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Title: Not Our Comrades
Author: Scott Campbell
Date: August 30, 2017
Language: en
Topics: ITS, anarchist movement, mexico, attack
Source: Retrieved on 18th June 2021 from https://itsgoingdown.org/its-attacks-anarchists/

Scott Campbell

Not Our Comrades

In May of this year, the eco-extremist group Individualists Tending

Toward the Wild (ITS) issued a statement claiming responsibility for the

murder of two hikers in the State of Mexico and the femicide of Lesvy

Rivera at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico

City, providing as justification for these acts their belief that “every

human being merits extinction.” In response, I wrote “There’s Nothing

Anarchist About Eco-Fascism: A Condemnation of ITS” for It’s Going Down,

denouncing both ITS and the U.S.-based anarchist platforms that

disseminate and promote the group’s activities.

While by no means the first anarchist condemnation of ITS, it did garner

a bit of attention, facilitated in part by the responses of ITS and its

supporters, which we will turn to in a moment. Shortly thereafter,

strong critiques emerged from other quarters, in particular from

insurrectionary anarchists such as L from the UK, Eat from Indonesia,

and a joint statement from former members of Anonymous Anarchist Action,

Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, the Mariano Sánchez Añón Insurrectional

Cell and others in Mexico.

Taken together, these statements offer a robust distancing of ITS from

anarchists and anarchist practice across varying tendencies. None were

written in the hope of actually changing the behavior of ITS but to

unequivocally clarify the distinction between anarchism and ITS. Indeed,

since May, ITS has continued on its terroristic path. Most notably, the

ITS franchise in Chile claims to have twice placed bombs on Transantiago

public buses (one, two). In doing so, they follow in the steps of ITS in

Mexico who claimed to have placed a bomb on public buses in Mexico City

last October and November and ITS in Brazil who in January claimed to

have placed a shrapnel-filled bomb at a crowded bus station in Brasilia.

Indeed, the favorite tactic of ITS these days appears to be putting

bombs in public areas in the hopes that they explode and maim or kill as

many random people (or “hyper-civilized sheep” in their words) as

possible.

While indiscriminately blowing up civilians based on a twisted,

authoritarian ideology places ITS in league with ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the

State, of particular concern to anarchists should be the special

vehemence ITS reserves for us and the threat it poses to anarchists.

With tiresome predictability, ITS goes on and on about how wrong and bad

anarchists are. (Undoubtedly this article will receive such a reply.) At

times it is not clear who ITS hates more – all of civilization or just

us. But in an odd twist, alongside the relentless defamations, ITS also

spends a notable about of energy attempting to recuperate selected

anarchist history into their eco-extremist ideology, in particular the

few attacks by anarchists in which several civilians were killed in the

late 1800s and early 1900s. Like a spurned lover, ITS cannot accept that

anarchism is just not that into it. So it adopts a defensive position of

projected hatred, all the while continual reaching out to anarchism as

if to pleadingly say, “See what a few of you did over 100 years ago?

You’re just like us. We should be together, even though I hate you.” Yet

in its anarchist revisionism, ITS fails to grasp that even in the rare

anarchist action which resulted in the loss of civilian life, it has

never been anarchist praxis to kill people for the sake of killing

people.

Helpful in understanding this behavior is the matter of ITS’ ideological

(or theological) fragility. Though they have been around for six years,

those six years have been marked by frequently shifting and inconsistent

rationales, beliefs and analyses put forward by the group for what they

do and why. They have now sought resolution to their existential

incoherence by resorting to the basest of premises: “kill ‘em all.” This

oppositional posture creates a Manichean world without nuance and

therefore requires no explication or nuance on their part. By

proclaiming all to be the enemy, they provide themselves an impenetrable

refuge from all critique and also any need for internal consistency. Yet

by existing as purely in opposition to everything, with nothing but

disdain for all aspirational proposals, they reduce themselves to mere

activists. Their actions seek to change nothing, they are symbolic and

done simply to make themselves feel better. They are like a graffiti

artist who goes out to put their tag on as many walls as possible then

goes home, pats themselves on the back and sends out a communique. The

tragic part, of course, is that the ITS brand of futile activism

involves killing and wounding people.

By creating an ideology against anarchism and also shielding their

actions from critique by stating that they believe that they will never

change anything, ITS can come across as both inventive and reactionary

at the same time. The small anarchist following ITS generates is also

telling, insofar as they are people who are already hostile to social

struggle and see ITS as developing a critique of currents within

anarchism they also wish to attack. In short, while ITS is an instrument

we are told to “have a conversation with” and “ask questions about,” in

reality ITS is simply a means to an end for those who desire to wage a

‘culture war’ within anarchism. They help normalize and popularize ITS

while still holding it at arms-length as a way to divorce themselves

from any responsibility. This is something ITS wants just as much as do

the people who make money selling their communiques and use ITS to build

up their personalities as podcasters and journal publishers. Meanwhile,

the very group these anarchists use to reap social capital from

threatens to kill us and attempts to blow up our friends and spaces.

That anarchists would want nothing to do with this is unsurprising. It

is therefore predictable that as the anarchist rejection of ITS has

become more strident, the reaction of ITS has reached new levels of

unhinged vitriol. In November of last year, they issued a statement

complaining of “censorship” from Noblogs after the site dropped their

page. In March, after Chilean insurrectionary anarchist prisoner Joaquín

García criticized ITS, it mocked him and called for an attack on “that

senile hippy Zerzan” in the same breath. The article I wrote in May

apparently touched a nerve and ITS responded with the only tools at its

disposal – anger and violence – by threatening to kill me.

Mr. Campbell, you should value your life more. You’re addressing some

dangerous people who have killed people indiscriminately for over six

years. We are still free, and they have not been able to catch us. How

are you so sure that we don’t know the place in Mexico where you

“vacation” and we won’t show up as we tend to do? You should chill out

because in a country where killing journalists is very common, it’s not

a good idea that you go about everywhere with your camera, or you’ll end

up like your colleague Bradley Will. Remember him? Only this time the

bullets won’t be coming from PRI goons.

For good measure, in the same statement they also throw in some

homophobia, referring to myself and others as “fucking faggots,” and

some sexism in denouncing the “pussy motherfucker sons of Contrainfo.”

After more anarchist condemnations of ITS came out, they responded with

another statement going after insurrectionary anarchists in Mexico along

with snitchjacketing the main individual behind the anarchist library

and social center Biblioteca Social Reconstruir. It being an ITS

statement, of course there is again a fair amount of homophobia and

sexism contained within. However, in this case it also clarified an

incident that occurred last year at OkupaChe, the occupied Che Guevara

Auditorium on the campus of UNAM.

OkupaChe is an autonomous space for a variety of collectives and

individuals that for years has been under threat and attacks from the

police and university administration. On December 14, after a growing

push for the eviction of the okupa, there was to be a large student

assembly with OkupaChe as the first item on the agenda. At some point

during the night before the assembly, an explosive device was left

outside the doorway of the auditorium. It was described as a package

made up of flammable material and nails, powerful enough to have started

a fire and wounded people at the space as well as passers-by. Initially

thought to be part of the push to evict OkupaChe, in March an ITS group

mentioned “an annoying device that we left in the mousetrap called che.”

In the more recent statement, ITS elaborates further, regurgitating

without irony the government’s talking points about the space:

[D]id you know that one of our groups placed a bomb at the “Che Squat”?

That was done mainly because they were defaming us and we shit on those

anarcho-rock star ex-con politicians and drug addicts who hang out

there, because the auditorium is supposedly so legendary: a symbol of

“autonomy” and the “combative” student movement of the ‘90’s.

So along with their tirades and death threats against individual

anarchists, one can see that they have actually attempted to kill or

injure anarchists en masse and cause damage to anarchist spaces. In

preparation for this article, I reached out to anarchists in Mexico to

attempt to document other ITS threats. They indicated that numerous

threats from ITS have been directed against anarchist individuals and

projects, but no one felt comfortable going on the record.

In case their reprehensible actions, along with threatening and

attempting to kill anarchists, is not enough of a reason for anarchist

disassociation from ITS, there is another cause for anarchist concern.

ITS proudly proclaims it has never been caught, even though “Interpol

has already collected all the information that it could from the

Internet about our Mafia.” Yet is that true? If ITS is placing bombs on

buses in three countries then why the subdued reaction from the State to

an international terrorist movement? The English-language spokesperson

for ITS calls himself Abe Cabrera. Abe is an unknown figure among

radicals yet has been welcomed into some circles because of his advocacy

of eco-extremism. He is open about where he lives, yet remains

unmolested by the state. This is odd if Interpol is involved and when

compared to the treatment members of the ELF press office received for

the less-egregious acts they reported on. I am certainly not advocating

that the state target him and to attempt to answer why he hasn’t been

would be pure speculation. But as with many of ITS’ own claims, things

do not add up.

Despite all of the above, the disturbing fact remains that various

anarchists and anarchist projects in the U.S. continue to provide a

platform to ITS. In relaying that fact to both social and

insurrectionary anarchists in Mexico, they responded with bewilderment,

anger and disappointment that a group that is bombing and threatening

them is being propped up in the U.S. by some anarchists. This again

speaks to the privilege these U.S.-based anarchists enjoy in treating

ITS as an intellectual exercise while comrades in Mexico are under

attack by them. Since May, these platforms have posted a slew of

articles and podcasts about ITS and personally attacking anarchists who

criticize ITS. In response to the ITS statement threatening to kill me,

one prominent anarchist in this vein wrote, “OMG this shit is so

hysterical. Wow.” And then promptly reposted it on their website. (It

was later removed after numerous individuals pointed out that an

anarchist site reposting death threats against anarchists was rather

outrageous.) Most recently, this same grouping published Black Seed, a

journal being distributed nationally that in part seeks to incorporate

eco-extremism, including ITS, into green anarchism. A second edition of

the eco-extremist journal Atassa is set to be published around year’s

end, presumably again by Little Black Cart.

This is pointed out not with the expectation that these individuals and

projects will stop supporting ITS. Rather, it is so anarchists are aware

of those in our circles who are providing legitimacy and cover for a

group whose sole purpose is to murder people and who have a history of

targeting anarchists in particular. ITS has proclaimed itself an enemy

to anarchists. Its words and deeds reaffirm that. Why, then, should our

enemies be welcome or tolerated in our spaces?