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Title: Chaotic Variables Author: CCF – Metropolitan Violence Cell Date: April 10th, 2016 Language: en Topics: informal organisation, platform, insurrectionary, analysis, chaos, CCF, Conspiracy of Cells of Fire Source: Retrieved on April 26th, 2016 from https://web.archive.org/web/20170426213410/https://325.nostate.net/2016/04/10/chaotic-variables-a-theoretical-contribution-in-proposal-for-an-informal-anarchist-platform-by/ Notes: Translated by A-politiko
“You are obliged to pretend to respect people and institutions that you
consider irrational. You live by fashion in a cowardly era, attached to
ethical and social conventions you despise, that you condemn and you
know they lack of any background. It is this constant contradiction
between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and
conceited spearheads of a culture that makes you sad, disoriented and
unbalanced. In this unbearable struggle you lose every dance for life,
all sense of your personality as every moment they oppress, they limit
and control the freedom of your strength. This is a poisonous and deadly
blow caused by the civilized world.”
Octave Mirbeau
We have long since opposed the world of authority and its countless
projections and impositions on our lives. We have toed the line with the
world of anarchy seeking to find accomplices in the “crime” of anarchist
insurrection as a living stance towards the barbarism of modern times.
So far we have attempted to realize smaller and bigger mutinies, always
on the principles of self-organization, anti-hierarchy and horizontal
structures. Seeking through collective processes to achieve our personal
self-education in order to acquire experiences, becoming familiar with
anarchist procedures while making our “possessions” more and more forms
of struggle, we came to meet each other based on common objectives and
aspirations so as to continue wandering on the paths of anarchist
action, walked or not up to now.
With this political culture as a vehicle, we armed our denials and
decided to move from the spontaneous impulse to organized action. We
have always felt part of a multiform anarchist front that fought against
authority in various ways and we, from our part, felt that we
contributed in this way to the war for the destruction of power and its
civilization.
Enemies of every state, country, religion, social, racial and gender
discrimination, enemies of an authoritarian machine that crushes entire
populations and kills others in the clamp of exploitation. A machine
that rampages against nature and destroys wildlife on the altar of
capitalist development. We sought both to attack the murderous tentacles
of sovereignty and to reprimand, through our words, the society that
tolerates and reproduces it in millions of ways.
But the story begins earlier …
Starting from the periphery of the anarchist milieu, from our first
participation in conflicts in demos, in Exarchia or elsewhere, we
started feeling that the spontaneous and the non-organized does not suit
us anymore. So we passed by anarchist hang-outs (students or not) where
we got more or less involved, we took part in central assemblies, in
student occupations, while slowly we got to know each other and created
organized street groups applying aggressive practices in the period
2006- 2007 during student mobilizations – while some others had already
met previously through our presence in anarchist groupings at school.
Every one of us was looking for a way to organize and act, and that’s
why we all looked for our way through smaller or larger groups of
comrades that promoted practices of direct action. We moved within
solidarity assemblies for political prisoners that promoted the value of
multiform action, electing — amongst other things — on a consistent
basis, to include the dimension of aggressive solidarity (for example
the Coordination of Action for Imprisoned Fighters).
By our individual and collective need to promote the intensification of
anarchist attack against authority through organized collectivities of
direct action, we all met again in the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire.
In December 2008 we went down to the streets flooded by the anger of the
insurgents seeking to get lost in the crowd in order to contribute to
the diffusion of metropolitan violence. Following this, we tried to
sharpen the direct action and the diffusion of the new anarchist urban
guerrilla (which, as semiology, claimed in a political way the guerrilla
tool as an anarchist practice, which was something really new up to that
time).
So these are our roots and we’re never going to renounce them. Many
times, in order to see how to move forward you have to look at who you
were before and where you started from. So for us, the anarchist current
(which has come to be described as a “space”) with all the good and evil
in which we have contributed more or less, is our womb. Within the
processes of this “space” we met, we came to know each other and we
reached today and that’s why we do not see any necessity for a
self-exile. Since the anarchist current is a synthetic construct where
many ideas and also practices mix, since the space has no longitude and
latitude to splinter from, it was unnecessary to found another of our
own. Moreover it has been proven historically that it is neither
productive nor feasible to do so. This mosaic of many different schools
of theory and practices that make up the “space”, promotes the
development of political competition. It is up to us all, however, to
ensure the quality of the characteristics of such a competition. In any
case self-exile does not contribute nor does it cover us personally.
Anything one can see as negative elements in the so-called “space” it’s
also one’s own responsibility to contribute to their elimination.
Bureaucracy, hegemonism, informal hierarchies, intrigue, false
friendships and “fellow” stabbing in the back, are there for as long as
anarchists exist, because they are human elements of our contradictions
that constantly come into conflict with each other. All these
pathologies are due to attitudes that do not belong to a single
anarchist tendency but in all, and if not dealt with as they are, we
will find them in front of us again and again.
This does not mean we have to compromise and make concessions to avoid
any confrontations. Besides, as we wrote above, the anarchist “space” is
at the same time a political competition arena where various strategies
intersect. It is a bet, if they can not go along, to walk on parallel
paths without necessarily being in direct conflict with each other. Such
an event will be a condition of mutual political maturation, which may
allow anarchy to escape its introversion and acquire characteristics
more dangerous for authority. In any case it is advisable to bear in
mind that any criticism of anarchist procedures should be separated from
the component subjects, as the value of a political project or attempt,
may be different from those involved in it, otherwise criticism of a
squat for example, might be as sterile as criticism towards an armed
struggle organization, when all that’s hiding behind it is personal
emotions. Because people come and go, but the value of the projects is
timeless.
“Indifference is a lack of will, is parasitism, it is cowardice, not
life. That’s why I hate the indifferent. Indifference is the dead weight
of history. It acts passive but it’s active. It is fatalism. It’s what
you cannot calculate. It is what upsets the programs, and tumbles the
plans made in the best possible way. It is the brutal matter that chokes
intelligence. What happens, the evil that falls on everyone, is because
the mass of people renounces its will, lets laws be issued, that only
the revolt will be able to abolish, [the mass] allows the ascendance to
power by people that only a mutiny could overthrow.”
Antonio Gramsi
We are not opposed to the concept of organization and if this surprises
some people then we make clear that our aim neither was, nor is it to
become a literary and philosophical individualists’ club of
intellectuals and artists who will spend their time self-admiring their
singularities and praising their ego.
Our conception of individualism does not come from the belief that we
are a nihilistic avant-garde, but has clear anarchist origins. First of
all we are anarchists. Our difference with other anarchists, among
others, is that we believe anarchist action must be defined by itself
and not by the social consensus and that we stand against all those
political views imposed as a “directive” of a supposedly orthodox
anarchist political line which believes that the only good anarchist
action is one that enjoys social legitimacy. We have always considered —
and still do — such views as narrow-minded because in fact they are
political attitudes which trap anarchy solely within the context of a
public presence, under some conditions of course, since in order to be
liked it gets self-castrated, it smooths the picks of its radical
character and the most aggressive corners of its words end up being no
different from the words of other political spaces (usually of some
political party) who also for reasons of entrism hide their political
identity, using in fact the same tactic. Needless to say who the winners
are every time in this game of politics. Furthermore we believe that the
revolutionary commitment of each and everyone is above all a very
personal issue covering one’s consciousnesses, existential and political
needs, not a duty that has to be fatally carried out because it is
imposed by some class or other social role.
This very important difference of ours with other anarchists has made it
easier for us to focus on everyone’s individual choices. Thus the
delineation process of the social machine functions and the condition
recorded as apathy and indifference towards the continuous crimes power
imposes in any possible way on every corner of the globe, has also
formed a large part of our analysis on society and therefore a large
part of our strategy.
We have got rid of guilty syndromes such as “why do people not come with
us?” or “why are our proposals not being understood?” We don’t live in
an era where writings expressing subversive and revolutionary statements
are delivered to fire along with their authors. In modern societies,
access to libertarian and subversive ideas is free. There are books,
magazines, essays, analysis, historiographies, biographies and all of
them can freely be found in bookstores or by clicking a button on the
computer. Therefore we must admit away from any kind of obsession, that
it’s not that people do not know or understand our ideas and proposals
but that they do know (or can easily learn) and simply either ignore
them for multiple and various reasons, or, having bad intentions
already, consider them to be hostile.
So the way we’ll act and what we will say cannot be determined by
depending our estimation on the opinion of an — in any way — indifferent
society. Furthermore we believe that reaction against the inequalities,
violence and repression produced by authority does not derive from
academic research nor from a thorough training in various ideologies and
programs, but from each person’s deeper sensitivity which can not be
reconciled with the idea of injustice that exists all around us.
This deeper sensitivity as a human instinct does not make the insurgents
superior entities but people who want to stand up and attack any form of
authority. On the other hand there are those who are accustomed to not
having quests, not being interested, closing their eyes and ears where
circumstances require it, and end up arguing with all those who
disturbed the order and the false peace of their indifferent society.
In our times however, the surgically calculated violence on which the
edifice of sovereignty is built can no longer be hidden. With the
explosion of the technological era and the development of the industry
of the spectacle, we’re being bombarded daily with audiovisual stimuli
of extreme crimes of power. It is not only what is happening in our
backyard but also all the major events that take place around us. We
watch the bombing of modern crusades that build onto the piles of
thousands of dead as the new status quo of Western prosperity, while in
the same time we are familiar to scenes of torture and murder by an
Islamo-fascist nation that was nurtured, trained and equipped by the
West itself to serve its own strategic and geopolitical interests.
Alongside, we see the extreme right gaining ground everywhere in Europe,
since the eruption of the refugee and migration issue makes the leaders
of the neo-Nazi parties everywhere increasingly popular. The whole of
Europe is armoured, creating an iron-clad continent, at the borders of
which thousands have been sacrificed in recent years, among them many
children. The safety of every European is painted with the blood of the
desperate.
We therefore believe that it would be preferable for anarchists, through
our action and words to try to talk first of all to those few who feel
themselves revolting against the ugliness of this world.
One does not need to wear any ideological glasses to understand this
ugliness. That’s why we’re not ever going to approach the indifferent,
the apathetic, the neutral, or adapt our words so that they like us.
Because today more than ever, neutrality is not just a luxury but a
provocative and conscious indifference concerning the thousands of forms
of power’s oppression, and it is therefore complicity.
Social war will make imperative the need for an organization, which will
be the essential progress of the real movement. The constant antagonism
of active minorities is the path of attacking the structures of
sovereignty and everyone who staffs it, here and now, it will highlight
how vulnerable the enemy is and let our comrades who are hostages of the
state know that they are not alone and we support them with our
solidarity.
Gustavo Rodriguez
Any critique that does not correspond to a certain proposal is neither
motivational nor really antagonistic. It is well known that the concept
of organization can cause an allergic reaction to anarchists because it
is usually identified with arteriosclerotic forms similar to
authoritarian structures (which is true even to a small degree) and it
is logical to have this strong reaction especially when a sufficient
number of anarchists driven fanatically by structuralism develop
structures like that. But what is the meaning of a critique that doesn’t
aim to practically overcome problems that we meet in these kind of
structures?
First of all, it is important to start on common grounds: Anything that
deviates from the context of complete opportunism and spontaneity tends
to be a form of organization, whether it is in cases of political groups
with characteristics of companionship, either a collective, a meeting, a
group of direct action. If we think about it, the thing that matters is
the political and qualitative characteristic of the organization. The
need for organization occurs from the desire of pursuing collaboration
with each other with the goal of uniting their denials in a way they
believe is better.
The fact that we are individualist anarchists does not mean that we
don’t have perspectives and goals in our action. This is a mistaken view
usually attributed to us from those who want to undermine us. To embrace
these opinions ourselves just because of reactivity to this criticism
doesn’t allow us to evolve. We personally want to contribute to an
anarchist action that tries constantly to achieve some objectives:
their intensity, dynamics and nature) to disrupt the smooth function of
sovereignty. We desire to incriminate social neutrality and to
constantly create a polarized condition which will force everyone to
pick sides and lay out the dilemma : being an accomplice of authority or
being with the law of rebellion. There are no middle ground solutions,
no intermediate states. Neutrality must die because we have war.
or bigger social short-circuits. With any kind of imaginative action we
want to contribute to social paralysis and destabilization because these
opportunities constitute cracks in society, and whether they have
smaller or bigger durations, they set the basis for an open road to
radicalization, which expands through generalised experience with
chaotic multiformity.
to constantly intensify the fight with sovereignty using all the tools
of struggle without any kind of ranking. It would be good to avoid
persistence in specialization which is a result of even subconscious
adherence to specific tools of struggle, but on the other hand though,
we should not hesitate to interfere more and more dynamically in as many
fields as possible. Moreover, different types of struggle should not be
condemned because this is something unacceptable. The experience of
conflict can eventually lead to conscience awakening, overcoming our
fears and weaknesses. In this way we can be sure about ourselves, we
strengthen more and more our desire for fighting and realise that we can
trust our power. The conflict opens the way.
regardless of the form of action that represents them the most, after
common willingness for an informal coordination of their struggle. This
consistency can result in an automatic upgrading of the above goals
because the wider possible spread of the anarchist action can reach
these goals or even exceed them, placing bigger bets every time.
Moreover, the targeting-result sequence must be fluid so to avoid
maximalistic aspirations which can result in disappointment of some when
the goals are not fulfilled. Because no matter how much we are in love
with the idea of the final destruction of the world of authority, we
know that this target might be so far away that we may never experience
it. For us the journey of the everlasting rebellion itself, the
perpetual insurrection, is what matters the most. To live and fulfill
daily our denials here and now. That is why we want to set open bets
with qualitative terms always negotiable. In this way we ensure a
durable flexibility of anarchist action, which avoids stagnation and
inactivity. Naturally a critique towards our goals is acceptable but it
should not be based on imaginary standards that we haven’t even placed.
It sure is better to approach our goals even a little, than not at all.
So critiques that are about the numbers of burned ATMs do not contribute
to anything, and may just be heard as the echo of a distant nagging. In
this consistency we have to make it clear that some forms of action are
not here to result in some others.
Every collectivity of the anarchist struggle that is public or
conspiratorial, be it squatting, arson or carrying out armed attacks and
bombing, is part of a mosaic of polymorphous actions where every method
complements and supports the others without hierarchical grades. All
together it represents an international informal coordination against
authority. We don’t believe that theoretical differences can be an
obstacle for this consistency. We recognize that among anarchists with
different theoretical beliefs there are people who serve their ideas
with consistency and despite our differences that is something
respectable. So as long as our words and actions are not treated in a
hostile way, we do not intend to treat other perceptions with hostility
either. Except for those who with an ideological and political sign
stand against multiformity because they carry a settled and enduring
disagreement with the illegal forms of struggle. Their polemic sometimes
openly and other times covertly (disguised in a critique about result,
targeting, strategy, ethical merit — or not — of goals) is a sterile
form of non-violence that legalises an idealized pacifism, a concept
foreign to anarchy (at least in the way that we see anarchy), and does
not correspond to a minimum of our values. It is a concept with
Christian roots influenced by a radical liberalism that even partly
reproduces the dominant ideology and hides its fear behind it. We were
and we will be opposed to this trend of anarchy that has the historical
tradition to slander and condemn practices of direct action as well as
the anarchists who use them. And because memory is not trash, we don’t
forget the condemning libels (which would easily be envied even by city
tabloids) that followed the execution of the two fascists of Golden Dawn
by the Revolutionary Organisation – Militant People’s Revolutionary
Forces. It would have been better for the aphoristic libels if that
action had been made by individualists or nihilists, but despite their
effort to hide it, their real problem is not the ideological context of
the action but the practices of armed violence itself.
explained above. We want to promote the idea of an international
anarchist polymorphic coordination. A Black International which is about
action (there is the live example of FAI/IRF and we are a part of it)
but also about the propagation of subversive anarchist ideas by informal
networked groups that will carry forward the anarchist conflict in every
part of the world.
not to let them disappear into oblivion. It is true what they say that
the fight against oblivion is a fight against authority therefore by
trying to feel our lost comrades next to us is a part of the fight that
they left unfinished. That is why it is important to remember them in a
proper way and not in a way more touching to the petty bourgeois, who
are dying for drama and victimization.
the world, from the cells of Korydallos to the high security prison of
Santiago in Chile. It is given that our comrades in captivity have lost
the advantage of political fermentation with others so as to
collaborate, promote with words and actions the destruction of the
existent. They themselves have many times declared that they will not
compromise with their exile from the anarchist action, that they don’t
accept the game is over for them and they refuse to internalize the
repression, searching for ways to connect to the struggle against
authority given outside the walls. That is why it is in our hands to
make this connection possible.
Just as in the framework of the strategy explained above, comrades Nikos
Romanos and Panagiotis Argyros called for a month of coordinated action
proposing as its theme a campaign of memory for the murdered anarchist
Alexandros Grigoropoulos. At the same time, Black December was the first
attempt to test the objectives and strategies described above. To what
extent, however do we believe that these goals were reached?
media), has contributed to the creation of — even to a small degree — a
divisive situation for a section of the people.
and 6 of December in Exarchia and other cities while many direct action
activities were carried out in the framework of Black December.
with what was happening in the past few years where admittedly there was
a stagnation, if not regression, in this part) as many direct action
projects have taken place in different cities of the province (Rethymno,
Heraklion, Komotini, Volos, Larissa, Thessaloniki, Mytilene) while
nuclei of the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) supported the call
with attacks in Athens, Komotini, Larissa.
theoretical preconceptions, as they came from different tendencies of
anarchy, which rather than focusing on their differences with mutual
accusations, they managed to contribute to actions that highlighted the
richness of anarchist multiformity, demonstrating in practice that
public anarchist activity may be perfectly consistent with the illegal
one. Of course there are those who consider this as a negative legacy as
they rather prefer the sterile theoretical preconceptions which prevent
joint actions and consistency. We cannot explain in another way the fact
of a public negative valuation of Black December, coming from an
anarchist hangout, that values as a drawback of the whole thing the fact
that some people decided to find out more what it is that unites rather
than what divides them. If this is the dialectics they prefer to
contribute to, then they didn’t pioneer in anything: this dialectic
prevails in the anarchist “space” for decades.
from abroad, since from Chile to Italy and from the US to Australia
there really developed a polymorphy of actions: sabotage in pet shops,
arsons at several targets, conflictual demonstrations in Holland,
Switzerland and Chile, street blockades with flaming barricades in Peru,
events in hangouts and occupations both in Greece and in other
countries, public propaganda actions with banners, posters, flyers,
slogans, stencils, subversive book and magazine publications and all
kinds of sabotage such as placing explosive devices in Italy and Mexico.
restored. What really insulted his memory was the focus, even by
anarchists, on him being “young” and “innocent”.
The fetishism of victimization can find other dead to spend its time
with from now on, as the others will remember Alexandros for what he was
in reality: a young rebel anarchist who paid with his life for his
choice not to comply with the dictates of a uniformed servant of
legality, who in turn judged him as guilty and executed him on the spot.
Alexandros was not killed during some social struggles, so as to be
connected only with them, but during a spontaneous insurrectionary
action in Exarchia, one of those that usually some slander with the
worst words. Moreover 6^(th) December 2008 is a proof that such actions
are not always on the safe side (as many like to say) as it was neither
the first nor the last time a cop pulls gun and shoots against comrades
attacking him inside and outside Exarchia. The fact that Alexandros was
who he was, does not serve the political agenda of some and it’s not at
all by chance, that while many knew who the comrade actually was still
insist after seven years on commemorating him as an innocent 15 year old
student.
the prison walls, since both in Greece and abroad anarchist prisoners
supported Black December with public texts, while in Greece anarchist
prisoners put some banners in the A and D wing of Korydallos prison and
there was a public call for a rally outside the Korydallos prison on
31^(st) December.
We believe that one of the things that helped in spreading Black
December so much was that the two comrades’ call was open enough for
everyone to be able to shape it. Also, the perspective of multiformed
action without prioritizing one means over the other, we believe freed
up even more possibilities which became understood. Of course, comrades
Nikos Romanos and Panagiotis Argyros, together with the other members of
the Conspiracy from the A wing that accompanied the proposal either
theoretically or in practice, had originally declared that they
perceived Black December as an experiment, practically a “pilot” to test
in practice the possibilities of an informal anarchist action
coordination platform, on the principles of political autonomy of
collectives and individualities and on those of polymorphy.
We from our side are searching for a substantive way of connecting with
our captive comrades, a way that goes beyond the hitherto narrow
concepts of solidarity and tries to transform them into relations that
move onto those of comradely collaboration. Where this is possible in
any way, we submit this theoretical contribution supporting the proposal
of comrade Nikos Romanos.
We know that the texts aren’t sufficient enough to replace the beauty of
live communication, but on the other hand we understand that the
condition of confinement does not allow many options beyond the written
contribution of thoughts, ideas and proposals appealing to anyone who
believes he can get something out of them. Such proposals are certainly
not some kind of Holy Bible and obviously we do not think that it is a
technique of attracting “believers”. So for our part we will support and
promote such theoretical propositions coming from our captive comrades
considering that in this way we abolish even just conceivably the prison
bars that separate us, while moreover we want to develop as much as
possible a healthy interaction with those who believe that there could
be a common comradely way. That’s the way we understand the importance
of the proposal for an informal anarchist platform itself.
We have noticed by our own experience that there are no recipes for
anything and that continuous experimentation, continuous effort for
self-development, fighting our own inner dogmatic thoughts, by which
we’re pretty much overwhelmed from time to time, is the way to
practically test ourselves and our ideas. Ideas which should not be
petrified because they lose their dynamics and most of all they lose the
possibility for transformation. That’s why in our suggestions we welcome
those critics that will contribute positively to any ameliorative
development. Our will is the opening of dialogues that promote the
development of the anarchist war against any form of authority creating
an informal anarchist platform of theories and practices without
necessarily letting political and social actuality erase our
self-determination. An informal platform of minimum agreements in
constant motion, where every collectivity and individuality will
preserve its political autonomy as a whole, while promoting action as
concerted as possible.
Finally we send our warmest greetings to all comrades around the world
that gave life to the Black December experiment.
It’s now that everything starts…
With our dead always present in our memories…
For the constant Anarchist Rebellion and the Informal Coordination of
the polymorphous Anarchist Action.
“Until it’s day we will stay
with our head held high
and all that we can do
we will not let others do it before us”
Goethe
Nothing less than everything…
CCF – Metropolitan Violence Cell
PS: A few days ago the anarchist group from Volos city “Saboteurs next
door / Memories in Motion” claimed responsibility for the sabotage of 52
security cameras in many areas of Volos, in the period from early
December to mid-January (an action that was enrolled in the concept of
Black December) addressing in turn a call for actions against the
society of control and surveillance. The initiative and the words of the
comrades who made this call, practically strengthen the experiment for
coordinating the multiform anarchist action, therefore we can not but
express our full support.