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Title: Greetings from Greece
Author: Anonymous
Date: 2009
Language: en
Topics: Alfredo M. Bonanno, Greece, Italy, prison
Source: Retrieved on November 26, 2009 from http://www.non-fides.fr/spip.php?article549

Anonymous

Greetings from Greece

They’re old things, from another century. Two anarchists get arrested

after a bank job. The first robbed it, gun in hand. They say the second

helped him, holding the money. It happened in a small Greek village,

this past October 1. And so? There are things that happen. And then that

is a far away country, with an incomprehensible and untranslatable

language. Who do you want to be interested in it?

The robber is Christos Stratigopulos, already arrested and convicted

here in Italy fifteen years ago on a similar charge. The penalty served,

he returned to Greece. Remembered by a few, unknown to most. But the

other one arrested is Italian; it is Alfredo Bonanno. Yes, precisely

him; who hasn’t heard his name? In its own small way, the news has gone

quickly around the world, revived by many press agencies: “one of the

major theorists of insurrectionalist anarchism”, “among the major

ideologues of anarchy”, “anarchist activist and writer”, “international

fugitive anarchist robber”, “theorist of revolutionary violence”, has

ended up behind bars again. The promoters of antiterrorism, both Greek

and Italian, have rushed in, ready to exploit the juicy occasion. The

elements for concocting a fine theorem are all there: a country in which

there are still fires blazing after the great insurrectionary

conflagration that flared up last December, a Greek anarchist active in

the movement, a foreign anarchist known for his subversive theories who

travelled around the country holding meetings, a bank robbed.

Christos has taken full responsibility for the act, caused by economic

problems, denying Alfredo’s involvement. But, clearly, the judge didn’t

believe him. So both are still in jail. The first, because he dared to

reach out a hand toward wealth rather than resign himself to dying in

misery. What’s more, he is an anarchist. The second, because...

because... because maybe he helped his comrade. And, for sure, he is an

anarchist. And that’s enough.

They are old things, from another century. Two anarchists get arrested

after a bank job. Outside, solidarity is organized. Funds start to be

collected; initiatives are prepared. But that’s not all. In Athens, the

two prisoners get explosive greetings from the group Conspiracy of the

Cells of Fire, which had just disturbed the crowning of the new Greek

premier. In Villejuif, France, someone renders their homage by smashing

the windows of the local offices of the Socialist Party. One of the

beauties of anarchy is that it doesn’t recognize borders. And in Italy?

Bah, here it has been limited to communicating the news, faithfully and

coldly reporting the journalists’ poisons. No comment. The drafters of

daily virtual communiqués say nothing. The tenders of militant gardens

fall silent. The little strategists of the new alliances hush up. The

movement has now become a community, and anyone who doesn’t share its

rules and language doesn’t exist. He is nameless. In the rush to follow

the masses, have individuals been forgotten? Perhaps it’s better this

way. Better a sincere silence, if in the face of such an act, one no

longer knows what to say, than hypocritical chatter about solidarity.

Let’s leave that to the Stalinist annoyances and other ruins. Or to a

few third millennium fascists, who on one of their forums rendered

“honor” to the two arrested anarchists.

They are old things, from another century. Two anarchists get arrested

after a bank job. The first is 46-years-old, the second 72. Whether

guilty or innocent, for them being anarchists doesn’t even have the

excuse of being an infantile disorder of extremism. Stubborn as they

are, they haven’t understood that now is the time to ride the wave of

social movements, to defend who knows what in front of places of power,

to act as social workers for the damned of the earth. No, they haven’t

understood this. The dream that they have in their hearts is much too

big to adapt itself to the tick-tock of modern times.

No pardon, no pity.

Good-bye, beautiful Lugano.