The world is shaken by insurrectionalism. More or less everywhere, in the places of maximum tension, people are moving and coming out into the streets. They are claiming their rights or, even more often, what they believe their rights to be, in deed. We don’t want to say that all these insurrectional movements are in the right direction, but they are in the right situation and the right method.
It is not up to us to say if what we have been saying for years finds confirmation in this historical phase or, as some would certainly like to see, a denial. We pay as much attention to the critic-critics as we do to the whispers of the spies in the police vicoli. What we do find interesting on the contrary is that people, vast populations, are moving, choosing the method of attack and putting aside the reformist perspective of a power that always finds new ways to hide the mystification of reality.
Not only the Algerians and the Palestinians, not only the European countries of the Russian empire, not only Yugoslavia, Cechoslovakia, Poland, but also Manfredonia, Ionia, Athens, Berlin, etc. Of course, for different reasons, different perspectives and, if you like, different equivocations but, above everything, unity of method.
We have often mentioned the causes of a possible new insurrectionalism and how this does not see possible an historical continuity with the old insurrectionalism based on the exclusivity, or almost, of economic claiming blocked by less intransigence or by the vicissitudes of the mechanisms of capital. Today, the international structure of capital already renders institutional the blocks an impossibility. A crisis within a system that has transformed the periodic crises of the past into one of the elements of recuperation and rationalisation of the productive process. No crises therefore, but permanent crisis. A life in crisis. A life in the probability of a happening and not in the certainty of a path. there is only one certainty today: that nothing can happen that is persistent and durable, but that everything changes quickly, within the framework of absolutions and preconstituted condemnations. Awareness of that, well beyond the seeds and the earth in the strict sense is leading people in the direction of direct action. Also, we believe, beyond the occasion of flags and territories. Nationality, like bread and work, under some conditions, still constitute a propulsive element in the struggle, and it would be stupid to deny it. But this element is tightly tied to elements that were quite unrecognisable in the past, only to play a quite secondary role in the light of the unrestraining function that these new elements are developing.
The breaking of institutional links, in the first place of taking the family into account, is one of these elements. In many situations this lightening of interjected order produces a sense of panic of not knowing where to base one’s perspectives, one’s hopes. The State, as other than oneself, is no longer capable of supplying elements of the valid surrogate. Most of the time it is in crisis itself, ideologically if nothing else. It needs support and does not know how to give support. The myth of nationality alone is not sufficient to be an element of order and putting a brake on things, moreover, most of the time it produces outbursts in the opposite direction. The world is precipitating more and more into a provisority that exalts the possibility of recuperation of capital and makes possible its restructuring in the short term but, at the same time, it is imposing very high social and psychological costs.
In the light of recent events, much more of the libertarian alternative that it saw as field of struggle hardly a few decades ago, and a progressive reduction of the authoritarian content of the institutional structures of society has been realised today, than even the most unchained utopians might have been hoped. From religions to morals, from pedagogy to the science of self, from language to philosophy, even science, everywhere the culture of technological man has borrowed liberation as an element for recycling the new dominion. And they realised this without fatigue. In the past one worked for the king of Prussia, and now they are reaping the profits.
But every repressive design has its limits and therefore renders possible the interests of the struggle. Even this omnivorous possibility of mature capitalism to use also cultural elements, the most estranged to its own production, presents aspects that are contradictory. In fact, the destruction of the classical values of accumulation, (money in the strict sense, cariche, recognition, stability, status, etc) makes possible a more agile utilisation of people in the productive process, also in view of a strong quantitative reduction, and without any notable problems of social perturbance. This also has a cost in terms of a progressive lack of stability of the system as a whole.
It remains to be seen, as is logical, not having any past experience on which to base itself, on what this new lack of stability will end up. For the moment we can see that manifestations of mass violence are forming, some of which are gratuitous and eclatante, even if not exactly very significant (we are talking about the so-called violence in the football stadiums); but they are also supplying insurrectional manifestations that are far more important and full of revolutionary significance. We are talking, in this second case, of the great movements of people that are developing at the present time.
Are they destined to disappear? We do not know. We could hazard a guess, make an hypothesis. But we will have quite other things to do.
NUMBER SEVENTEEN
The Trade Union Boulevard ORSO
Dogs and Pigs
‘Vivalitalia’
Game
Dear Bertoli
Band of Assassins IMF
“Karin B” - Poison Ship - Sabotage
Chile, the Knots
Algeria - The Faces of the Revolt
Jugoslavia - Burocrats and Revolt
Horror
Pinelli Was Killed. Calabresi Too
Priests
But What Political solution?
Pylon
Manfredonia - Direct Action
English Privatisation
Renounced
Sindona and Swindlers
Against the state in Greece
Giuseppe Coniglio Arrested
Raids
“Suicidio” Seized
Editorial missing
NUMBER EIGHTEEN
No! To the Palestinian State* (Insurrection)
The Recuperating Role of the Polish Unions
The Nationalist Conflicts on the Borders of the Soviet Empire
Our Desistence and the Scenery
Terni in Crisis due to A Faina
Repression and Insurrectional Struggle in Palestine
IRA Attack in Ireland
The Struggle Continues in Chile Beyond Agreements
Memo From Ketziot Concentration Camp
It is Because We Feel You Enemies That We Don’t Believe you
That Terrible Era in Which the Blind are Led by Madmen
Two thousand Minks Freed in Veneto Region
Looking For Coherence
In Hamburg against the NATO.
Universities Occupied All Over Germany
Attacks on the EEC in Greece
Pylon Sawn Down in Ravenna
Interview With Paolo Venturino, Giuseppe coniglio’s Lawyer
Antimilitarism
Solidarity with the Antimilitarist Struggle of Agostino Manni and Giuseppe Coniglio
Declaration of total Objection of Salvatore Caltabiano of “Cattivi Pensieri” Syracusa
BETWEEN POLICE AND INFORMERS AMB
Anarchist the thought, Insurrectional the Method
There is no Antidote Against the Virus of Social Subversion and Freedom
Their Communiques - The Events - Our Communique
NON NEWS ABOUT DRUGS AMB*(Dissonances)
Letter to Mr Inquisitor of the Drugs Law (circular intelligence)
Junkie
The Triumphant Baraccone
The Adventures of the Ecolettan Myth
A Destructive Capitalist Model: Deforestation
Attack in Salvador Against the Military
Solidarity Committee for Juan Soto Paillacar
Why a Committee
A Committee?
Free Soto Paillaca! Free Everyone!
Sit in in Florence at Chilean Consulate
Yet... Yet... Yet...
Jugoslavia, autumn 1988
Still on Syndicalism, More Inoportune Reflections
In Rio De Janiero, Assault on Supermarkets
Madrid, ETA Attack Guardia Civil
Germany - Nuclear Accidents
Enea against Two comrades in Florence
Clashes Students/Police in Seul
Perù: Miners in Struggle against Police
Clashes in London against Police
Massacre of Workers in Brasil
Revolt in Bologna Prison
A New Sack of Rome
Clashes in Rome Between Police and Workers of ‘Indesit’
number nineteen
FEBRUARY 1989
On the Arrest of Alfredo Bonanno and Pippo Stasi
The Catastrophe Psychosis
Antimilitarist Action in Holland
Black Revolt Rages in Miami
Revolutionary Solidarity with Arrested Anarchistsù
Nautilus Leaflet
Communique
Horizons and Limits PLP
From France: “No Longer a Case for Extradition”
A Look at Ninetytwo
The Confindustria Tints itself Green
Subversion and Limits
PALESTINE AMB*(?Palestina mon amour)
Washington as Business Centre of Organised Crime
Montedision
Fuori Circuito
Di Giovanni
Courage in Pills
The Weight of Our Responsibility
The Slapper
Antimilitarism
A Letter From Giuseppe Coniglio
Poland
Nationalism
An Experiemntal Model of Extermination
A Partial List of New Toxic Medicines
Let’s Send Back Discharge to the Military Authorities
Animal Liberationists Attack an Experimental Centre
The Forgetful
Manipulated Information
The Face of soviet society
Vienna at the Celebrity Ball
Get the State out of Your Veins
Antimilitarist Initiative
Milan: The Hunt Against the Different
Arson attack on Milan Town Hall
On the Margins of a Robbery
Communique
Anti-USA Attack in South Corea
Editorial missing
NUMBER TWENTY
May ‘89
Revolt in Manfredonia
Contorsions of the CP
The Shadows of Nationalism
From Train to School
The Rage of the Postal Workers
Esselunga
National Liberation Struggle in corsica
The Weight of Chemicals
Chile: Poisones Eggs
In Amsterdam Against Shell
The Student Reacts
Shell Sabotaged in Milan
Psychoanalysis and Perplexity
Direct Action in Technicolour
Insurance against Cancer
BUT WE ARE MODERN AMB*(Propulsive Utopia)
Informatic Pirates
Against silence
Informal thefts
Intifada Wrapped Up PLP
The Subterranean Wars
A Year of Halabaja
News: The Revolutionary Passion of an Independant Weekly
New IRA Objectives
General Pushed into the Sea
Escape in USSR
A Little Bot and Respectability
Solidarity With the Indios of the Amazonia
Bees as Instruments of Sabotage
Facts of Ordinary Repression
Squatters in Berlin
Rosa Nera Communique
A Letter from J.S. Paillacar
The Reasons for Closing a Committee
A Few Considerations on Bonanno and Stasi Case
Blues
Only a Few Words
Megacentral in the Adriatic
Rome: Fascist Den Burned
Anartism
Monument to an Artist
A Leaflet Rome anarchist Group
Attack on Fascist Den
Anarchofest S.F.
The Survival Gathering Toronto 1/4 July ‘88
The ALF is Everywhere
Magna Carta - No to Violence to Defend Animals
Sabotage and Repentance
Trial, Giuseppe Coniglio
Arson Attacks in Germany
Proseselaw
Prison Revolt in Guatemala... and.. Brasil
Persecution continues
Communique
Solidarity
Spectacularised animal, Animal of the Spectacle
A False Bomb in Court
Editorial missing
NUMBER TWENTYONE
June ‘89
Ecological Luddism: Montedison Explodes
Naval War Exhibition
ALF Insists
South Africa, Shadow of the Gallows
“Precision”
Sabotage
Communique
Repression in Genoa
Beyond the Horror, Dusgust
Communique
But Are We Really Full of Gossip?
From Bergamo Prison
HOW TO PUT ONE’S LIFE ON THE LINE AND WHY AMB* (Propulsive Utopia)
PC and Militarism
Christians and War
Violence and Poverty
SCALZONE AND AMNESTY AMB
Bad Thoughts Aliens
Unconditional Freedom Aliens
A Factory in Flames
Far Far Away in a City “full of words and empty stones”.
The Destiny of the Myth
Pope Contested in Norway
School in Flames
A Case of Conscience
The Falls at Quadraro
Uelà comrades
New Caledonia, the Struggle Continues
The Hotel of the Slaves
Nomads at the Stake
Fire against Injustice
First of May Revolts in the East... and West
ALF in Lyons
The War Industry in United Europe
Adventures of Transponder
Pinochet’s Difficulties
Word
All Vanguards
Don’t Pay! El Paso
The End of the Game
Open Letter to Franco Serantini in Pisa
Monteshell in Brescia Sabotaged
Anarchists, beyond...
Communique
Clashes in S. Corea
Against Criminalisation
Revolt in USSR Prisons
ISSUE SIXTEEN
There are various ways to see the situation one finds oneself living in as natural and thriving. One of these, undoubtedly the best, is by using the positive aspects of the situation itself, not worrying about what happens to others but only in the line of principle - also painful - of a spectacle that has now become habitual and tedious. However, in any case, both in the eventuality of the first as in the second, nothing is moved of one’s own initiative, nothing of that which belongs to us and which is clear to us put in question and submitted to criticism.
We have before our eyes the plateal behaviour of those who come under the first conception of life cited above, but also that no less plateal of those who raise a groan in the name of the second.
It is the latter, as it is easy to understand, who attract our attention, giving the first for the time being our absolute despisal, then later, we hope, something more concrete.
Profound changes are taking place in the world: generalised insurrections, changes in the structures and equilibrium of international power, massacres and genocide of every dimension. Over all this fine people pull a piteous veil of routine interest: the newspaper (even our papers), TV. The spectacle of massacres reaches our homes every day, our eyes are now trained and our hearing switched off.
The Palestinians are beginning their 10th month of popular insurrection in the occupied territories, they are systematically being massacred by the Israeli occupying army, they are dying in the ghettoes and concentration camps. We listen and watch.
The South African blacks are defying the most racist country in the world, they are organising in struggle structures, they are being killed daily not only by the bullets of the army and police, but also by hunger and isolation. We listen and watch.
The Birmanians are rebelling against a dictatorial socialist regime. The people are fighting in the streets against the army in the most total isolation in the most complete indifference. We listen and watch.
The Afghan Mujaheddin continue their struggle, even after the disparity of the Russian army. Now, although between internal disputes for the conquest of power, the time is right for the moment of truth with the puppet regime. Only the poor people, involved in a gigantic struggle that has been going on for almost a decade, continue to die. We listen and watch.
The Miskitos of Central America, after having won their battle against Managua which was obliged to a truce, are employed in taking up the struggle again against the Honduras. Also here massacres are the order of the day: hundreds of dead, 70 villages raized to the ground, thousands of refugees. We listen and watch.
In Burundi a majority are literally being massacred by a minority in power in the name of a crazy racial difference but, more precisely in defence of specific economic interests and those of power. We listen and watch.
Then in Ireland, Spain, Corsica, New Caledonia, Canada, Yugoslavia, Russia, etc., peoples in struggle are trying to survive against oppression, the division in classes to the profit of the strongest, systematic death organised in great style. We limit ourselves to listening and looking.
Yet, in our own small way, we can do something. Not in the optic that revealed itself to be a losing one so many years ago, that which could be summed up in the words “taking the third world into Europe”, so much as in the optic of attack on the European capitalist interests that are being woven with the interests of those who, in every part of the world, are putting the people in revolt under their heels.
We can therefore do little things. And many of us are of the opinion that these things need to be done, and soon. Many others are only waiting for a slight push, collaboration, advice, a suggestion, practical and technical support, a little analytical clarity. Then there are many others, also among ourselves, who do not think the same way. And it is to them that we are addressing ourselves.
They belong to the category of those for whom nothing goes well that is done in the name of practical initiative and immediate and precise direct action. They have strange theses for criticising whoever wants to act now, right away. The strangest are the first who base themselves on the sophism that small actions do not serve because they do not disturb anyone and only increase repression (but against whom?) while the most important actions are the patrimony of groups of specialists against whom it is always necessary to be in a critical position, otherwise what anarchists would we be.
In other words, they don’t know what they want. Neither small actions (to understand each other, these people do not agree with attacks on the pylons of the ENEL and have bitterly criticised attacks against the death industries that were struck some time ago in Milan), nor the large (only hypothetical at the moment, to capital’s good fortune, certainly not ours).
Just talk. That, yes, is all right for them. Analyses. The incredible and strongly anachronistic lists of war industry, nuclear, etc, lists made up it seems to document that capital produces arms, produces nuclear power, etc, as though we didn’t know. If then some of these lists want to reach the due consequences, then they line themselves immediately against, criticisng whoever decides that two and two make four.
Mysteries of the logic of a certain anarchism.
The fact is that certain comrades have transformed anarchism into a pacific gymnasium of interesting debates, in which each one measures themselves with the other in the exclusive light of the worthiness of their own lives. Practice must stay outside the door.
We don’t agree.
NUMBER SIXTEEN
Mortal Rhetoric of “Three Colour Arrows” in Germany
The Calabresi Affair
But Who Killed Pinelli?
Greenpeace afainst the Solvay
Nothing (BR -PCC)
The Polish Recuperation
Gangs in Los Angeles
Clashes in a French Printers
IRA Offensive
A Precision (Turin, Luxemburg)
Micromia
Antagonism as Solidarity
Phenomena of Mass Illegality
Military Discharge Sent Back
Bottles against social Worker
The Firm (re\Curcio)
Punx Attack Turin Duomo
Letter to the Pope (A. Artaud)
Just One More Effort (De Sade)
Against Farmoplant
Better to Keep Quiet
Revolts and Escapes in English Prisons
Hammer against the Courts
Too Much Hysteria against Israel
Against the Mystification about Israel
BUT LET’S NOT SHUT OUR EYES TO IT - AMB
A Palestinian Document
Attack in Milan against Two Cariplo Bank Agencies
Athens Attack on Police, Arms Taken
Spain - ETA attacks on French Interests
THE PALESTINIANS CONTINUE TO DIE - AMB (Palestine mon amour)
A Car in Milan
Twelve Years Ago the Revolt in Soweto
Against the Summer Manoeuvres of amato
In New York against the Yuppies
Edinburgh Festival
Coniglio Sentence Confirmed
Total Objection in South Africa
Catania - Mafia against Experia
ALF - GB
Bombs in romagna
Struggle against Poll Tax in Scotland
Rural vilence in GB
90 Minutes - Riots in Shepherd’s Bush
We have before our eyes the plateal behaviour of those who come under the first conception of life cited above, but also that no less plateal of those who raise a groan in the name of the second.
It is the latter, as it is easy to understand, who attract our attention, giving the first for the time being our absolute despisal, then later, we hope, something more concrete.
Profound changes are taking place in the world: generalised insurrections, changes in the structures and equilibrium of international power, massacres and genocide of every dimension. Over all this fine people pull a piteous veil of routine interest: the newspaper (even our papers), TV. The spectacle of massacres reaches our homes every day, our eyes are now trained and our hearing switched off.
The Palestinians are beginning their 10th month of popular insurrection in the occupied territories, they are systematically being massacred by the Israeli occupying army, they are dying in the ghettoes and concentration camps. We listen and watch.
The South African blacks are defying the most racist country in the world, they are organising in struggle structures, they are being killed daily not only by the bullets of the army and police, but also by hunger and isolation. We listen and watch.
The Birmanians are rebelling against a dictatorial socialist regime. The people are fighting in the streets against the army in the most total isolation in the most complete indifference. We listen and watch.
The Afghan Mujaheddin continue their struggle, even after the disparity of the Russian army. Now, although between internal disputes for the conquest of power, the time is right for the moment of truth with the puppet regime. Only the poor people, involved in a gigantic struggle that has been going on for almost a decade, continue to die. We listen and watch.
The Miskitos of Central America, after having won their battle against Managua which was obliged to a truce, are employed in taking up the struggle again against the Honduras. Also here massacres are the order of the day: hundreds of dead, 70 villages raized to the ground, thousands of refugees. We listen and watch.
In Burundi a majority are literally being massacred by a minority in power in the name of a crazy racial difference but, more precisely in defence of specific economic interests and those of power. We listen and watch.
Then in Ireland, Spain, Corsica, New Caledonia, Canada, Yugoslavia, Russia, etc., peoples in struggle are trying to survive against oppression, the division in classes to the profit of the strongest, systematic death organised in great style. We limit ourselves to listening and looking.
Yet, in our own small way, we can do something. Not in the optic that revealed itself to be a losing one so many years ago, that which could be summed up in the words “taking the third world into Europe”, so much as in the optic of attack on the European capitalist interests that are being woven with the interests of those who, in every part of the world, are putting the people in revolt under their heels.
We can therefore do little things. And many of us are of the opinion that these things need to be done, and soon. Many others are only waiting for a slight push, collaboration, advice, a suggestion, practical and technical support, a little analytical clarity. Then there are many others, also among ourselves, who do not think the same way. And it is to them that we are addressing ourselves.
They belong to the category of those for whom nothing goes well that is done in the name of practical initiative and immediate and precise direct action. They have strange theses for criticising whoever wants to act now, right away. The strangest are the first who base themselves on the sophism that small actions do not serve because they do not disturb anyone and only increase repression (but against whom?) while the most important actions are the patrimony of groups of specialists against whom it is always necessary to be in a critical position, otherwise what anarchists would we be.
In other words, they don’t know what they want. Neither small actions (to understand each other, these people do not agree with attacks on the pylons of the ENEL and have bitterly criticised attacks against the death industries that were struck some time ago in Milan), nor the large (only hypothetical at the moment, to capital’s good fortune, certainly not ours).
Just talk. That, yes, is all right for them. Analyses. The incredible and strongly anachronistic lists of war industry, nuclear, etc, lists made up it seems to document that capital produces arms, produces nuclear power, etc, as though we didn’t know. If then some of these lists want to reach the due consequences, then they line themselves immediately against, criticisng whoever decides that two and two make four.
Mysteries of the logic of a certain anarchism.
The fact is that certain comrades have transformed anarchism into a pacific gymnasium of interesting debates, in which each one measures themselves with the other in the exclusive light of the worthiness of their own lives. Practice must stay outside the door.
We don’t agree.
NUMBER SIXTEEN
Mortal Rhetoric of “Three Colour Arrows” in Germany
The Calabresi Affair
But Who Killed Pinelli?
Greenpeace afainst the Solvay
Nothing (BR -PCC)
The Polish Recuperation
Gangs in Los Angeles
Clashes in a French Printers
IRA Offensive
A Precision (Turin, Luxemburg)
Micromia
Antagonism as Solidarity
Phenomena of Mass Illegality
Military Discharge Sent Back
Bottles against social Worker
The Firm (re\Curcio)
Punx Attack Turin Duomo
Letter to the Pope (A. Artaud)
Just One More Effort (De Sade)
Against Farmoplant
Better to Keep Quiet
Revolts and Escapes in English Prisons
Hammer against the Courts
Too Much Hysteria against Israel
Against the Mystification about Israel
BUT LET’S NOT SHUT OUR EYES TO IT - AMB
A Palestinian Document
Attack in Milan against Two Cariplo Bank Agencies
Athens Attack on Police, Arms Taken
Spain - ETA attacks on French Interests
THE PALESTINIANS CONTINUE TO DIE - AMB (Palestine mon amour)
A Car in Milan
Twelve Years Ago the Revolt in Soweto
Against the Summer Manoeuvres of amato
In New York against the Yuppies
Edinburgh Festival
Coniglio Sentence Confirmed
Total Objection in South Africa
Catania - Mafia against Experia
ALF - GB
Bombs in romagna
Struggle against Poll Tax in Scotland
Rural vilence in GB
90 Minutes - Riots in Shepherd’s Bush
ISSUE FOURTEEN
In the things of life you want a little logic and, why not, also intelligence. Also in the highly discutable and miserable practice of dissociation, those who are masters in this field have made us see that you need a certain logic, a certain graduality. Dissociative positions are not in themselves necessary up until the moment when facts that do not have any agreement among those who intend to dissociate themselves are verified.
For example, the long line of dissociated in the past 15 years has taught us that there is always time for signing declarations. First one must see how things stand, evaluate the pros and the cons, before taking a distance from someone whose practices we do not approve of.
Preconfectioned dissociation “bulletins” as these could be defined let us say, their linguistic structure predetermined, to be put into circulation by parties, politicians and economic personalities when certain facts occur. It is a question of generic condemnation where one frequently finds the term “vile attack” and other such things.
The difference exists although it remains within a strata that disgusts in any case.
Now, what one might ask, were the motivations that pushed the comrades of Rivista “A” and the FAI in Milan to dissociate themselves from events that took place in Milan some time ago, small attacks against militarist objectives like the ENEL nuclear research centre or similar firms who work in the nuclear sectors?
Why did they immediately bring out a communique? What did they want to distinguish themselves from in such a hurry? They certainly weren’t afraid of the risk of seeing themselves with the carabinieri turning up at their homes to raid them, in that it is well known - at least it is without doubt so in Milan - that these political line-ups do not agree with certain practices. What did they want to take a distance from? Would not it have been better to wait for a few days to pass, if nothing else to be able to successively defend the comrades who could (and presumably will be, persecuted for things they are quite extraneous to), and at the same time as they support the comrades, see to making the legitimate distinction they are imposing in political terms because it is not right for everyone to share a practice which by its very nature cannot be other than, at the moment, accepted by only a few?
Wouldn’t that have been better?
Of course it would have been better and it would have made a police act of intimidation more difficult that becomes easier within our movement precisely when the floodlights shine on a small number of us.
I ask myself then, what pushed these comrades to act in such a way? Which then turns out to be contradictory, in that first they dissociate themselves from a certain practice, contributing to turning attention to comrades that do not intend to dissociate themselves in this obtuse and preconceived way, and then they solidarise with those struck by the repression, precisely the repression which with its own dissociative practice it had contributed to soliciting. Such behaviour seems to me to be not only contradictory but also devoid of that minimum of political intelligence required in the practice of social struggles, whatever this practice might be, without being too subtle.
A comrade, with a passion that is his, defined them recently at the Forlì conference as “pieces of shit”. Certainly, it’s a strong phrase, beyond all measure of good manners, but we must also understand that certain ways of acting, beyond sharing cetain practices or not, are not admissable in that it is behaviour that supplies the instruments of repression.
I would suggest a let’s say “benevolent” reading of these “incidents” in which, in my opinion, have run into both the Milan FAI and Rivista A; basically the latter have been taken by surprise: they did not expect a movement to exist in today’s reality, a number of comrades, even minimal, that were intending to realise destructive attacks against militarist objectives. This intention is happening in practice and we, of this paper, have punctually witnessed how much is happening, at times undergoing incrimination, raids, and trials with accusations of instigation, apology, and, incredible as it may seem, participation; without for that claiming that what we are pointing out should receive the applause of all comrades. But it is necessary to reflect better on what might happen in future, when taking a position.
Criticism is one thing. Police-style infamous denunciation is another.
NUMBER FOURTEEN
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AMB
Racism
A Meeting in the Abyss of Despair
A Murrain of Fascists
Communique Milan Comrades Leave ProvocAzione
The New Technological Materials
Considerations About a Meeting (Forlì) AMB
Between Anarchists and Shopkeepers
Attack against Oto Melara (ind. militare)
Chile 1° May Clashes
Between Shopkeepers and Anarchists
The Dogs of Sinai
The Lightness of Being
AntiArab Racism
Two Bombs in Barcelona
Out of the Ghetto* (?Insurrection)
Mini-Riots in Plymouth* (Insurrection)
Seeing Clearly (Re attack against Luxemburg Bookshop in Turin)
Communique - Anarchist Vitriol
Raids in Palermo
Donations? Young Milanese procatari
Anti-clericalism
Clashes 1° May Berlin
5th Anticlerical Meeting Alga Marina
Why Only a Provocation?
From Milan Downwards
Dynamite Against the Pope (Lima)
WHY WE ALONE’ AMB
Attack on US Military Train
Old Lady against BBC
CALL TO COMRADES IN GOOD FAITH AMB
What to Say About the silence? (Forlì)
Editorial missing
NUMBER FIFTEEN
Bagnoli, Rage and Limits
Corea - Olympic Games as an Occasion
Inside America
Holland Against Shell
Repression in La Spezia
Attacks Against Israeli Importer
In Naples Against Pollution
Athens - Anti-Nato Attack
Police Cars Burned
Racism in the Anarchist Movement?
New Palestinian Iniatives
“Goodbye Armed Struggle” But Not to Lie Down Before Power
Bombs in Florence
2 Bombs against Augusta (weapons)
Clashes in Berlin
Bombs in Athens
English Army Depot Burned Out
Water Revolt
Clashes in Stonehenge
Experia Social Centre
With J.S.Paillacar
Clarity
Parcel Bomb, Kennedy
Various IRA attacks
Issue 15
Bagnoli
The riot in Naples had the effect of the crack of a whip against local and national power. Destroying nearly all the regional and town hall structures the workers have imposed the reason of rage against the negligence and absenteeism of the bosses. But it is also necessary to see the limits of these outlets so that they can extend beyond the simple objective of defence of wages and jobs.
Korea
The revolt of the south Korean students continues, also against the continual infiltrations and attempts to recuperate North Korean of North Korean politicians. Beyond this there is the sign, very important for us, of trying to contrast a spectacular demo like the Olympics which undoubtedly constitutes one of the highest moments of the productivist exaltation of international capitalism. Sport, on such occasions, is just a reminder.
Holland
Shell finances and guarantees the racist government in South Africa. It is one of the few multinationals that continues to work and produce in the country that discriminates against blacks. Certainly not alone, but for the moment the attack against its petrol pumps that has been carried out in Holland could be considered the sign of a revolutionary internationalism.
America
One of the black quarters of New York turned over by the repression starting with the excuse of drugs and now widening to a politic aimed at extinguishing the organisation of rebellion that is passing through the conditions of the most absolute poverty and unlivable conditions of the ghettos.
Repression in La Spezia
The most militarised city in Italy. The activity of anarchists. Their revolutionary presence against any adhesion to the will of the so-called democratic regime. Repression, blind and absurd. But that cannot dissuade the struggle, involvement and antagonism.
Is there racism in the anarchist movement?
Starting off from an article on the Palestinian question recently published by “Rivista A” the comrades of Folingo propose a text elaborated by a number of Palestinian students. This text obviously presents limits. It is interesting all the same because it allows us to better understand some aspects of the complex Palestinian problem and the clash that is presently in course both in the occupied territories and within the territory of Israel itself.
Goodbye...Struggle
A few critical considerations on the recent positions taken by Rivista A. End of armed struggle of a certain kind, precisely that which based itself on the analyses of the authoritarian marxist kind. That does not mean that an automatic parallel can be drawn between armed struggle and authoritarian marxism. To develop a detailed analysis that might not be shared by all, the article shows well the possible solutions of a complex problem.
Experia
In Catania a social space abandoned for years has been occupied and been transformed into a centre for musical activities, theatre, self-managed production, etc. The importance of the action is considerable in a city such as Catania, which has never seen such a thing and which certainly remains one of the most backward cities as far as social services are concerned as it is at the mercy of a Mafiosi local administration.
J.S. Paillacar
Behind the prison bars indications that are coherent with revolutionary principles. One of these is that of JSP. The Committee for his freedom has taken on the spreading of his position, the most coherent for an anarchist revolutionary. Unfortunately, also among comrades we would have thought were more openly available in the clash and violent struggle against the state, distinction and precisions are emerging which is from an abstract static point of view are well-founded, in practice do not preclude a cautious taking a distance.
Fuori dei denti..
Precisions in the respective ways of being and seeing things. A few clear words on what should be a revolutionary and who is a political intriguer and social democrat winger.
Hooligans
The recent events at the world cup - not football in the strict sense of the word - have shown a return in grand style of the violence of the hooligans. Once again we have been confronted with reality of a problem which far from reducing itself or being put under control by the so much bandied repressive capacities of the police, is going back to showing up the most desolate and contradictory aspects of our time.
For example, the long line of dissociated in the past 15 years has taught us that there is always time for signing declarations. First one must see how things stand, evaluate the pros and the cons, before taking a distance from someone whose practices we do not approve of.
Preconfectioned dissociation “bulletins” as these could be defined let us say, their linguistic structure predetermined, to be put into circulation by parties, politicians and economic personalities when certain facts occur. It is a question of generic condemnation where one frequently finds the term “vile attack” and other such things.
The difference exists although it remains within a strata that disgusts in any case.
Now, what one might ask, were the motivations that pushed the comrades of Rivista “A” and the FAI in Milan to dissociate themselves from events that took place in Milan some time ago, small attacks against militarist objectives like the ENEL nuclear research centre or similar firms who work in the nuclear sectors?
Why did they immediately bring out a communique? What did they want to distinguish themselves from in such a hurry? They certainly weren’t afraid of the risk of seeing themselves with the carabinieri turning up at their homes to raid them, in that it is well known - at least it is without doubt so in Milan - that these political line-ups do not agree with certain practices. What did they want to take a distance from? Would not it have been better to wait for a few days to pass, if nothing else to be able to successively defend the comrades who could (and presumably will be, persecuted for things they are quite extraneous to), and at the same time as they support the comrades, see to making the legitimate distinction they are imposing in political terms because it is not right for everyone to share a practice which by its very nature cannot be other than, at the moment, accepted by only a few?
Wouldn’t that have been better?
Of course it would have been better and it would have made a police act of intimidation more difficult that becomes easier within our movement precisely when the floodlights shine on a small number of us.
I ask myself then, what pushed these comrades to act in such a way? Which then turns out to be contradictory, in that first they dissociate themselves from a certain practice, contributing to turning attention to comrades that do not intend to dissociate themselves in this obtuse and preconceived way, and then they solidarise with those struck by the repression, precisely the repression which with its own dissociative practice it had contributed to soliciting. Such behaviour seems to me to be not only contradictory but also devoid of that minimum of political intelligence required in the practice of social struggles, whatever this practice might be, without being too subtle.
A comrade, with a passion that is his, defined them recently at the Forlì conference as “pieces of shit”. Certainly, it’s a strong phrase, beyond all measure of good manners, but we must also understand that certain ways of acting, beyond sharing cetain practices or not, are not admissable in that it is behaviour that supplies the instruments of repression.
I would suggest a let’s say “benevolent” reading of these “incidents” in which, in my opinion, have run into both the Milan FAI and Rivista A; basically the latter have been taken by surprise: they did not expect a movement to exist in today’s reality, a number of comrades, even minimal, that were intending to realise destructive attacks against militarist objectives. This intention is happening in practice and we, of this paper, have punctually witnessed how much is happening, at times undergoing incrimination, raids, and trials with accusations of instigation, apology, and, incredible as it may seem, participation; without for that claiming that what we are pointing out should receive the applause of all comrades. But it is necessary to reflect better on what might happen in future, when taking a position.
Criticism is one thing. Police-style infamous denunciation is another.
NUMBER FOURTEEN
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AMB
Racism
A Meeting in the Abyss of Despair
A Murrain of Fascists
Communique Milan Comrades Leave ProvocAzione
The New Technological Materials
Considerations About a Meeting (Forlì) AMB
Between Anarchists and Shopkeepers
Attack against Oto Melara (ind. militare)
Chile 1° May Clashes
Between Shopkeepers and Anarchists
The Dogs of Sinai
The Lightness of Being
AntiArab Racism
Two Bombs in Barcelona
Out of the Ghetto* (?Insurrection)
Mini-Riots in Plymouth* (Insurrection)
Seeing Clearly (Re attack against Luxemburg Bookshop in Turin)
Communique - Anarchist Vitriol
Raids in Palermo
Donations? Young Milanese procatari
Anti-clericalism
Clashes 1° May Berlin
5th Anticlerical Meeting Alga Marina
Why Only a Provocation?
From Milan Downwards
Dynamite Against the Pope (Lima)
WHY WE ALONE’ AMB
Attack on US Military Train
Old Lady against BBC
CALL TO COMRADES IN GOOD FAITH AMB
What to Say About the silence? (Forlì)
Editorial missing
NUMBER FIFTEEN
Bagnoli, Rage and Limits
Corea - Olympic Games as an Occasion
Inside America
Holland Against Shell
Repression in La Spezia
Attacks Against Israeli Importer
In Naples Against Pollution
Athens - Anti-Nato Attack
Police Cars Burned
Racism in the Anarchist Movement?
New Palestinian Iniatives
“Goodbye Armed Struggle” But Not to Lie Down Before Power
Bombs in Florence
2 Bombs against Augusta (weapons)
Clashes in Berlin
Bombs in Athens
English Army Depot Burned Out
Water Revolt
Clashes in Stonehenge
Experia Social Centre
With J.S.Paillacar
Clarity
Parcel Bomb, Kennedy
Various IRA attacks
Issue 15
Bagnoli
The riot in Naples had the effect of the crack of a whip against local and national power. Destroying nearly all the regional and town hall structures the workers have imposed the reason of rage against the negligence and absenteeism of the bosses. But it is also necessary to see the limits of these outlets so that they can extend beyond the simple objective of defence of wages and jobs.
Korea
The revolt of the south Korean students continues, also against the continual infiltrations and attempts to recuperate North Korean of North Korean politicians. Beyond this there is the sign, very important for us, of trying to contrast a spectacular demo like the Olympics which undoubtedly constitutes one of the highest moments of the productivist exaltation of international capitalism. Sport, on such occasions, is just a reminder.
Holland
Shell finances and guarantees the racist government in South Africa. It is one of the few multinationals that continues to work and produce in the country that discriminates against blacks. Certainly not alone, but for the moment the attack against its petrol pumps that has been carried out in Holland could be considered the sign of a revolutionary internationalism.
America
One of the black quarters of New York turned over by the repression starting with the excuse of drugs and now widening to a politic aimed at extinguishing the organisation of rebellion that is passing through the conditions of the most absolute poverty and unlivable conditions of the ghettos.
Repression in La Spezia
The most militarised city in Italy. The activity of anarchists. Their revolutionary presence against any adhesion to the will of the so-called democratic regime. Repression, blind and absurd. But that cannot dissuade the struggle, involvement and antagonism.
Is there racism in the anarchist movement?
Starting off from an article on the Palestinian question recently published by “Rivista A” the comrades of Folingo propose a text elaborated by a number of Palestinian students. This text obviously presents limits. It is interesting all the same because it allows us to better understand some aspects of the complex Palestinian problem and the clash that is presently in course both in the occupied territories and within the territory of Israel itself.
Goodbye...Struggle
A few critical considerations on the recent positions taken by Rivista A. End of armed struggle of a certain kind, precisely that which based itself on the analyses of the authoritarian marxist kind. That does not mean that an automatic parallel can be drawn between armed struggle and authoritarian marxism. To develop a detailed analysis that might not be shared by all, the article shows well the possible solutions of a complex problem.
Experia
In Catania a social space abandoned for years has been occupied and been transformed into a centre for musical activities, theatre, self-managed production, etc. The importance of the action is considerable in a city such as Catania, which has never seen such a thing and which certainly remains one of the most backward cities as far as social services are concerned as it is at the mercy of a Mafiosi local administration.
J.S. Paillacar
Behind the prison bars indications that are coherent with revolutionary principles. One of these is that of JSP. The Committee for his freedom has taken on the spreading of his position, the most coherent for an anarchist revolutionary. Unfortunately, also among comrades we would have thought were more openly available in the clash and violent struggle against the state, distinction and precisions are emerging which is from an abstract static point of view are well-founded, in practice do not preclude a cautious taking a distance.
Fuori dei denti..
Precisions in the respective ways of being and seeing things. A few clear words on what should be a revolutionary and who is a political intriguer and social democrat winger.
Hooligans
The recent events at the world cup - not football in the strict sense of the word - have shown a return in grand style of the violence of the hooligans. Once again we have been confronted with reality of a problem which far from reducing itself or being put under control by the so much bandied repressive capacities of the police, is going back to showing up the most desolate and contradictory aspects of our time.
ISSUE THIRTEEN
In past times when everything seemed to be going for the best on the wings of ideological illusions, when demonstrations and clashes, destructive actions and attacks against the class enemy were only disturbed by those who stubbornly wanted to move them to a level of excessive military efficiency. At times when the present fashion of symbolism and creeping repression had not yet been discovered. One lined up whole-heartedly with different possible ways of seeing the social clash and the revolutionary intervention.
On the one hand the old remnants of social democracy that were contained in anarchist symbols and banners, on the other the noisy supporters of disturbance taken to the extreme of the ecstatic dreams of the former and their more or less avid supporters.
For the outside spectator the clashes, both verbal and on printed paper, seemed like a storm in a teacup. Chatter on the right, chatter on the left. More or less well done more or less agreeable to read, obvious in its basic elements.
Then there was a third element, that which we could now call the “centrists”. Comrades who like Pontias Pilate did not want (and do not want, because they are still around) to dirty their hands, avoiding with contortion the occasion of taking sides in one or the other way of seeing things. This “marais”, like all swamps, lay hidden, nesting in the corridors of meetings and conferences but never coming out into the light of day with smiles and hyberbolic declarations of esteem, at the same time as unequivocable indications of equidistance.
Whatever the reasons at the time were for the possibilist “social-democrats” and whatever the unconfessed interests of the inhabitants of the “marais” the fact remains that most of the time they end up cohabiting within the same positions, cutting, without realising it, the same lean figure.
Now things are changing. If you like, in the rarefaction of the facts present, divergences and methods are distinguishing themselves better. The old possibilists have been leading the movement, recruiting new adepts and these, as always happens, are more realist than the king. The swamp in the middle is filling up with new opportunists who, in the best of cases, i.e. giving them credit for their good faith, must say they do not know which fish to choose. Not to mention professional informers and spies, who also exist, but they make up such a minute isolated minority that, for the time being, they are not worth mentioning.
We believe that the evolution of things, i.e. of the conditions of exploitation, the production of the new subordinated man sold out to the new techniques of power, the destruction of any residual sign of humanity or dignity; all this along with elements of the good will of the few who have not remained prisoner to psychological dilemas and moral plunder; they will produce a new need for confrontation. We do not believe it possible to carry on as though nothing has happened, to see the old social democratic merchandise, as we believe it is difficult that in the next few months one will be able to continue to float in the slimy waters of the swamp without fishing down to the depths.
To understand ourselves, beyond any possible doubt, we do not intend here to point out eventual roads of clarification or convergence in the name of superior principles to be saved at any cost. We are only indicating the sad possibility of a far heavier divarication. And neither does our contestation want to be a raising of shields but simply a bitter verification of how cancer-ridden and insanabile divergences are. We have never shown pity on anyone, least of all ourselves, and we don’t intend to start now. That is why we might seem to be too rigid at times. The fact is that perhaps we really are rigid.
NUMBER THIRTEEN
Milan: the Two Faces of the Metropolis
Greece: Repression and State Crimes
Let’s Boycott Israeli Products
Anti-NatoAttack in Spain
Attack in Sardina
Mario Innes Torres
Clashes in Venezuela
Belgium: against Police
Evictions, Rage in Milan
Eggs in Turin
Is There a Jewish Problem?* (?Palestine mon amour)
Communique for the Press and Public Information
To Antonio Gizzo
A Molotov in Turin
Communique
Antizionist Initiative in Turin
Attacks in Frankfurt
Escape
Silence and the Cigar
Computer Viruses
Elections in New Caledonia?
American Space Shield Security Systems Made Fun of
Antistudent Movement Aliens
PREVALENCE OF PRACTICE? AMB* (Propulsive Utopia)
Beyond the Nuclear Swindle
Comunque ‘Green City’
Communique “A” Rivista
Antinuclear Attacks in Milan
Anarchist Communique
“Comatic Station (Vivaitalia)
Against Reformism
Reconsidering Antimilitarism
South Africa - “Sharpville Six” Execution Stayed
Guatemala - A Genocide that Lasts Over 30 Days
Anti-Militarist Initiative
Germany - A New Middle Ages
The Social Democratic Offensive
Repression in Milan
“Rats” in Moscow (thefts in flats)
Revolt in French Prison
On the one hand the old remnants of social democracy that were contained in anarchist symbols and banners, on the other the noisy supporters of disturbance taken to the extreme of the ecstatic dreams of the former and their more or less avid supporters.
For the outside spectator the clashes, both verbal and on printed paper, seemed like a storm in a teacup. Chatter on the right, chatter on the left. More or less well done more or less agreeable to read, obvious in its basic elements.
Then there was a third element, that which we could now call the “centrists”. Comrades who like Pontias Pilate did not want (and do not want, because they are still around) to dirty their hands, avoiding with contortion the occasion of taking sides in one or the other way of seeing things. This “marais”, like all swamps, lay hidden, nesting in the corridors of meetings and conferences but never coming out into the light of day with smiles and hyberbolic declarations of esteem, at the same time as unequivocable indications of equidistance.
Whatever the reasons at the time were for the possibilist “social-democrats” and whatever the unconfessed interests of the inhabitants of the “marais” the fact remains that most of the time they end up cohabiting within the same positions, cutting, without realising it, the same lean figure.
Now things are changing. If you like, in the rarefaction of the facts present, divergences and methods are distinguishing themselves better. The old possibilists have been leading the movement, recruiting new adepts and these, as always happens, are more realist than the king. The swamp in the middle is filling up with new opportunists who, in the best of cases, i.e. giving them credit for their good faith, must say they do not know which fish to choose. Not to mention professional informers and spies, who also exist, but they make up such a minute isolated minority that, for the time being, they are not worth mentioning.
We believe that the evolution of things, i.e. of the conditions of exploitation, the production of the new subordinated man sold out to the new techniques of power, the destruction of any residual sign of humanity or dignity; all this along with elements of the good will of the few who have not remained prisoner to psychological dilemas and moral plunder; they will produce a new need for confrontation. We do not believe it possible to carry on as though nothing has happened, to see the old social democratic merchandise, as we believe it is difficult that in the next few months one will be able to continue to float in the slimy waters of the swamp without fishing down to the depths.
To understand ourselves, beyond any possible doubt, we do not intend here to point out eventual roads of clarification or convergence in the name of superior principles to be saved at any cost. We are only indicating the sad possibility of a far heavier divarication. And neither does our contestation want to be a raising of shields but simply a bitter verification of how cancer-ridden and insanabile divergences are. We have never shown pity on anyone, least of all ourselves, and we don’t intend to start now. That is why we might seem to be too rigid at times. The fact is that perhaps we really are rigid.
NUMBER THIRTEEN
Milan: the Two Faces of the Metropolis
Greece: Repression and State Crimes
Let’s Boycott Israeli Products
Anti-NatoAttack in Spain
Attack in Sardina
Mario Innes Torres
Clashes in Venezuela
Belgium: against Police
Evictions, Rage in Milan
Eggs in Turin
Is There a Jewish Problem?* (?Palestine mon amour)
Communique for the Press and Public Information
To Antonio Gizzo
A Molotov in Turin
Communique
Antizionist Initiative in Turin
Attacks in Frankfurt
Escape
Silence and the Cigar
Computer Viruses
Elections in New Caledonia?
American Space Shield Security Systems Made Fun of
Antistudent Movement Aliens
PREVALENCE OF PRACTICE? AMB* (Propulsive Utopia)
Beyond the Nuclear Swindle
Comunque ‘Green City’
Communique “A” Rivista
Antinuclear Attacks in Milan
Anarchist Communique
“Comatic Station (Vivaitalia)
Against Reformism
Reconsidering Antimilitarism
South Africa - “Sharpville Six” Execution Stayed
Guatemala - A Genocide that Lasts Over 30 Days
Anti-Militarist Initiative
Germany - A New Middle Ages
The Social Democratic Offensive
Repression in Milan
“Rats” in Moscow (thefts in flats)
Revolt in French Prison
ISSUE TWELVE
Power is getting time to rearrange its structures and sort out its projects for the best.
This is the significance one grasps from the hesitation and uncertainty on the best way to set out the struggle.
The traditional front of the class struggle, after the more or less long periods of wild rearrangement, is addressing itself towards sorting out more tranquil and productive social peace in the medium term.The “theorem” of Tarantelli and Modigliani is revealing itself to be inexact. Political re-enforcements, as an effect of an economic re-organisation, is producing better conditions of exploitation. People feel safer (better represented) and, largely speaking, are more willing to be exploited. The democratic wager must be played out in full. In the case of the contrary, an inverse process could set underway. Credit could become debit, faith lack of it. Peace rage.
In what way and in what times all that could happen, we cannot say. Economic reajustments are proceding well. The financial counterblows (such as those in the stock exchange) are better ammorticised than happened following the relative (therefore growing) independence of the capitalist structures from crude financial capitalist needs. Italy in particular is growing economically to levels such as to threaten the French and English leaderships. We are also about to become economic colonisers in territories that were traditionally the decisional centres where foreign colonialism started off against us (who can forget the exploitation realised in Italy by the great foreign railway firms). There are drawbacks, but these are also under control. The unemployed are on the increase, but they are not giving excessive preoccupations. The State deficit is at levels that were unthinkable just a few years ago, but is still far from the standard levels of the big industrial countries. We now know well that only with big debts is it possible to manage big enterprises of exploitation. The complex management of the enterprise does not matter, what counts is profit in the short term. In fact, to be precise, not so much profit in financial terms but power and influence in the short term.
The level of the struggle is in decline. It is pointless to hide this fact. The sign of this decline is given by the fact that the confederated unions are also gaining ground, eminently holding all kinds of autonomous phenomena under control, moreover carriers of not very original reasons for struggle. The decrease in struggles will give new space to the final structuring of power. If in the next two years a new cycle of struggles does not take root, capital will place its unsurmountable frontiers in such a way as to guarantee itself at least a decade of sure margins.
It no longer seems to us to be the case to come out again with the symbols of the great unifying objectives. Nuclear power, for example, undoubtedly constitutes a “readable” objective, but no longer in a “demonstrative” key. In this perspective it has become a supporting element of restructuring. The same can be said for all kinds of pollution. These two sectors can see interventions of struggle, and the same in the sectors of international class collaboration, but not at demonstrative levels. To fight today for whoever wants to do so, means finding new roads even within these sectors of intervention that are open to everyone. But these new roads can, at least in the beginning, fail to be practicable except by a few.
The awakening of great strata of comrades and exploited in general can only come about more slowly. The struggle, simple and practical, is taking up again, from the beginning. With simple means, without great illusions, but with the usual hope in our hearts.
NUMBER TWELVE
Third world: Gulag of Capital
Trial Agostino Manni
Demo against ACNA
Roberto Gemigmami Freed
Freedom For Juan Paillacar
Freedom for Comrades in Prison
Social Sabotage is Never Terrorism
Pylons Sawn Down
“We Will Stain” Every Place of Detention
Sabotage at Gargnano
Kronstadt Social Centre Communique
Adieu Cobas
To Destroy the Mafia You Must Destroy the State
Pirates in the Philippines
Against the Exporters of Social Detention
Attack in Ajaccio
“Kanak” in Revolt
Tension in Ireland
Extradition
The Eggheads of Control
“Milipol”: The Arms of Terrorism on Show
THE MORAL FRACTURE (AMB) * (Propulsive Utopia, Insurrection)
Comidad: Apersuasive “Consolatory” Discourse
Declaration
From Prison in Solidarity With the Palestinians
Greek Exploiter Brought to Justice
“International Revolutionary Solidarity”
American Antinuclear Folklore
Anatomy of a Desert
Another Letter
A Reply to Pierre tognoli
‘El Paso and Squats in Turin
Self-management is not Self-service
Social Struggles in Milan
Zanone Contested at the University
Long Live work
The Reasons of a People
A Cigar in the Mouth
Feast Infested
Communique - UCC
“Bancomat” Sabotaged in Milan
Orazio and Giuseppe Freed
Meeting in Rome
Nautillus Communique
“The Poverty of the Student Movement”
This is the significance one grasps from the hesitation and uncertainty on the best way to set out the struggle.
The traditional front of the class struggle, after the more or less long periods of wild rearrangement, is addressing itself towards sorting out more tranquil and productive social peace in the medium term.The “theorem” of Tarantelli and Modigliani is revealing itself to be inexact. Political re-enforcements, as an effect of an economic re-organisation, is producing better conditions of exploitation. People feel safer (better represented) and, largely speaking, are more willing to be exploited. The democratic wager must be played out in full. In the case of the contrary, an inverse process could set underway. Credit could become debit, faith lack of it. Peace rage.
In what way and in what times all that could happen, we cannot say. Economic reajustments are proceding well. The financial counterblows (such as those in the stock exchange) are better ammorticised than happened following the relative (therefore growing) independence of the capitalist structures from crude financial capitalist needs. Italy in particular is growing economically to levels such as to threaten the French and English leaderships. We are also about to become economic colonisers in territories that were traditionally the decisional centres where foreign colonialism started off against us (who can forget the exploitation realised in Italy by the great foreign railway firms). There are drawbacks, but these are also under control. The unemployed are on the increase, but they are not giving excessive preoccupations. The State deficit is at levels that were unthinkable just a few years ago, but is still far from the standard levels of the big industrial countries. We now know well that only with big debts is it possible to manage big enterprises of exploitation. The complex management of the enterprise does not matter, what counts is profit in the short term. In fact, to be precise, not so much profit in financial terms but power and influence in the short term.
The level of the struggle is in decline. It is pointless to hide this fact. The sign of this decline is given by the fact that the confederated unions are also gaining ground, eminently holding all kinds of autonomous phenomena under control, moreover carriers of not very original reasons for struggle. The decrease in struggles will give new space to the final structuring of power. If in the next two years a new cycle of struggles does not take root, capital will place its unsurmountable frontiers in such a way as to guarantee itself at least a decade of sure margins.
It no longer seems to us to be the case to come out again with the symbols of the great unifying objectives. Nuclear power, for example, undoubtedly constitutes a “readable” objective, but no longer in a “demonstrative” key. In this perspective it has become a supporting element of restructuring. The same can be said for all kinds of pollution. These two sectors can see interventions of struggle, and the same in the sectors of international class collaboration, but not at demonstrative levels. To fight today for whoever wants to do so, means finding new roads even within these sectors of intervention that are open to everyone. But these new roads can, at least in the beginning, fail to be practicable except by a few.
The awakening of great strata of comrades and exploited in general can only come about more slowly. The struggle, simple and practical, is taking up again, from the beginning. With simple means, without great illusions, but with the usual hope in our hearts.
NUMBER TWELVE
Third world: Gulag of Capital
Trial Agostino Manni
Demo against ACNA
Roberto Gemigmami Freed
Freedom For Juan Paillacar
Freedom for Comrades in Prison
Social Sabotage is Never Terrorism
Pylons Sawn Down
“We Will Stain” Every Place of Detention
Sabotage at Gargnano
Kronstadt Social Centre Communique
Adieu Cobas
To Destroy the Mafia You Must Destroy the State
Pirates in the Philippines
Against the Exporters of Social Detention
Attack in Ajaccio
“Kanak” in Revolt
Tension in Ireland
Extradition
The Eggheads of Control
“Milipol”: The Arms of Terrorism on Show
THE MORAL FRACTURE (AMB) * (Propulsive Utopia, Insurrection)
Comidad: Apersuasive “Consolatory” Discourse
Declaration
From Prison in Solidarity With the Palestinians
Greek Exploiter Brought to Justice
“International Revolutionary Solidarity”
American Antinuclear Folklore
Anatomy of a Desert
Another Letter
A Reply to Pierre tognoli
‘El Paso and Squats in Turin
Self-management is not Self-service
Social Struggles in Milan
Zanone Contested at the University
Long Live work
The Reasons of a People
A Cigar in the Mouth
Feast Infested
Communique - UCC
“Bancomat” Sabotaged in Milan
Orazio and Giuseppe Freed
Meeting in Rome
Nautillus Communique
“The Poverty of the Student Movement”
ISSUE ELEVEN
A search for a new equilibrium. This is without doubt the dominant theme of the political moment that we are going through. Not only in Italy, but all over the world.
However, considering things from the point of view of our own reality we must say right away that this research is not only happening with the consultations on institutional reforms at various levels, not only with the roped climbers against the wild protests of a certain trade unionism of new coinage but also with a certain way of facing the problem of the past legislative and judicial emergency.
On various sides they are again taking up the question of amnesty, pardon and all the other judicial instruments that are capable of resolving the delicate situation in which we have come to find State institutions in the face of the phenomenon of armed struggle as this phenomenon has been developing over past years.
We do not know how things will turn out, sure that they had to be sorted out in one way or another. To be convinced of this are not only the dissociated old and new with all their more or less intelligent nuances, but also those who - like Piperno - are on the point of returning to Italy or have already done so.
The solution will, in the first place, be a useful fact in the prospects of new Italian political equilibrium. The State, especially in the face of a prospect of institutional and constitutional reshuffles, needs an old-style political “opposition” even stuffed with opportunely recycled unglorious signatures . From this “opposition” one could, as everyone understands, make the most opportune and optimal use as a lubricant to avoid the risky frictions of the past, i.e. greater unrest. Certainly, men have bargained with the State, even in “intelligent” terms, such as those who “suggest” that the State looks at its cards again and remedies the “wrongs” of the past to avoid a gloomy future of “useless” and bloody clashes, must necessarily be available for manipulation, to suitable use. We are not talking about a Curcio in parliament like Negri and perhaps worse than him. But we are talking of an opposition that is insinuating itself beyond the institutions (that’s a manner of speaking) recuperating the real dissent of the country that is precisely the greatest preoccupation of our governers at a time that is presenting itself as transitory, to go towards an institutional resystemisation. Think of the great importance of a fictitious opposition of the old stamp organised in the streets, supported by the official forces of the parties and of the left, or even by recycled organisations or those of a new stamp, to serve as a safety valve at a time when they finally want to gag the possibilities of strikes, spontaneous workers’ organisations, freedom of movement, of thought, meeting, etc. Because that is what we are talking about.
The State is prospecting a more adequate refoundation in the nineties, which will be years of struggle for the drastic restructuring of production on the basis of the post-industrial economy. In this perspective it could be very comfortable to have a fictitious opposition that pushes the great masses of the past in piazza, people with so many years’ prison to display as a guarantee and hazy ambivalent discourses to contraband as new horizons of revolutionary struggle.
The thing is not so strange. It is necessary to reflect on it. After all, in the perspective of State restructuring it is precisely the highly politicised minorities that scare, those who could constitute a point of reference, a potentially subversive struggle. And it would be difficult to control these minorities and repress them with the classical means (police, judiciary, etc.) that a democratic State has as its disposal. While they could easily fall into the arms of a fictitious orientation of opposition and, so doing, definitively disarm themselves.
That is why - and we remind all those who have not understood it yet - we have always been against all struggles for amnesty. That is why, once again, we are pointing out the dangers of a turning in the direction of “pardon”, legitimisation, or whatever more or less clean term they want to indicate the abandonment and renunciation of ideals and the practice of revolutionary struggle.
NUMBER ELEVEN
Celebration of a Massacre (PLP)
Ethopia Exports Beef
Ed Koch at the Stake: The Homeless Rebel
The “Last Mazurka” and the Parenthesis of “Corriere”
Editorial
No Expulsions, No Extraditions
Against the Persecution of a Comrade
Attacks in Corsica
Attacks in Bretagne
Solidarity with “Action Directe”/Trial
Lottery Rebibbia
Lesbians against the House of Lords
Revolt in Prison in Brasil
“AnNew Black Contestation
Racism in Direct on American TV
THE TYRANNY OF WEAKNESS AMB* (Insurrection)
Revolt in the Soviet Prisons
Thefts in soviet supermarkets
USSR: Sacked workers Struggle
Indians Rebel
How to Jinx Police
“Down with Work” “Disintegrate control” centre pages
The Anarchist Movement Must React
Attacks in Sardinia
What Pluralism?
Palermo - Counterinformation on the Walls
New Year in Germany
Inaugural Tee Shirt
Two Pylons sabotaged
Organised anarchism
A Letter
“Post Festum”
Communicato
Attack against Fininvest
Digos Raid Home of AMB
Bomb against Pretura
Solidarity With the Palestinians
On the Side of the Palestinians
Unexpected Explosion
Struggle Against apartheid is Struggle against Caopital and the State
Freedom For Roberto Gemignani
Night Creatures in Court
Fire to Building society
Enel Pylons Sawn Down at Caorso and Montalto
Proletarian Expropriation
Against an Army Barracks
Teacher Punished
However, considering things from the point of view of our own reality we must say right away that this research is not only happening with the consultations on institutional reforms at various levels, not only with the roped climbers against the wild protests of a certain trade unionism of new coinage but also with a certain way of facing the problem of the past legislative and judicial emergency.
On various sides they are again taking up the question of amnesty, pardon and all the other judicial instruments that are capable of resolving the delicate situation in which we have come to find State institutions in the face of the phenomenon of armed struggle as this phenomenon has been developing over past years.
We do not know how things will turn out, sure that they had to be sorted out in one way or another. To be convinced of this are not only the dissociated old and new with all their more or less intelligent nuances, but also those who - like Piperno - are on the point of returning to Italy or have already done so.
The solution will, in the first place, be a useful fact in the prospects of new Italian political equilibrium. The State, especially in the face of a prospect of institutional and constitutional reshuffles, needs an old-style political “opposition” even stuffed with opportunely recycled unglorious signatures . From this “opposition” one could, as everyone understands, make the most opportune and optimal use as a lubricant to avoid the risky frictions of the past, i.e. greater unrest. Certainly, men have bargained with the State, even in “intelligent” terms, such as those who “suggest” that the State looks at its cards again and remedies the “wrongs” of the past to avoid a gloomy future of “useless” and bloody clashes, must necessarily be available for manipulation, to suitable use. We are not talking about a Curcio in parliament like Negri and perhaps worse than him. But we are talking of an opposition that is insinuating itself beyond the institutions (that’s a manner of speaking) recuperating the real dissent of the country that is precisely the greatest preoccupation of our governers at a time that is presenting itself as transitory, to go towards an institutional resystemisation. Think of the great importance of a fictitious opposition of the old stamp organised in the streets, supported by the official forces of the parties and of the left, or even by recycled organisations or those of a new stamp, to serve as a safety valve at a time when they finally want to gag the possibilities of strikes, spontaneous workers’ organisations, freedom of movement, of thought, meeting, etc. Because that is what we are talking about.
The State is prospecting a more adequate refoundation in the nineties, which will be years of struggle for the drastic restructuring of production on the basis of the post-industrial economy. In this perspective it could be very comfortable to have a fictitious opposition that pushes the great masses of the past in piazza, people with so many years’ prison to display as a guarantee and hazy ambivalent discourses to contraband as new horizons of revolutionary struggle.
The thing is not so strange. It is necessary to reflect on it. After all, in the perspective of State restructuring it is precisely the highly politicised minorities that scare, those who could constitute a point of reference, a potentially subversive struggle. And it would be difficult to control these minorities and repress them with the classical means (police, judiciary, etc.) that a democratic State has as its disposal. While they could easily fall into the arms of a fictitious orientation of opposition and, so doing, definitively disarm themselves.
That is why - and we remind all those who have not understood it yet - we have always been against all struggles for amnesty. That is why, once again, we are pointing out the dangers of a turning in the direction of “pardon”, legitimisation, or whatever more or less clean term they want to indicate the abandonment and renunciation of ideals and the practice of revolutionary struggle.
NUMBER ELEVEN
Celebration of a Massacre (PLP)
Ethopia Exports Beef
Ed Koch at the Stake: The Homeless Rebel
The “Last Mazurka” and the Parenthesis of “Corriere”
Editorial
No Expulsions, No Extraditions
Against the Persecution of a Comrade
Attacks in Corsica
Attacks in Bretagne
Solidarity with “Action Directe”/Trial
Lottery Rebibbia
Lesbians against the House of Lords
Revolt in Prison in Brasil
“AnNew Black Contestation
Racism in Direct on American TV
THE TYRANNY OF WEAKNESS AMB* (Insurrection)
Revolt in the Soviet Prisons
Thefts in soviet supermarkets
USSR: Sacked workers Struggle
Indians Rebel
How to Jinx Police
“Down with Work” “Disintegrate control” centre pages
The Anarchist Movement Must React
Attacks in Sardinia
What Pluralism?
Palermo - Counterinformation on the Walls
New Year in Germany
Inaugural Tee Shirt
Two Pylons sabotaged
Organised anarchism
A Letter
“Post Festum”
Communicato
Attack against Fininvest
Digos Raid Home of AMB
Bomb against Pretura
Solidarity With the Palestinians
On the Side of the Palestinians
Unexpected Explosion
Struggle Against apartheid is Struggle against Caopital and the State
Freedom For Roberto Gemignani
Night Creatures in Court
Fire to Building society
Enel Pylons Sawn Down at Caorso and Montalto
Proletarian Expropriation
Against an Army Barracks
Teacher Punished
ISSUE ELEVEN
A search for a new equilibrium. This is without doubt the dominant theme of the political moment that we are going through. Not only in Italy, but all over the world.
However, considering things from the point of view of our own reality we must say right away that this research is not only happening with the consultations on institutional reforms at various levels, not only with the roped climbers against the wild protests of a certain trade unionism of new coinage but also with a certain way of facing the problem of the past legislative and judicial emergency.
On various sides they are again taking up the question of amnesty, pardon and all the other judicial instruments that are capable of resolving the delicate situation in which we have come to find State institutions in the face of the phenomenon of armed struggle as this phenomenon has been developing over past years.
We do not know how things will turn out, sure that they had to be sorted out in one way or another. To be convinced of this are not only the dissociated old and new with all their more or less intelligent nuances, but also those who - like Piperno - are on the point of returning to Italy or have already done so.
The solution will, in the first place, be a useful fact in the prospects of new Italian political equilibrium. The State, especially in the face of a prospect of institutional and constitutional reshuffles, needs an old-style political “opposition” even stuffed with opportunely recycled unglorious signatures . From this “opposition” one could, as everyone understands, make the most opportune and optimal use as a lubricant to avoid the risky frictions of the past, i.e. greater unrest. Certainly, men have bargained with the State, even in “intelligent” terms, such as those who “suggest” that the State looks at its cards again and remedies the “wrongs” of the past to avoid a gloomy future of “useless” and bloody clashes, must necessarily be available for manipulation, to suitable use. We are not talking about a Curcio in parliament like Negri and perhaps worse than him. But we are talking of an opposition that is insinuating itself beyond the institutions (that’s a manner of speaking) recuperating the real dissent of the country that is precisely the greatest preoccupation of our governers at a time that is presenting itself as transitory, to go towards an institutional resystemisation. Think of the great importance of a fictitious opposition of the old stamp organised in the streets, supported by the official forces of the parties and of the left, or even by recycled organisations or those of a new stamp, to serve as a safety valve at a time when they finally want to gag the possibilities of strikes, spontaneous workers’ organisations, freedom of movement, of thought, meeting, etc. Because that is what we are talking about.
The State is prospecting a more adequate refoundation in the nineties, which will be years of struggle for the drastic restructuring of production on the basis of the post-industrial economy. In this perspective it could be very comfortable to have a fictitious opposition that pushes the great masses of the past in piazza, people with so many years’ prison to display as a guarantee and hazy ambivalent discourses to contraband as new horizons of revolutionary struggle.
The thing is not so strange. It is necessary to reflect on it. After all, in the perspective of State restructuring it is precisely the highly politicised minorities that scare, those who could constitute a point of reference, a potentially subversive struggle. And it would be difficult to control these minorities and repress them with the classical means (police, judiciary, etc.) that a democratic State has as its disposal. While they could easily fall into the arms of a fictitious orientation of opposition and, so doing, definitively disarm themselves.
That is why - and we remind all those who have not understood it yet - we have always been against all struggles for amnesty. That is why, once again, we are pointing out the dangers of a turning in the direction of “pardon”, legitimisation, or whatever more or less clean term they want to indicate the abandonment and renunciation of ideals and the practice of revolutionary struggle.
Editorial
Number Twelve
Power is getting time to rearrange its structures and sort out its projects for the best.
This is the significance one grasps from the hesitation and uncertainty on the best way to set out the struggle.
The traditional front of the class struggle, after the more or less long periods of wild rearrangement, is addressing itself towards sorting out more tranquil and productive social peace in the medium term.The “theorem” of Tarantelli and Modigliani is revealing itself to be inexact. Political re-enforcements, as an effect of an economic re-organisation, is producing better conditions of exploitation. People feel safer (better represented) and, largely speaking, are more willing to be exploited. The democratic wager must be played out in full. In the case of the contrary, an inverse process could set underway. Credit could become debit, faith lack of it. Peace rage.
In what way and in what times all that could happen, we cannot say. Economic reajustments are proceding well. The financial counterblows (such as those in the stock exchange) are better ammorticised than happened following the relative (therefore growing) independence of the capitalist structures from crude financial capitalist needs. Italy in particular is growing economically to levels such as to threaten the French and English leaderships. We are also about to become economic colonisers in territories that were traditionally the decisional centres where foreign colonialism started off against us (who can forget the exploitation realised in Italy by the great foreign railway firms). There are drawbacks, but these are also under control. The unemployed are on the increase, but they are not giving excessive preoccupations. The State deficit is at levels that were unthinkable just a few years ago, but is still far from the standard levels of the big industrial countries. We now know well that only with big debts is it possible to manage big enterprises of exploitation. The complex management of the enterprise does not matter, what counts is profit in the short term. In fact, to be precise, not so much profit in financial terms but power and influence in the short term.
The level of the struggle is in decline. It is pointless to hide this fact. The sign of this decline is given by the fact that the confederated unions are also gaining ground, eminently holding all kinds of autonomous phenomena under control, moreover carriers of not very original reasons for struggle. The decrease in struggles will give new space to the final structuring of power. If in the next two years a new cycle of struggles does not take root, capital will place its unsurmountable frontiers in such a way as to guarantee itself at least a decade of sure margins.
It no longer seems to us to be the case to come out again with the symbols of the great unifying objectives. Nuclear power, for example, undoubtedly constitutes a “readable” objective, but no longer in a “demonstrative” key. In this perspective it has become a supporting element of restructuring. The same can be said for all kinds of pollution. These two sectors can see interventions of struggle, and the same in the sectors of international class collaboration, but not at demonstrative levels. To fight today for whoever wants to do so, means finding new roads even within these sectors of intervention that are open to everyone. But these new roads can, at least in the beginning, fail to be practicable except by a few.
The awakening of great strata of comrades and exploited in general can only come about more slowly. The struggle, simple and practical, is taking up again, from the beginning. With simple means, without great illusions, but with the usual hope in our hearts.
Editorial
Number thirteen
In past times when everything seemed to be going for the best on the wings of ideological illusions, when demonstrations and clashes, destructive actions and attacks against the class enemy were only disturbed by those who stubbornly wanted to move them to a level of excessive military efficiency. At times when the present fashion of symbolism and creeping repression had not yet been discovered. One lined up whole-heartedly with different possible ways of seeing the social clash and the revolutionary intervention.
On the one hand the old remnants of social democracy that were contained in anarchist symbols and banners, on the other the noisy supporters of disturbance taken to the extreme of the ecstatic dreams of the former and their more or less avid supporters.
For the outside spectator the clashes, both verbal and on printed paper, seemed like a storm in a teacup. Chatter on the right, chatter on the left. More or less well done more or less agreeable to read, obvious in its basic elements.
Then there was a third element, that which we could now call the “centrists”. Comrades who like Pontias Pilate did not want (and do not want, because they are still around) to dirty their hands, avoiding with contortion the occasion of taking sides in one or the other way of seeing things. This “marais”, like all swamps, lay hidden, nesting in the corridors of meetings and conferences but never coming out into the light of day with smiles and hyberbolic declarations of esteem, at the same time as unequivocable indications of equidistance.
Whatever the reasons at the time were for the possibilist “social-democrats” and whatever the unconfessed interests of the inhabitants of the “marais” the fact remains that most of the time they end up cohabiting within the same positions, cutting, without realising it, the same lean figure.
Now things are changing. If you like, in the rarefaction of the facts present, divergences and methods are distinguishing themselves better. The old possibilists have been leading the movement, recruiting new adepts and these, as always happens, are more realist than the king. The swamp in the middle is filling up with new opportunists who, in the best of cases, i.e. giving them credit for their good faith, must say they do not know which fish to choose. Not to mention professional informers and spies, who also exist, but they make up such a minute isolated minority that, for the time being, they are not worth mentioning.
We believe that the evolution of things, i.e. of the conditions of exploitation, the production of the new subordinated man sold out to the new techniques of power, the destruction of any residual sign of humanity or dignity; all this along with elements of the good will of the few who have not remained prisoner to psychological dilemas and moral plunder; they will produce a new need for confrontation. We do not believe it possible to carry on as though nothing has happened, to see the old social democratic merchandise, as we believe it is difficult that in the next few months one will be able to continue to float in the slimy waters of the swamp without fishing down to the depths.
To understand ourselves, beyond any possible doubt, we do not intend here to point out eventual roads of clarification or convergence in the name of superior principles to be saved at any cost. We are only indicating the sad possibility of a far heavier divarication. And neither does our contestation want to be a raising of shields but simply a bitter verification of how cancer-ridden and insanabile divergences are. We have never shown pity on anyone, least of all ourselves, and we don’t intend to start now. That is why we might seem to be too rigid at times. The fact is that perhaps we really are rigid.
Editorial
Number fourteen
In the things of life you want a little logic and, why not, also intelligence. Also in the highly discutable and miserable practice of dissociation, those who are masters in this field have made us see that you need a certain logic, a certain graduality. Dissociative positions are not in themselves necessary up until the moment when facts that do not have any agreement among those who intend to dissociate themselves are verified.
For example, the long line of dissociated in the past 15 years has taught us that there is always time for signing declarations. First one must see how things stand, evaluate the pros and the cons, before taking a distance from someone whose practices we do not approve of.
Preconfectioned dissociation “bulletins” as these could be defined let us say, their linguistic structure predetermined, to be put into circulation by parties, politicians and economic personalities when certain facts occur. It is a question of generic condemnation where one frequently finds the term “vile attack” and other such things.
The difference exists although it remains within a strata that disgusts in any case.
Now, what one might ask, were the motivations that pushed the comrades of Rivista “A” and the FAI in Milan to dissociate themselves from events that took place in Milan some time ago, small attacks against militarist objectives like the ENEL nuclear research centre or similar firms who work in the nuclear sectors?
Why did they immediately bring out a communique? What did they want to distinguish themselves from in such a hurry? They certainly weren’t afraid of the risk of seeing themselves with the carabinieri turning up at their homes to raid them, in that it is well known - at least it is without doubt so in Milan - that these political line-ups do not agree with certain practices. What did they want to take a distance from? Would not it have been better to wait for a few days to pass, if nothing else to be able to successively defend the comrades who could (and presumably will be, persecuted for things they are quite extraneous to), and at the same time as they support the comrades, see to making the legitimate distinction they are imposing in political terms because it is not right for everyone to share a practice which by its very nature cannot be other than, at the moment, accepted by only a few?
Wouldn’t that have been better?
Of course it would have been better and it would have made a police act of intimidation more difficult that becomes easier within our movement precisely when the floodlights shine on a small number of us.
I ask myself then, what pushed these comrades to act in such a way? Which then turns out to be contradictory, in that first they dissociate themselves from a certain practice, contributing to turning attention to comrades that do not intend to dissociate themselves in this obtuse and preconceived way, and then they solidarise with those struck by the repression, precisely the repression which with its own dissociative practice it had contributed to soliciting. Such behaviour seems to me to be not only contradictory but also devoid of that minimum of political intelligence required in the practice of social struggles, whatever this practice might be, without being too subtle.
A comrade, with a passion that is his, defined them recently at the Forlì conference as “pieces of shit”. Certainly, it’s a strong phrase, beyond all measure of good manners, but we must also understand that certain ways of acting, beyond sharing cetain practices or not, are not admissable in that it is behaviour that supplies the instruments of repression.
I would suggest a let’s say “benevolent” reading of these “incidents” in which, in my opinion, have run into both the Milan FAI and Rivista A; basically the latter have been taken by surprise: they did not expect a movement to exist in today’s reality, a number of comrades, even minimal, that were intending to realise destructive attacks against militarist objectives. This intention is happening in practice and we, of this paper, have punctually witnessed how much is happening, at times undergoing incrimination, raids, and trials with accusations of instigation, apology, and, incredible as it may seem, participation; without for that claiming that what we are pointing out should receive the applause of all comrades. But it is necessary to reflect better on what might happen in future, when taking a position.
Criticism is one thing. Police-style infamous denunciation is another.
Editorial
Number Sixteen
There are various ways to see the situation one finds oneself living in as natural and thriving. One of these, undoubtedly the best, is by using the positive aspects of the situation itself, not worrying about what happens to others but only in the line of principle - also painful - of a spectacle that has now become habitual and tedious. However, in any case, both in the eventuality of the first as in the second, nothing is moved of one’s own initiative, nothing of that which belongs to us and which is clear to us put in question and submitted to criticism.
We have before our eyes the plateal behaviour of those who come under the first conception of life cited above, but also that no less plateal of those who raise a groan in the name of the second.
It is the latter, as it is easy to understand, who attract our attention, giving the first for the time being our absolute despisal, then later, we hope, something more concrete.
Profound changes are taking place in the world: generalised insurrections, changes in the structures and equilibrium of international power, massacres and genocide of every dimension. Over all this fine people pull a piteous veil of routine interest: the newspaper (even our papers), TV. The spectacle of massacres reaches our homes every day, our eyes are now trained and our hearing switched off.
The Palestinians are beginning their 10th month of popular insurrection in the occupied territories, they are systematically being massacred by the Israeli occupying army, they are dying in the ghettoes and concentration camps. We listen and watch.
The South African blacks are defying the most racist country in the world, they are organising in struggle structures, they are being killed daily not only by the bullets of the army and police, but also by hunger and isolation. We listen and watch.
The Birmanians are rebelling against a dictatorial socialist regime. The people are fighting in the streets against the army in the most total isolation in the most complete indifference. We listen and watch.
The Afghan Mujaheddin continue their struggle, even after the disparity of the Russian army. Now, although between internal disputes for the conquest of power, the time is right for the moment of truth with the puppet regime. Only the poor people, involved in a gigantic struggle that has been going on for almost a decade, continue to die. We listen and watch.
The Miskitos of Central America, after having won their battle against Managua which was obliged to a truce, are employed in taking up the struggle again against the Honduras. Also here massacres are the order of the day: hundreds of dead, 70 villages raized to the ground, thousands of refugees. We listen and watch.
In Burundi a majority are literally being massacred by a minority in power in the name of a crazy racial difference but, more precisely in defence of specific economic interests and those of power. We listen and watch.
Then in Ireland, Spain, Corsica, New Caledonia, Canada, Yugoslavia, Russia, etc., peoples in struggle are trying to survive against oppression, the division in classes to the profit of the strongest, systematic death organised in great style. We limit ourselves to listening and looking.
Yet, in our own small way, we can do something. Not in the optic that revealed itself to be a losing one so many years ago, that which could be summed up in the words “taking the third world into Europe”, so much as in the optic of attack on the European capitalist interests that are being woven with the interests of those who, in every part of the world, are putting the people in revolt under their heels.
We can therefore do little things. And many of us are of the opinion that these things need to be done, and soon. Many others are only waiting for a slight push, collaboration, advice, a suggestion, practical and technical support, a little analytical clarity. Then there are many others, also among ourselves, who do not think the same way. And it is to them that we are addressing ourselves.
They belong to the category of those for whom nothing goes well that is done in the name of practical initiative and immediate and precise direct action. They have strange theses for criticising whoever wants to act now, right away. The strangest are the first who base themselves on the sophism that small actions do not serve because they do not disturb anyone and only increase repression (but against whom?) while the most important actions are the patrimony of groups of specialists against whom it is always necessary to be in a critical position, otherwise what anarchists would we be.
In other words, they don’t know what they want. Neither small actions (to understand each other, these people do not agree with attacks on the pylons of the ENEL and have bitterly criticised attacks against the death industries that were struck some time ago in Milan), nor the large (only hypothetical at the moment, to capital’s good fortune, certainly not ours).
Just talk. That, yes, is all right for them. Analyses. The incredible and strongly anachronistic lists of war industry, nuclear, etc, lists made up it seems to document that capital produces arms, produces nuclear power, etc, as though we didn’t know. If then some of these lists want to reach the due consequences, then they line themselves immediately against, criticisng whoever decides that two and two make four.
Mysteries of the logic of a certain anarchism.
The fact is that certain comrades have transformed anarchism into a pacific gymnasium of interesting debates, in which each one measures themselves with the other in the exclusive light of the worthiness of their own lives. Practice must stay outside the door.
We don’t agree.
However, considering things from the point of view of our own reality we must say right away that this research is not only happening with the consultations on institutional reforms at various levels, not only with the roped climbers against the wild protests of a certain trade unionism of new coinage but also with a certain way of facing the problem of the past legislative and judicial emergency.
On various sides they are again taking up the question of amnesty, pardon and all the other judicial instruments that are capable of resolving the delicate situation in which we have come to find State institutions in the face of the phenomenon of armed struggle as this phenomenon has been developing over past years.
We do not know how things will turn out, sure that they had to be sorted out in one way or another. To be convinced of this are not only the dissociated old and new with all their more or less intelligent nuances, but also those who - like Piperno - are on the point of returning to Italy or have already done so.
The solution will, in the first place, be a useful fact in the prospects of new Italian political equilibrium. The State, especially in the face of a prospect of institutional and constitutional reshuffles, needs an old-style political “opposition” even stuffed with opportunely recycled unglorious signatures . From this “opposition” one could, as everyone understands, make the most opportune and optimal use as a lubricant to avoid the risky frictions of the past, i.e. greater unrest. Certainly, men have bargained with the State, even in “intelligent” terms, such as those who “suggest” that the State looks at its cards again and remedies the “wrongs” of the past to avoid a gloomy future of “useless” and bloody clashes, must necessarily be available for manipulation, to suitable use. We are not talking about a Curcio in parliament like Negri and perhaps worse than him. But we are talking of an opposition that is insinuating itself beyond the institutions (that’s a manner of speaking) recuperating the real dissent of the country that is precisely the greatest preoccupation of our governers at a time that is presenting itself as transitory, to go towards an institutional resystemisation. Think of the great importance of a fictitious opposition of the old stamp organised in the streets, supported by the official forces of the parties and of the left, or even by recycled organisations or those of a new stamp, to serve as a safety valve at a time when they finally want to gag the possibilities of strikes, spontaneous workers’ organisations, freedom of movement, of thought, meeting, etc. Because that is what we are talking about.
The State is prospecting a more adequate refoundation in the nineties, which will be years of struggle for the drastic restructuring of production on the basis of the post-industrial economy. In this perspective it could be very comfortable to have a fictitious opposition that pushes the great masses of the past in piazza, people with so many years’ prison to display as a guarantee and hazy ambivalent discourses to contraband as new horizons of revolutionary struggle.
The thing is not so strange. It is necessary to reflect on it. After all, in the perspective of State restructuring it is precisely the highly politicised minorities that scare, those who could constitute a point of reference, a potentially subversive struggle. And it would be difficult to control these minorities and repress them with the classical means (police, judiciary, etc.) that a democratic State has as its disposal. While they could easily fall into the arms of a fictitious orientation of opposition and, so doing, definitively disarm themselves.
That is why - and we remind all those who have not understood it yet - we have always been against all struggles for amnesty. That is why, once again, we are pointing out the dangers of a turning in the direction of “pardon”, legitimisation, or whatever more or less clean term they want to indicate the abandonment and renunciation of ideals and the practice of revolutionary struggle.
Editorial
Number Twelve
Power is getting time to rearrange its structures and sort out its projects for the best.
This is the significance one grasps from the hesitation and uncertainty on the best way to set out the struggle.
The traditional front of the class struggle, after the more or less long periods of wild rearrangement, is addressing itself towards sorting out more tranquil and productive social peace in the medium term.The “theorem” of Tarantelli and Modigliani is revealing itself to be inexact. Political re-enforcements, as an effect of an economic re-organisation, is producing better conditions of exploitation. People feel safer (better represented) and, largely speaking, are more willing to be exploited. The democratic wager must be played out in full. In the case of the contrary, an inverse process could set underway. Credit could become debit, faith lack of it. Peace rage.
In what way and in what times all that could happen, we cannot say. Economic reajustments are proceding well. The financial counterblows (such as those in the stock exchange) are better ammorticised than happened following the relative (therefore growing) independence of the capitalist structures from crude financial capitalist needs. Italy in particular is growing economically to levels such as to threaten the French and English leaderships. We are also about to become economic colonisers in territories that were traditionally the decisional centres where foreign colonialism started off against us (who can forget the exploitation realised in Italy by the great foreign railway firms). There are drawbacks, but these are also under control. The unemployed are on the increase, but they are not giving excessive preoccupations. The State deficit is at levels that were unthinkable just a few years ago, but is still far from the standard levels of the big industrial countries. We now know well that only with big debts is it possible to manage big enterprises of exploitation. The complex management of the enterprise does not matter, what counts is profit in the short term. In fact, to be precise, not so much profit in financial terms but power and influence in the short term.
The level of the struggle is in decline. It is pointless to hide this fact. The sign of this decline is given by the fact that the confederated unions are also gaining ground, eminently holding all kinds of autonomous phenomena under control, moreover carriers of not very original reasons for struggle. The decrease in struggles will give new space to the final structuring of power. If in the next two years a new cycle of struggles does not take root, capital will place its unsurmountable frontiers in such a way as to guarantee itself at least a decade of sure margins.
It no longer seems to us to be the case to come out again with the symbols of the great unifying objectives. Nuclear power, for example, undoubtedly constitutes a “readable” objective, but no longer in a “demonstrative” key. In this perspective it has become a supporting element of restructuring. The same can be said for all kinds of pollution. These two sectors can see interventions of struggle, and the same in the sectors of international class collaboration, but not at demonstrative levels. To fight today for whoever wants to do so, means finding new roads even within these sectors of intervention that are open to everyone. But these new roads can, at least in the beginning, fail to be practicable except by a few.
The awakening of great strata of comrades and exploited in general can only come about more slowly. The struggle, simple and practical, is taking up again, from the beginning. With simple means, without great illusions, but with the usual hope in our hearts.
Editorial
Number thirteen
In past times when everything seemed to be going for the best on the wings of ideological illusions, when demonstrations and clashes, destructive actions and attacks against the class enemy were only disturbed by those who stubbornly wanted to move them to a level of excessive military efficiency. At times when the present fashion of symbolism and creeping repression had not yet been discovered. One lined up whole-heartedly with different possible ways of seeing the social clash and the revolutionary intervention.
On the one hand the old remnants of social democracy that were contained in anarchist symbols and banners, on the other the noisy supporters of disturbance taken to the extreme of the ecstatic dreams of the former and their more or less avid supporters.
For the outside spectator the clashes, both verbal and on printed paper, seemed like a storm in a teacup. Chatter on the right, chatter on the left. More or less well done more or less agreeable to read, obvious in its basic elements.
Then there was a third element, that which we could now call the “centrists”. Comrades who like Pontias Pilate did not want (and do not want, because they are still around) to dirty their hands, avoiding with contortion the occasion of taking sides in one or the other way of seeing things. This “marais”, like all swamps, lay hidden, nesting in the corridors of meetings and conferences but never coming out into the light of day with smiles and hyberbolic declarations of esteem, at the same time as unequivocable indications of equidistance.
Whatever the reasons at the time were for the possibilist “social-democrats” and whatever the unconfessed interests of the inhabitants of the “marais” the fact remains that most of the time they end up cohabiting within the same positions, cutting, without realising it, the same lean figure.
Now things are changing. If you like, in the rarefaction of the facts present, divergences and methods are distinguishing themselves better. The old possibilists have been leading the movement, recruiting new adepts and these, as always happens, are more realist than the king. The swamp in the middle is filling up with new opportunists who, in the best of cases, i.e. giving them credit for their good faith, must say they do not know which fish to choose. Not to mention professional informers and spies, who also exist, but they make up such a minute isolated minority that, for the time being, they are not worth mentioning.
We believe that the evolution of things, i.e. of the conditions of exploitation, the production of the new subordinated man sold out to the new techniques of power, the destruction of any residual sign of humanity or dignity; all this along with elements of the good will of the few who have not remained prisoner to psychological dilemas and moral plunder; they will produce a new need for confrontation. We do not believe it possible to carry on as though nothing has happened, to see the old social democratic merchandise, as we believe it is difficult that in the next few months one will be able to continue to float in the slimy waters of the swamp without fishing down to the depths.
To understand ourselves, beyond any possible doubt, we do not intend here to point out eventual roads of clarification or convergence in the name of superior principles to be saved at any cost. We are only indicating the sad possibility of a far heavier divarication. And neither does our contestation want to be a raising of shields but simply a bitter verification of how cancer-ridden and insanabile divergences are. We have never shown pity on anyone, least of all ourselves, and we don’t intend to start now. That is why we might seem to be too rigid at times. The fact is that perhaps we really are rigid.
Editorial
Number fourteen
In the things of life you want a little logic and, why not, also intelligence. Also in the highly discutable and miserable practice of dissociation, those who are masters in this field have made us see that you need a certain logic, a certain graduality. Dissociative positions are not in themselves necessary up until the moment when facts that do not have any agreement among those who intend to dissociate themselves are verified.
For example, the long line of dissociated in the past 15 years has taught us that there is always time for signing declarations. First one must see how things stand, evaluate the pros and the cons, before taking a distance from someone whose practices we do not approve of.
Preconfectioned dissociation “bulletins” as these could be defined let us say, their linguistic structure predetermined, to be put into circulation by parties, politicians and economic personalities when certain facts occur. It is a question of generic condemnation where one frequently finds the term “vile attack” and other such things.
The difference exists although it remains within a strata that disgusts in any case.
Now, what one might ask, were the motivations that pushed the comrades of Rivista “A” and the FAI in Milan to dissociate themselves from events that took place in Milan some time ago, small attacks against militarist objectives like the ENEL nuclear research centre or similar firms who work in the nuclear sectors?
Why did they immediately bring out a communique? What did they want to distinguish themselves from in such a hurry? They certainly weren’t afraid of the risk of seeing themselves with the carabinieri turning up at their homes to raid them, in that it is well known - at least it is without doubt so in Milan - that these political line-ups do not agree with certain practices. What did they want to take a distance from? Would not it have been better to wait for a few days to pass, if nothing else to be able to successively defend the comrades who could (and presumably will be, persecuted for things they are quite extraneous to), and at the same time as they support the comrades, see to making the legitimate distinction they are imposing in political terms because it is not right for everyone to share a practice which by its very nature cannot be other than, at the moment, accepted by only a few?
Wouldn’t that have been better?
Of course it would have been better and it would have made a police act of intimidation more difficult that becomes easier within our movement precisely when the floodlights shine on a small number of us.
I ask myself then, what pushed these comrades to act in such a way? Which then turns out to be contradictory, in that first they dissociate themselves from a certain practice, contributing to turning attention to comrades that do not intend to dissociate themselves in this obtuse and preconceived way, and then they solidarise with those struck by the repression, precisely the repression which with its own dissociative practice it had contributed to soliciting. Such behaviour seems to me to be not only contradictory but also devoid of that minimum of political intelligence required in the practice of social struggles, whatever this practice might be, without being too subtle.
A comrade, with a passion that is his, defined them recently at the Forlì conference as “pieces of shit”. Certainly, it’s a strong phrase, beyond all measure of good manners, but we must also understand that certain ways of acting, beyond sharing cetain practices or not, are not admissable in that it is behaviour that supplies the instruments of repression.
I would suggest a let’s say “benevolent” reading of these “incidents” in which, in my opinion, have run into both the Milan FAI and Rivista A; basically the latter have been taken by surprise: they did not expect a movement to exist in today’s reality, a number of comrades, even minimal, that were intending to realise destructive attacks against militarist objectives. This intention is happening in practice and we, of this paper, have punctually witnessed how much is happening, at times undergoing incrimination, raids, and trials with accusations of instigation, apology, and, incredible as it may seem, participation; without for that claiming that what we are pointing out should receive the applause of all comrades. But it is necessary to reflect better on what might happen in future, when taking a position.
Criticism is one thing. Police-style infamous denunciation is another.
Editorial
Number Sixteen
There are various ways to see the situation one finds oneself living in as natural and thriving. One of these, undoubtedly the best, is by using the positive aspects of the situation itself, not worrying about what happens to others but only in the line of principle - also painful - of a spectacle that has now become habitual and tedious. However, in any case, both in the eventuality of the first as in the second, nothing is moved of one’s own initiative, nothing of that which belongs to us and which is clear to us put in question and submitted to criticism.
We have before our eyes the plateal behaviour of those who come under the first conception of life cited above, but also that no less plateal of those who raise a groan in the name of the second.
It is the latter, as it is easy to understand, who attract our attention, giving the first for the time being our absolute despisal, then later, we hope, something more concrete.
Profound changes are taking place in the world: generalised insurrections, changes in the structures and equilibrium of international power, massacres and genocide of every dimension. Over all this fine people pull a piteous veil of routine interest: the newspaper (even our papers), TV. The spectacle of massacres reaches our homes every day, our eyes are now trained and our hearing switched off.
The Palestinians are beginning their 10th month of popular insurrection in the occupied territories, they are systematically being massacred by the Israeli occupying army, they are dying in the ghettoes and concentration camps. We listen and watch.
The South African blacks are defying the most racist country in the world, they are organising in struggle structures, they are being killed daily not only by the bullets of the army and police, but also by hunger and isolation. We listen and watch.
The Birmanians are rebelling against a dictatorial socialist regime. The people are fighting in the streets against the army in the most total isolation in the most complete indifference. We listen and watch.
The Afghan Mujaheddin continue their struggle, even after the disparity of the Russian army. Now, although between internal disputes for the conquest of power, the time is right for the moment of truth with the puppet regime. Only the poor people, involved in a gigantic struggle that has been going on for almost a decade, continue to die. We listen and watch.
The Miskitos of Central America, after having won their battle against Managua which was obliged to a truce, are employed in taking up the struggle again against the Honduras. Also here massacres are the order of the day: hundreds of dead, 70 villages raized to the ground, thousands of refugees. We listen and watch.
In Burundi a majority are literally being massacred by a minority in power in the name of a crazy racial difference but, more precisely in defence of specific economic interests and those of power. We listen and watch.
Then in Ireland, Spain, Corsica, New Caledonia, Canada, Yugoslavia, Russia, etc., peoples in struggle are trying to survive against oppression, the division in classes to the profit of the strongest, systematic death organised in great style. We limit ourselves to listening and looking.
Yet, in our own small way, we can do something. Not in the optic that revealed itself to be a losing one so many years ago, that which could be summed up in the words “taking the third world into Europe”, so much as in the optic of attack on the European capitalist interests that are being woven with the interests of those who, in every part of the world, are putting the people in revolt under their heels.
We can therefore do little things. And many of us are of the opinion that these things need to be done, and soon. Many others are only waiting for a slight push, collaboration, advice, a suggestion, practical and technical support, a little analytical clarity. Then there are many others, also among ourselves, who do not think the same way. And it is to them that we are addressing ourselves.
They belong to the category of those for whom nothing goes well that is done in the name of practical initiative and immediate and precise direct action. They have strange theses for criticising whoever wants to act now, right away. The strangest are the first who base themselves on the sophism that small actions do not serve because they do not disturb anyone and only increase repression (but against whom?) while the most important actions are the patrimony of groups of specialists against whom it is always necessary to be in a critical position, otherwise what anarchists would we be.
In other words, they don’t know what they want. Neither small actions (to understand each other, these people do not agree with attacks on the pylons of the ENEL and have bitterly criticised attacks against the death industries that were struck some time ago in Milan), nor the large (only hypothetical at the moment, to capital’s good fortune, certainly not ours).
Just talk. That, yes, is all right for them. Analyses. The incredible and strongly anachronistic lists of war industry, nuclear, etc, lists made up it seems to document that capital produces arms, produces nuclear power, etc, as though we didn’t know. If then some of these lists want to reach the due consequences, then they line themselves immediately against, criticisng whoever decides that two and two make four.
Mysteries of the logic of a certain anarchism.
The fact is that certain comrades have transformed anarchism into a pacific gymnasium of interesting debates, in which each one measures themselves with the other in the exclusive light of the worthiness of their own lives. Practice must stay outside the door.
We don’t agree.
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