💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › anonymous-a-barbaric-contribution.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 06:19:14. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: A Barbaric Contribution Author: Anonymous Date: Winter 2019 Language: en Topics: projectuality, communication, internationalism, insurrectionary, Zurich, The Local Kids, The Local Kids #3 Source: Translated for The Local Kids, Issue 3 Notes: First appeared as Contributo barbaro as a contribution to the international anarchist encounter in Zürich, November 2012
When we try to read the reality that surrounds us we realize that we are
assisting to profound transformations when we look at the management of
economic and political power. Such changes are also reflected on a
social level. It is necessary to confront ourselves with the current
transformations and to take them into consideration in relation to our
analysis and perspective of attack.
Capital is not in crisis, but the financial choices of the states
‘simply’ have created some difficulties in the traditional management of
the market and have produced, in general, a worsening of conditions in
the life of consumer-citizens. The contradictions that capital has
developed have contributed to possible moments of conflict in some
zones, more or less brutal and of longer or shorter time span, between
the structures and guardians of power and those pockets of population
that have had enough with being excluded from the comforts promised by
the fake well-being of the society of consumption.
Looking at this situation it is natural to ask ourselves what to do.
Being “here and now” is in fact at the basis of our desire of violent
rupture with all systems of values, with capital and its many
variations.
Within such reflections and within the definition of perspectives that
can guide us through uncertain and unexplored paths of revolt we believe
it necessary to avoid looking at reality through easy enthusiasms that
risk leading us to see insurrections at every street corner, accomplices
in every protester, revolutionary subjects in all exploited. At the same
time we believe it is equally dangerous to remain anchored in a kind of
realist pessimism that risks paralysing us faced with the current time,
of transforming us into permanently awaiting, trapped in a deterministic
logic.
What we believe to be fundamental is to place ourselves in a perspective
of lucid observation that could allow us to grasp the current
transformations, identifying the aspects which are vulnerable to our
enemy, to better aim towards how and what to attack.
In the mental and material condition that is dominated by the urgency of
being there (and not of being), as a definition of our own role within a
diffused conflictuality, we risk losing sight of the central point: the
necessity of starting from ourselves, from our own anarchist ideas and
perspectives. Then, during a moment of a spontaneous revolt, the problem
of anarchists is not that of seeking a role among other roles, of
finding a way to be accepted by the others, to be agreeable or to hide
our own real desires, to just make alliances. It would be a lot more
useful to choose conditions of attack that hinder a return to normality;
experimenting in the actions that belong to us, finding targets that
spontaneity alone is not able to find. Any insurrectionary hypothesis is
unpredictable and independent from us, but as anarchists, in a
perspective of permanent conflictuality and of defining insurrectionary
projects we can certainly give a fundamental contribution to what is
going on.
The problems that we should confront ourselves with are not so much how
to relate to the possibilities of revolt in the streets, of territorial
and/or specific struggles that could become radical and widespread, but
more how to continue to act and attack, in both a practical and
theoretical dimension, in the light of the current transformations
within society and the mechanisms of domination.
Analysing the practices and the paths of struggle in relation to the
objective is the fundamental step of a discussion aimed towards
individuating the limits and the perspectives of the theory and the
practice of social subversion. To be able to better touch on the
different questions and proposals that we intend to put forward on this
occasion, we would like to bring certain points to the attention of
comrades.
We believe it is urgent to confront the question of the ways of
communication among comrades. The problem can be faced distinguishing
two aspects: that of the ways with which we decide to communicate and
that of the value that we give to the tools that each time we choose to
use. Specifically, we are referring to the use of the internet and the
way we relate to it. Our own use of these tools – even within limits –
is a fact, however this is certainly not a factor from which we can
consider them useful in the case of an insurrection or a fundamental
tool in the definition of our perspective, or more, something which we
can dispose of as we please.
The systems of virtual communication have caused enormous developments
within the society we live in over the last twenty years and permeate
every day more the reality and the relations between people. We cannot
ignore that such systems have slowly entered our lives, inevitably
conditioning also our way of relating with others, with what surrounds
us and with the mediums of communication themselves. All of this
happened in spite of our awareness that virtual irreality is functional
to power and is one of its forces.
Over the last decade the traditional methods through which our ideas
circulated, such as newspapers, brochures, flyers, poster and books have
been severely reduced and the spreading of ideas has been almost
entirely delegated to the virtual universe. More than ever it is
indispensable to return and dust off the old forms of encounter and
communication between comrades and experiment with new ones, ones that
are only ours and not of the enemy. Meeting each other and taking the
time to do so. Something that is more and more difficult given the daily
rhythm imposed by modern life, rhythms that more or less consciously we
have made our own.
It often happens to hear someone referring to the possibility of using
computerized tools in certain situations. However finding ourselves in
practice face to face with the daily use of the internet – particularly
through the exchange of information and ideas – has shown us how much
virtual reality has been able to condition in a negative way the current
way of building relations. The idea of a good use of the virtual reality
in a revolutionary perspective does not convince us. In fact we think
that taking into consideration such a possibility would entail choosing
paths that give no guarantee, given that they are functional to capital
and the management of power. On the contrary, computerization and
technological development have to become potential targets of attack.
The machine of capital is fed by structures of power (bureaucracies and
institutions), by mechanisms of repression and control (prisons,
courthouses, military and police forces, surveillance systems), by work,
by consensus, by production. Radical critique and the perspective of
attack have to therefore develop on many levels, both through theory and
through practice. Specifically the system of production and consumption
is what binds and chains individuals to capital and all its variations.
The creation of false needs determines submission, more or less
conscious, to the exploitation of work, to the logics of economic
colonialism. The production of energy, industrial complexes and more or
less displaced factories, the distribution of merchandise are at the
basis of the functioning of this world.
And it is precisely in this direction that we need to act without
waiting for this wall of commodification, which is seeping into every
pore of our existences, to collapse on top of us, while we are busy
scratching away on the surface and not at its foundation, burying any
future possibility of attack. Acquiring, exchanging and spreading
information, practical and theoretical, in regards to the place and the
use of tools and knowledge is one of the aspects that we believe is
indispensable to discuss and develop.
We can ask ourselves questions about how to act and how to attack, but
it is equally important to ask ourselves against what to act and which
targets to take into consideration, aiming towards taking the initiative
rather than locking ourselves up in a logic of retaliation. What
surrounds us is swarming with places through which capital proliferates.
Places that were born or were transformed over the last decades. We can,
briefly, give an example, with which it is easy to highlight some
changes we are referring to. Let’s consider the difference there is
between paper archives and databases. In the past, burning the
documentation of a registry office, of a workplace, of a large
industrial complex could be considered a concrete destructive action.
Today not. Information and archives are preserved in databases, in
minuscule electronic devices, and run along thousands of kilometres of
cables and wires. Is it not perhaps necessary to take this into account?
Is it not perhaps obvious that the changes of the enemy have been
radical and cannot be ignored, and therefore it is necessary to get to
know them better and deeper?
On this occasion we do not want to make a list of what could possibly be
considered targets of attack, we prefer leaving these matters to the
imagination of the research and the creativity of one’s own definition
of perspectives of revolt.
Another point that we are interested in briefly discussing is the
international dimension that we believe an insurrectionary perspective
should assume or return to. Occasions such as this one allow us to meet,
discuss, confront ourselves with other comrades from different places,
and need to constitute a starting point to the deepening of future
relationships. However the possibility to make these bonds on an
individual basis or among realities from different places should not be
the end, but a starting point and an aspect within the internationalist
dimension that we aspire to. Having relations with comrades who live
elsewhere is not enough, it is necessary that each one of us knows how
to project ourselves in a perspective of observation and action that
goes beyond territorial boundaries.
To explain ourselves better, let’s take as an example what happened in
Greece over the last years. The insurrection of December, the thousands
of attacks spread over its entire territory, the repeating conflicts
with the police forces as well as various symbols and structures of
power, the looting of supermarkets and many other actions that have
warmed our hearts and fired our souls. Fires, though, that rarely
spilled over our souls to assume a concrete dimension.
Reasons can be different one from another. Lack of contacts? A reality
too far removed from our own? Internal conditions hard to decipher?
Sporadic news that often is exclusively linked to sources of the regime?
Of course these are reasons that probably weighed in. But first among
all, the most determining one, was that we were not and are not prepared
and therefore incapable of seizing the moment. Being able to take beyond
the Greek borders a permanent conflictuality and targeted attacks, being
able to understand the contradictions that capital is developing a bit
everywhere, being able to counter-attack having at our disposal tools
developed beforehand, could have made the difference. It is also through
reflecting on this missed occasion, of which we could mention many more,
that we can understand how much it is necessary to have the capacity to
see beyond the few things that are in our short range of view and to be
ready, to be prepared.
In the urgency of wanting to be there, in the excitement of
participation in the possibility of spreading opposition we run the risk
of losing ourselves between the provocations of capital and the
trajectory of paths that don’t belong to us. We don’t have a world to
save, nor consciences to conquest, nor a message to spread. Even though
creativity as part of the unpredictable is quite fundamental, the
perspectives and the objectives should not be pulled out of a magic hat.
We cannot debase ourselves in an obsessive search for roles, numbers and
head-counts. It is nonetheless important to explore new paths of attack,
explore new means, tools and techniques in relation not only to
objectives, but also tacking into consideration contexts and available
forces.
Infinite possibilities of intervention exist in a critical and
destructive path against the reality that surrounds us, and in such a
path we find it important to extend and diversify the practices of
conflict attempting to make them, time after time, reproducible.
Palermo, 31 October.