The law regarding the concealment of facial features at public

gatherings,” called the “mask law”, was passed in Greece at the

beginning of 2009 (as one of the immediate legislative responses to the

December 2008 revolt) and has been applied since then. In accordance

with the law, the charge of “covering one’s face” was changed from a

misdemeanor to a felony.

[2] The Greek word for “terrorism” is “τρομοκρατία”, which consists of

the words “τρόμος” (“terror” or “horror”) and “κράτος” (“government” or

“state”). Therefore, if democracy means “government by the people,” then

terrorism could be translated as “government by terror.”