Πέμπτη 26 Φεβρουαρίου 2009
Κυριακή 22 Φεβρουαρίου 2009
call from Netherlands (taken by squat.net)
Amsterdam: Call for help from Commelinstraat
We are a group that squatted Commelinstraat 246 - 250 on Sunday 15th of February. On Monday morning we were awakened by a group of at least ten men, led by Menno Jeen Bos (the owner of this building) into the house. They broke down the door, and threatening physical violence, they demanded that we leave within ten seconds.
We are a group that squatted Commelinstraat 246 - 250 on Sunday 15th of February. On Monday morning we were awakened by a group of at least ten men, led by Menno Jeen Bos (the owner of this building) into the house. They broke down the door, and threatening physical violence, they demanded that we leave within ten seconds.
By breaking into this house, where we had secured the right to domestic peace, they took the law into their own hands. They throw us out onto the street and then threw our belongings down from the second floor onto our heads. Due to these actions a few people sustained physical injuries.
The police came and asked mister Bos the reason for the disturbance. He claimed that the house had not been empty for a year and that anti-squatters were living there last sunmmer. We know this is a lie for we have received from several neighbours, declarations that say that the house is empty for at least a year (average astimation - 2 years). When mister Bos could not reproduce any documentation for his story, the police respected our legal rights to be there and let us back into the building, with no further immediate action taken against mister Bos.
On the same evening, agent from Nuon Company, together with 2 police officers appeared in our door, send by mr. Bos. We allowed the Nuon agent in, but refused to let the police join him. The police was threatening to use force and to cut the electricity. At that point we called an alarm, some people arrived to support us. As a result, the winds were calmed, Nuon and police left calmly after declaring that electricity is safely used.
Till this moment, we had no further contact with the owner, nor the police.
We are busy occupying, working hard on cleaning, building and fixing the building. Our goal is to make it a beautiful warm house, and in the future, as well create an open public space in the lower floors. It is a large space with big potential for the community in the middle of the city. It is as well a politically important case for the future of squatting in Amsterdam.
WE NEED YOUR HELP!!!
How Could You Help?
1 - We need people to occupy the place for the first period. Sharing shifts to keep the place occupied with as many people possible at all times. Come and be with us.
2 - Building materials. Everything is welcome, but we are specially looking for: - Copper pipes (no. 22 and 15) - Chimney pipes - Connection bites for gas pipes - Gyps (plaster) boards - Wood - Electric wires - Doors - Smoke detectors - Banners - Sink
3 - Help in work, cleaning and building. We need your hands! If you have some sort of knowledge and experience - great, but if not, no worries, we can closely direct you to work safely (and happily).
If you have any other suggestions, ideas or initiatives, they are more then welcome. We have a new space with open arms. Mail us (address below) or, simple and best - just pass by Commelinstraat 246 - 250 (near the corner of the Dappermarkt).
Thanks to all of you, hope to see you soon,
The Commelin Group - Esmeralda Dapperbuur
commelinstraat246.250[AAA]gmail.com
Τρίτη 17 Φεβρουαρίου 2009
reports on Crisis
Reports on CrisisTWO: RomaniaWe asked people in several countries to write down observations about social effects of the crisis. »The return of the strawberry pickers «Romania, Turnstile of Migration |
At the turn of the year the airport Bucarest-Baneasa bursts at the seams. During normal business times the passenger volume of this airport for cheap airlines is already enormous, now things have gone way beyond capacity limits. Endless queues, undefined waiting hours and sticky air. Most of the people pushing and shoving their way through the terminal hall are Romanians working abroad: capsunaris, strawberry pickers as they are called in Romania, disregarding whether they work as construction workers in Bologna, as old people's carer in Paris, dockers in Rotterdam or agriculture labourers in Andalusia. Approximately 10 to 20 percent of the Romanian population - up to five million people - permanently or temporarily work abroad, mainly in Italy and Spain. Most of them spend the festive season at the end of the year 'at home' in Romania and this is when you can observe one of the biggest inner-European migration movements in the bus terminals and airports of this country. .
For some time emigration has posed a massive problem for local companies. According to a study by Manpower, Romania was the country with the highest degree of labour-shortage in 2008 [1]. Particularly affected were; the construction sector (with half of the vacancies remaining unfilled), tourism and the shoe- and textile industry.
Although in the past years the wage level in Romania has increased considerably it is still the lowest in the EU. In the textile factories workers are still only being paid a little more than the legal minimum wage [2]. Nowadays hardly anyone is willing to sweat for these wages. Efforts undertaken by the companies to recruit more people from the countryside fail again and again due to lacking qualifications, frequent absence from work and the unmotivated attitude of the workers towards factory work. In order to retain the remaining local employees the companies offer them two months unpaid holiday for seasonal work abroad in addition to the regular paid holidays. Despite this they did not manage to curb labour attrition due to workers shifting jobs to the new plants of the automobile parts manufacturers and electronic industries where higher wages were on offer.
The labour shortage was supposed to be solved by import of work force from Asia. Right from the beginning these migrant workers from China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Bangladesh and the Philippines caused conflicts and organised resistance against the management.
We report here on two examples from the textile industry:
Of the former 1,200 local employees at the apparel manufacturer Mondostar in Sibiu, only 350 kept working after new offers became available. In order to avoid bankruptcy the company hired 95 female Philippine textile workers in May 2008. The work contract with a commercial job agency in Manila guaranteed a basic wage of 400 US Dollars, 100 percent bonus for over-time and free accommodation and food. On the basis of these promises the workers took the risk of taking out individual loans of 2,500 US Dollars for the agency fee and the travel expenses.
Forcing the women to sign a second contract after arrival Mondostar tried to undermine the previous contractual agreement, to squeeze out a maximum labour performance and to lower their own expenses. For a 60 hour working week the women received a monthly wage of 235 US Dollars. From the agreed basic wage 165 US Dollars were deducted for food and accommodation and the over-time was not paid at all. The Philippine women found themselves in an real dilemma: their permission to stay in Romania was tied to the work contract, but if they quit the job they would have had to face massive debts back home in the Philippines.
Most of them have years of experience of working in textile factories in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Namibia, South Africa or Brunei or as domestic workers in Hong Kong or Singapore. They are able to compare conditions and they know how to organise themselves. After two months they started to boycott the over-time and confronted the company with an ultimatum. Their complaint at the Philippine embassy resulted in Mondostar not being allowing to hire any more Philippine workers. In reaction Mondostar sacked six women for 'lack of discipline', amongst them the four spokeswomen elected by the workers, and cut the wages even further alleging that the seamstresses did not meet the companies' fixed production targets. In consequence 78 workers decided to stop being fucked over and to quit their jobs with Mondostar in September 2008.
Back in the Philippines the workers filed a legal case against the job agency in Manila and Mondostar, supported by a welfare organisation for the OFW [3], which had also paid the travel expenses for the return trip. The legal proceedings saw a first success: the workers did not have to pay the 2,500 US Dollars commission to the agency.
The condition for the migrant workers' struggle for the betterment of their situation is everything but favourable. The workers' permission to stay is bound to the work contract, which provides the employers with an effective way of putting pressure on them. Usually the textile workers live in dormitories on the factory premises, which makes them easier to control. The contact to local workers is further impeded by the fact that in most cases their work stations are separated from each other. In addition to that there are the language barriers.
The degree of employers' repression against migrant workers is shown in the example of the Italian textile manufacturer Gamba, which runs two bigger plants in Bacau, under the name Sonoma and Wear Company. Three years ago the manufacturer was the first in Romania to apply for a licence to employ 1,000 Chinese garment workers. Some months later in January 2007 Wear Company became internationally known when 400 Chinese women went on a spontaneous strike after not having been paid the promised wage sum. After the strike some of the women returned to China, but it has still not become clear whether they returned on their own accord or whether they have been deported.
At Wear Company Gamba started a new attempt, this time employing 500 contract workers from Bangladesh. But here again, the company was only able to quell the workers' discontent by heavy intimidation and repression. In summer 2008, after several textile workers from Bangladesh did not return to the factory, their remaining colleagues were locked inside the factory premises for two months. More workers left the factory and did not return, again the remaining workers got locked in - this procedure became common practice. Despite the the Romanian media and the Inspectorat Teritorial de Munca (ITM) - the official board responsible for labour law issues - being informed about the matter, no one followed up the case. In January 2009 a report was published in the English Bengali press saying that more than half of the 800 employed contract workers from Bangladesh had left the job and crossed the border to other European countries. The reports also mention a week long strike of 200 Bangladeshi workers in a Romanian textile factory [4]. Little to nothing is known about the current situation of the remaining workers at Wear Company. What is known is the fact that the textile entrepreneur Gamba aspires to become the consul general for Bangladesh in Romania.
Impact of the global economic crisis
In this young member country of the EU the global crisis will change the social relations drastically. An economic growth rate of 9.3 percent as in 2008, wage increases of 25 percent and an unemployment rate of under 4 percent - this dynamic might well be broken. Currently short-time work is spreading in Romania and for the first time in years the Romanian labour market is witnessing an end to hiring. In the automobile industry, in the steel- and chemical industries redundancies are on the agenda.
Due to the abolishment of the import quota [5], the increasing wages and labour-shortage, the textile industries are retreating from Romania. The employers' association of the Romanian textile industry announced that this dynamic is aggravated by the current lack of orders. It is most likely that the importing of foreign workforce - which has not gone beyond an experimental phase yet - will find a sudden end.
In the near future the turnstile of migration might also change direction for the "strawberry pickers". In Spain the real estate sector and therefore the construction industry has collapsed due to the global crisis; 500,000 Romanian construction workers are now threatened by unemployment. Will the airports and bus terminals soon be over-crowded by homecoming labour migrants. What kind of future outlook do they have? Will they be willing - after having got used to much higher wages and having made new experiences - to subject themselves once more to the prevalent conditions of long working-hours and low wages in Romania?
Ana Cosel
Endnotes:
[1]Manpower has published a survey on 22nd of April 2008 stating that 73 percent of employers questioned in Romania complain about not being able to find enough workers.
[2] In the time between 2000 and 2008 the legal minimum wage has quadrupled from 35 Euro to currently about 135 Euro. In the textile industry workers are hardly ever paid more than 200 Euro.
[3] OFW = Overseas Filipino Workers, for more information see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFW
[4] In the Romanian press only one item was published reporting that out of the 500 Bangladeshi workers employed in Bacau 100 had disappeared. The police asked the public for assistance.
[5] In January 2005 the international import quota for textile goods was lifted. The textile industry in China and India benefited from this reform given that their products can now be more cheaply exported to the US and European market. The textile companies in Romania could hardly keep up with these new competitors.
For more detailed reports about (migrant) workers struggles in Romania see: http://www.labourstart.org/[...]
Κυριακή 15 Φεβρουαρίου 2009
Πέμπτη 12 Φεβρουαρίου 2009
Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism
Terminal 119
[January 2009]
A week ago we wrote a text with the title “Is Anti-Semitism going to achieve what truncheons did not?”, noting that an evident anti-Semitism had started being manifested in various places within the country, hidden behind the anti-Zionist veil of opposition to the bombardments in Gaza. Our main concern in that text was to prevent any kind anti-Semitic outburst in Greece, something that would wash out any right attempts with a direction towards ‘inside’ (the creation of the ‘domestic enemy’), caused by December’s riot 2008 against the Greek state’s structures. While writing that text we could not imagine that we would soon face such a direct realization of the text’s title, something that happened three days ago in front of Larisa’s synagogue, during a rally. While a large group of riot police was standing at one side of the synagogue holding their truncheons, at the other side there was a battle taking place between some people who wanted to remove the Star of David from the synagogue’s entrance and those who wanted to protect it. Indeed, at this specific moment there was no external suppression. The problem was within the rally.
But let’s see things from the beginning: on the 17th of January 2009, a rally of 2,000 people took place in Larisa, expressing their solidarity with those that had been detained during December’s riot and their opposition to the anti-terrorist law, with which 19 people are being persecuted for their participation in the events in Larisa. This rally was partially the first implementation of the slogan that has been widely heard in many cities: “Let’s take back our prisoners!”
The amok
The moment, however, that the rally reached the square of the Jewish Martyrs of the Occupation, on which the monument of the Holocaust of the Greek Jews of Larisa is located and around which the synagogue, the Jewish school and the offices of the Israelite Community of Larisa are, near Palestine street, some revolutionaries from the anarchist part of the demonstration went into an Anti-Semitic frenzy.
It is worth noting that since the beginning of the demonstration some Palestinian flags had appeared in the anarchist bloc, waving next to the black and red ones, indicating some comrades’ selective tolerance towards the flags of only some nations and states.
Although the Palestinians that tried to hang the Palestinian flags on the monument of the Holocaust showed considerable understanding and were persuaded within a minute not to do something like that, some Greek anarchists were straight tried to hang their flags on the monument using screams and bullying. This is the renowned “solidarity with the Palestinian people” and the celebrated “solidarity with the intifada” we have been hearing about for so long! Greek anti-Semites and paranoids try to sharpen the situation and bring about fanaticism in order to provide their—supposed—help to the struggle of Palestinians, the best mean for which proved to be the desecration of the monument of the Holocaust!
Exactly the same moment, the two cameras placed outside the Community’s offices for the Synagogues security were broken and a lot of people gathered and started swearing at the cops that were at the alley where the entrance of the synagogue is. Although these moves had as a target the representatives of ‘order’ and the gear of surveillance, none was prevented from making comments such as “there are guarding the Jews”…and the slogan “dogs, guard your masters” that was suddenly shouted acquired a new flavor…since the cops at that moment were standing in front of the synagogue, a newsstand and a kebab place. We do not believe that the slogan implied that the cops’ masters are the owners of the newsstand or the kebab shop.
The last and worst incident happens in front of the old entrance of the synagogue, where, while the rally was moving, a group of anarchist revolutionaries helped by two Palestinians (you know, those used as excuse for any type of anti-Semitic action…) decide to rip away the Star of David from the entrance. From somewhere at the back someone was shouting “destroy it”, “burn it” and other similar…revolutionary calls.
The reaction
Before any destructive actions took place, comrades from various collectives, as well as immigrants that were participating in the rally, spontaneously stood in front of the synagogue’s entrance in order to protect it, while other comrades started quarreling with the anti-Semites, pushing and yelling to each other. The fact that some comrades were shouting to the aggressors that they are “nationalists” and “Fascists” caused a feeling of perplexity which could not be thought over by the wrathful revolutionaries. They, therefore, turned this perplexity into questions like: “who are those guarding the door? Are they Jews?”. While some of them had already raised their flags to destroy the Star of David sensing that something weird was happening—namely, that some of the people participating in the protest started protecting the star—and admitting their immature level of thought, started asking us holding their shafts questions like “explain to me, I don’t know, I want to know the reason why I should not rip it away…”, etc. These ‘beautiful moments’ ended soon, since the star was not ripped away and the rally moved towards its end.
This unity describing the broad ‘antizionist’ trend in Greece shows clearly who benefits from this. It is something that not only has to raise discussions and thoughts, but also needs to be condemned and treated without any prevarications. A collective memory that ‘forgets’ what fascism was and spots ‘fascisms’ everywhere has as a result the relativization of the old crimes. Today’s supposedly revolutionary memory that overlooks the character of the war it enters, leads to the destruction of the total historical memory and, indirectly, to reactionary and racist paths. When the targets and the slogans of some people, whoever they are, get identical with those of neo-Nazis, something peculiar is going on.
Whoever pretends not to understand the differences between the state of Israel and the monuments dedicated to greek Jews in memory of their annihilation by the Nazis of Hitler is dangerous. 86% of the greek Jewry, around 60,000 people, were exterminated by the Nazis between 1942 and 1945. These monuments are devoted to these victims, the victims of German fascism and anti-Semitism. Whoever does not accept this denies a priori the extermination itself or desecrates the memory of the genocide, by implying that the victims are responsible for things that are totally irrelevant. They continue in this way connecting the choices of the state of Israel with the greek-jewish communities (as the Communist Party also did in 2006 during the war between Hezbollah and Israel) and do the very job of fascists! With the veil of antizionism (that attacks whoever is considered a “Zionist”) and the blessings of a part of the greek Left and some radicals, it seems there is something emerging now that will end up out of control. It is our responsibility to realize it and stop it.
Whoever begins his supposed anti-religious campaigns (against someone else’s religion and not his own) today, that the limits between antizionism and anti-Semitism become socially more and more indistinguishable, proves proves to be, if not an anti-Semite, at least a useful idiot of anti-Semitism. Whoever gets involved in such things simply provides an additional argument of left origin to fascists themselves. What do we mean by that? That neonazis, not being justified to use their old kind, hitlerist, biological anti-Semitism anymore, they nowadays promote their anti-Semitism through the three central and very successful—in terms of camouflaging hatred—arguments of the Left: the anti-capitalist one (“I love Jews but I hate their companies and banks”), the anti-zionist one (“I love Jews but I hate the racist jewish state”) and the anti-religious one (“I love Jews but I hate the racist jewish religion”). Through these three arguments, anyone can say and act as he likes by replacing the word “jew” with the word “zionist”. In this way, from Mihaloliakos to Papariga and from Plevris to Alavanos, everyone speaks the same solid language without any obstacles.i
Finally, we have to say that we condemn this desecration in the city of Larissa, as well as the one in the jewish cemetery in Ioannina, as despicable anti-Semitic actions. We call everyone who still remains anti-fascist to resist against this kind of actions and stand by all those threatened by anti-Semitic attacks. We call all groups and organizations to take a strong stance about the latest wave of anti-Semitism in Greece that during these days has been directed against jewish buildings and monuments, and to isolate all those expressing anti-Semitic hatred and ideas.
Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism!
Against any kind of anti-Semitism!
Solidarity with the Jewish Communities!
Terminal 119
For social and individual autonomy
21/01/09
Ps. many comrades the last few days and after our previous text (which we wrote together with Café Morgenland) asked us to take a stance against Israel because of the war break in Gaza during January between Hamas and Israel. We have to respond publicly to this request, by saying that the conflict in Gaza has nothing to do with greek anti-Semitism. What we were discussing in our previous text is greek anti-Semitism and not “Gaza”. These are two different issues. Secondly, the conflict in Gaza is not for us the only conflict taking place today in the whole world—and it is certainly not the most tragic one—so we cannot understand why we have to take a selective stance about this conflict only, while no other greek anarchist group, leftist group or Media doesn’t even say a word about, for example, the genocide in Sudan, the dead Arabs of Iraq or the dozens of conflicts that the local media constantly refuse to televise. We should also squarely state that we refuse to criticize Israel in any way. And that’s because Israel receives a mainly anti-Semitic criticism from its very first appearance as a state (see our analysis about anti-Semitism—in Greek—in our first and second issue and in many of our texts). Finally, we have to say that, being loyal followers of the old political slogan “Our enemy is here!” (Karl Liebkneht), we choose without hesitations and second thoughts to primarily criticize greek society and the greek state, the destruction of which we desire. The task of criticizing the Israeli state has been already undertaken by our comrades inside Israel and we are happy to send them, once more, all our revolutionary greetings! Of course our comrades in Israel always try to persuade us that the Israeli state is the worst of all states, but we always respond that they are mistaken, probably because they have not visited Greece yet…
[January 2009]
A week ago we wrote a text with the title “Is Anti-Semitism going to achieve what truncheons did not?”, noting that an evident anti-Semitism had started being manifested in various places within the country, hidden behind the anti-Zionist veil of opposition to the bombardments in Gaza. Our main concern in that text was to prevent any kind anti-Semitic outburst in Greece, something that would wash out any right attempts with a direction towards ‘inside’ (the creation of the ‘domestic enemy’), caused by December’s riot 2008 against the Greek state’s structures. While writing that text we could not imagine that we would soon face such a direct realization of the text’s title, something that happened three days ago in front of Larisa’s synagogue, during a rally. While a large group of riot police was standing at one side of the synagogue holding their truncheons, at the other side there was a battle taking place between some people who wanted to remove the Star of David from the synagogue’s entrance and those who wanted to protect it. Indeed, at this specific moment there was no external suppression. The problem was within the rally.
But let’s see things from the beginning: on the 17th of January 2009, a rally of 2,000 people took place in Larisa, expressing their solidarity with those that had been detained during December’s riot and their opposition to the anti-terrorist law, with which 19 people are being persecuted for their participation in the events in Larisa. This rally was partially the first implementation of the slogan that has been widely heard in many cities: “Let’s take back our prisoners!”
The amok
The moment, however, that the rally reached the square of the Jewish Martyrs of the Occupation, on which the monument of the Holocaust of the Greek Jews of Larisa is located and around which the synagogue, the Jewish school and the offices of the Israelite Community of Larisa are, near Palestine street, some revolutionaries from the anarchist part of the demonstration went into an Anti-Semitic frenzy.
It is worth noting that since the beginning of the demonstration some Palestinian flags had appeared in the anarchist bloc, waving next to the black and red ones, indicating some comrades’ selective tolerance towards the flags of only some nations and states.
Although the Palestinians that tried to hang the Palestinian flags on the monument of the Holocaust showed considerable understanding and were persuaded within a minute not to do something like that, some Greek anarchists were straight tried to hang their flags on the monument using screams and bullying. This is the renowned “solidarity with the Palestinian people” and the celebrated “solidarity with the intifada” we have been hearing about for so long! Greek anti-Semites and paranoids try to sharpen the situation and bring about fanaticism in order to provide their—supposed—help to the struggle of Palestinians, the best mean for which proved to be the desecration of the monument of the Holocaust!
Exactly the same moment, the two cameras placed outside the Community’s offices for the Synagogues security were broken and a lot of people gathered and started swearing at the cops that were at the alley where the entrance of the synagogue is. Although these moves had as a target the representatives of ‘order’ and the gear of surveillance, none was prevented from making comments such as “there are guarding the Jews”…and the slogan “dogs, guard your masters” that was suddenly shouted acquired a new flavor…since the cops at that moment were standing in front of the synagogue, a newsstand and a kebab place. We do not believe that the slogan implied that the cops’ masters are the owners of the newsstand or the kebab shop.
The last and worst incident happens in front of the old entrance of the synagogue, where, while the rally was moving, a group of anarchist revolutionaries helped by two Palestinians (you know, those used as excuse for any type of anti-Semitic action…) decide to rip away the Star of David from the entrance. From somewhere at the back someone was shouting “destroy it”, “burn it” and other similar…revolutionary calls.
The reaction
Before any destructive actions took place, comrades from various collectives, as well as immigrants that were participating in the rally, spontaneously stood in front of the synagogue’s entrance in order to protect it, while other comrades started quarreling with the anti-Semites, pushing and yelling to each other. The fact that some comrades were shouting to the aggressors that they are “nationalists” and “Fascists” caused a feeling of perplexity which could not be thought over by the wrathful revolutionaries. They, therefore, turned this perplexity into questions like: “who are those guarding the door? Are they Jews?”. While some of them had already raised their flags to destroy the Star of David sensing that something weird was happening—namely, that some of the people participating in the protest started protecting the star—and admitting their immature level of thought, started asking us holding their shafts questions like “explain to me, I don’t know, I want to know the reason why I should not rip it away…”, etc. These ‘beautiful moments’ ended soon, since the star was not ripped away and the rally moved towards its end.
This unity describing the broad ‘antizionist’ trend in Greece shows clearly who benefits from this. It is something that not only has to raise discussions and thoughts, but also needs to be condemned and treated without any prevarications. A collective memory that ‘forgets’ what fascism was and spots ‘fascisms’ everywhere has as a result the relativization of the old crimes. Today’s supposedly revolutionary memory that overlooks the character of the war it enters, leads to the destruction of the total historical memory and, indirectly, to reactionary and racist paths. When the targets and the slogans of some people, whoever they are, get identical with those of neo-Nazis, something peculiar is going on.
Whoever pretends not to understand the differences between the state of Israel and the monuments dedicated to greek Jews in memory of their annihilation by the Nazis of Hitler is dangerous. 86% of the greek Jewry, around 60,000 people, were exterminated by the Nazis between 1942 and 1945. These monuments are devoted to these victims, the victims of German fascism and anti-Semitism. Whoever does not accept this denies a priori the extermination itself or desecrates the memory of the genocide, by implying that the victims are responsible for things that are totally irrelevant. They continue in this way connecting the choices of the state of Israel with the greek-jewish communities (as the Communist Party also did in 2006 during the war between Hezbollah and Israel) and do the very job of fascists! With the veil of antizionism (that attacks whoever is considered a “Zionist”) and the blessings of a part of the greek Left and some radicals, it seems there is something emerging now that will end up out of control. It is our responsibility to realize it and stop it.
Whoever begins his supposed anti-religious campaigns (against someone else’s religion and not his own) today, that the limits between antizionism and anti-Semitism become socially more and more indistinguishable, proves proves to be, if not an anti-Semite, at least a useful idiot of anti-Semitism. Whoever gets involved in such things simply provides an additional argument of left origin to fascists themselves. What do we mean by that? That neonazis, not being justified to use their old kind, hitlerist, biological anti-Semitism anymore, they nowadays promote their anti-Semitism through the three central and very successful—in terms of camouflaging hatred—arguments of the Left: the anti-capitalist one (“I love Jews but I hate their companies and banks”), the anti-zionist one (“I love Jews but I hate the racist jewish state”) and the anti-religious one (“I love Jews but I hate the racist jewish religion”). Through these three arguments, anyone can say and act as he likes by replacing the word “jew” with the word “zionist”. In this way, from Mihaloliakos to Papariga and from Plevris to Alavanos, everyone speaks the same solid language without any obstacles.i
Finally, we have to say that we condemn this desecration in the city of Larissa, as well as the one in the jewish cemetery in Ioannina, as despicable anti-Semitic actions. We call everyone who still remains anti-fascist to resist against this kind of actions and stand by all those threatened by anti-Semitic attacks. We call all groups and organizations to take a strong stance about the latest wave of anti-Semitism in Greece that during these days has been directed against jewish buildings and monuments, and to isolate all those expressing anti-Semitic hatred and ideas.
Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism!
Against any kind of anti-Semitism!
Solidarity with the Jewish Communities!
Terminal 119
For social and individual autonomy
21/01/09
Ps. many comrades the last few days and after our previous text (which we wrote together with Café Morgenland) asked us to take a stance against Israel because of the war break in Gaza during January between Hamas and Israel. We have to respond publicly to this request, by saying that the conflict in Gaza has nothing to do with greek anti-Semitism. What we were discussing in our previous text is greek anti-Semitism and not “Gaza”. These are two different issues. Secondly, the conflict in Gaza is not for us the only conflict taking place today in the whole world—and it is certainly not the most tragic one—so we cannot understand why we have to take a selective stance about this conflict only, while no other greek anarchist group, leftist group or Media doesn’t even say a word about, for example, the genocide in Sudan, the dead Arabs of Iraq or the dozens of conflicts that the local media constantly refuse to televise. We should also squarely state that we refuse to criticize Israel in any way. And that’s because Israel receives a mainly anti-Semitic criticism from its very first appearance as a state (see our analysis about anti-Semitism—in Greek—in our first and second issue and in many of our texts). Finally, we have to say that, being loyal followers of the old political slogan “Our enemy is here!” (Karl Liebkneht), we choose without hesitations and second thoughts to primarily criticize greek society and the greek state, the destruction of which we desire. The task of criticizing the Israeli state has been already undertaken by our comrades inside Israel and we are happy to send them, once more, all our revolutionary greetings! Of course our comrades in Israel always try to persuade us that the Israeli state is the worst of all states, but we always respond that they are mistaken, probably because they have not visited Greece yet…
Will anti-Semitism succeed where the repression didn’t?
Cafe Morgenland & Terminal 119
[January / 2009]
Will anti-Semitism succeed where the repression didn’t?
«For every known or unknown person whom we want or are forced to form an opinion of, we constantly and consistently make the same, stereotypical and set question: How would he or she react, how would this or the other collective or social group react if Auschwitz or something proportional would be repeated? The answer to this question is the dominant, the absolute and the decisive criterion by which we count and esteem the individuals and the groups, their actions and their behavior».
In 31.12.2008, a “revolutionary” attack took place against the Jewish synagogue in Volos (the older one was blown up by the Germans in 1943). The attack consisted of writing some threatening slogansi on the synagogue walls (elsewhere, they call it desecration or sacrilege). This act of disgraceful anti-Semitism, consists of another attempt at changing the direction in the radical scene (the first occurred at Athens Indymedia which, “for the Greek lords’ favour”, rapidly left behind the theme of the December riots in Greece so as to promote the Middle East issue with its all necessary reflexives and accesoires).
Because, of course, it is very convenient, after seeing in Greece an outburst, a rebellion, that at last, looking “inside,” found the enemy in the Greek state, and all the shit of Greek society, clearly attacked the local putrescence and conservatism… where even social de-alienation (“p l i a t s i k o” as it was called in a pejorative term) started to blossom in mid-Winter… now, to have those that that will start to burn American flags, those that will speak against the Jews about the international financial crisis and the war, those that will target synagogues, those that will care to “drake” the rebellion’s violence to targets (read here the embassies of Israel and USA) more compatible with local nationalism and the old, pure patriotic feelings that we have got used to blessing in every revolutionary-patriotic anniversary. Thus, it is very convenient when the structures that this rebellion left behind, go on to insinuate themselves using all possible connections among the immigrants and the workers that receive murder attacks with acid, like the immigrant syndicalist Konstantina Kouneva, and when, in solidarity to Kouneva, demonstrators attack and injure cops in response, in Piraeus and elsewhere. It is very convenient when someone wants to mislead us from the solidarity to the dozens of arrested immigrant rebels that this repression left behind, it is very convenient when over 50 Albanian and Arab immigrants have been put in jail for 18 months in Athens alone, and will be deported. It is very convenient when the Riot Police are tired to death by the thousands of rioters and when the para-militaries and indignant Greek citizens and fascists take their guns out and shoot people. It is precisely this moment, now, that it seems that anti-Semitism, always in the form of anti-Zionism, manages to repress whatever the cops “magic weapons”ii didn’t succeed in repressing…
At this definitive point, it is a fact that such actions can have only one goal and one result, namely to gather people once again around the Greek national pole, either for anti-imperialist or for humanist reasons, where, of course, one can make distinctions between these two. Thus, they try in this manner to bury one of the slogans shouted during the December riot: “Righteous are the rebels, national unity with blood is stained!”
Until now, the communist party of Greece was the “usual suspect” for such actions (desecration of the Holocaust memorial, mob gatherings by “communists” and other good citizens outside the offices of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki, screaming anti-Semitic chants against the Greek Jews in 2006, etc.), not to mention the neo-nazis of Golden Dawn and all the remaining democratic powers, each one of them, of course, for their very own political reasons. Now, another group took over, with the signature of “AK” (in Volos). What is strange about this last action is that there is no “AK Volos” group, as far as we knowiii, while it is definitive of this period that we live in, that we can’t distinguish which actions were carried out by neo-nazis and which ones by others. The only thing for certain is that not a few people from the “scene” cheered the action in Indymedia (and in “Stohos”, a greek nationalist newspaper). We say this without, of course, trying to lessen the value of many people’s opposition to the above “revolutionary” action.
The threat of their “intervention” yesterday is expressed with a rhetorical question in one of their slogans on a wall of the synagogue:
The state of Israel murders! Whose position do you support? (signature Α.Κ.).
Those who criticize Israel for corporate responsibility, without hesitation lash out with exactly the same accusation against the Greek Jews of Volos.
With their question, they don’t just express their curiosity, so as to learn their fellow citizens’ opinion, as they also never cared about their fellow citizens’ opinion about other issues, they have never cared about their blood-stained historyiv, the one that smells of Zyklon B and crematories, about their feelings, about their dreams and hopes. They demand that the Greek Jews of Volos take a position about the facts in Middle East and, thus, a position condemning Israel, as any other position will make them “guilty by definition”. Only so can they be certain that the stigmatised will not escape them.
Of course, they themselves give the answer that they ask of the OTHERS, those that are DIFFERENT, with their second slogan, as they already know, before they make their “visit” to the synagogue. Since the day they were born, they already knew everything about this chthonic race which is responsible and guilty for the politics of Israel (even in the greek “Antifa” magazine, the Jews are not even Greeks, but citizens, and thus agents, of a foreign country, Israel). So as not to leave any doubts, they respond to themselves with their second slogan:
In genocide there is no “neutrality” and “equal distance”! (signature Α.Κ. - antiauthoritarian movement) a greek group
The threat to physical integrity, to property, synagogues, cemeteries, Holocaust memorials and, in general, everything that is or is supposed to be Jewish, manifest themselves as the tacit consequences of these slogans, consequences that the stigmatised will have caused the perpetrators to perpetrate, consequences that the stigmatised will have to bear.
Die Bedrohung der körperliche Unversehrtheit, des Eigentums, der Synagogen, der Friedhöfe, der Holocaust-Mahnmale, und generell allen was jüdisch ist oder als solcher definiert wird, sind die implizierten Konsequenzen solche Parolen, Konsequenzen, die die Stigmatisierte durch die „Angreifer“ zu tragen haben.
So, what will be the next step, their next “revolutionary” act, if (the Jews) do not abide and keep “a neutral position” or maintain an “equal distance”? What will their next dynamic action be, if they that survived Auschwitz, and their descendants, take a pro-Israeli stand? (Indeed, we don’t even want to imagine it). Others have already spread the rumor that they attacked the Larissa synagogue – a lie, as far as we know – and try, in this way, to create a wave of attacks against Jewish targets all over the country, by sweeping up more people from the mob, under the mask of their anti-Zionism and/ or opposition against… religions in general.
We will say it again here, without any hesitation. After Auschwitz, every anti-Semitic act and every anti-Semitic threat, is synonymous with annihilation. Don’t forget that, at the anteroom of the Holocaust, in parallel with the free smearing of the inferiority and noxiousness of the chthonic Jews (which a writer from Babylonia newspaper called “freedom of speech”), were also the attacks against Jewish synagogues (in “Kristallnacht”, for example), houses, shops etc. Back then, they were writing on the synagogue walls «Juda verrecke!» («death to the Jews») or «kauft nicht bei Juden!» («don’t buy from the Jews») etc. That, 70 years ago, they were not writing the same things on the walls as today, is simply because of the fact that there was no Middle East issue back then. Nothing else matters.
We condemn every action and expression of threat against the Greek Jews and we promise to do everything to stop these actions by any means, so as to allow every person and every Israelite community to freely decide, whether they want to be for or against Israel, whether they want to keep a neutral stand or no stand at all etc, without anyone daring to force them sign certificates of loyalty.
We demand from the anti-authoritarian scene, we demand from every person and group, that they themselves condemn and isolate such actions and groups as a phenomena of an anti-Semitic cesspit, of racist behavior and patriotic sublimity.
We demand from those intellectuals that write these abstract, spectacular articles against anti-Semitism and racism to condemn the particular.
Silence stands for Guilt by accessory!
Hands off the Greek Jews!
Café Morgenland – antifascist immigrant group from Germany
Terminal 119 – for social and individual autonomy
03/01/09
i Five days after the attack, the Greek Helsinki Monitor published the following announcement “Greek Jew’s fears following new outburst of anti-Semitism” (in English): Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM) has been receiving messages from Greek Jews following the desecration of the Volos Synagogue on New Year’s Eve (http://cm.greekhelsinki.gr/index.php?sec=194&cid=3392). With the sender’s permission and on condition of confidentiality, one such message is reprinted here. It eloquently describes how many Greek Jews live in the provinces and the consequences of anti-Semitic acts and –especially– media coverage. “The Jews in our community are experiencing a climate of intimidation following the graffiti on the Volos Synagogue. Since that act was taken as an attack, it resulted in the cancellation of Sabbath services and all other events and gatherings scheduled over the next several days. Some even considered removing their names from their apartment house bells! These concerns are intensified by various bombastic programs on local and national TV channels where everything becomes grist for the mill (Jews, Masons, Zionism, arrival of the Antichrist and the end of the world with globalization and so forth)!”. Café Morgenland group immediately republished the news in Greek http://www.cafemorgenland.net/archiv/2009/2009.01.06_Wohnungsklingen_gr.htm and German (http://www.cafemorgenland.net/archiv/2009/2009.01.06_Wohnungsklingen.htm.
ii A reference to the riot’s classic slogan “The cop’s gun is magic/ he shoots in the air and hits in the flesh”. The slogan mocks the usual excuse of the Greek cops when they kill someone, usually immigrant, with their guns: “the gun drakes”.
iii Ten days after the incident, “AK” organization (Anti-authoritarian movement) and particularly its groups in Ioannina, Thessaloniki and Athens published an announcement that condemned the action by saying that it was a “dangerous stupidity” and that everyone that acts similarly can only be compared with the neo-nazis of Golden Dawn. Also, demanded the perpetrators to expose themselves so as to take the responsibility of their actions. http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=966719 (in Greek)
iv The hunting had already begun from October 1943. On the 25th of March in 1944, the Jews were arrested and sent to the Concentration Camps, where they were exterminated. Totally, 227 Jews from Volos lost their lives (“Hronika” magazine, KIS). Thanks to the attempts that the rabbi Pessah, the archbishop Ioakeim and some parts of EAM, the 74% of the Jews of Volos, were saved. Today, the “Jewish danger” in Volos includes only 120 survivors of Holocaust and their descendants.
Δευτέρα 9 Φεβρουαρίου 2009
the new http://deletetheborder.org/ online
Deletetheborder.org is an online community with the goal of nurturing a global network of movements against borders. We began the project in 2005. Sensing the tremendous potential energy and having seen the existence of many networks around the world like NoBorder.org and No One Is Illegal in Canada, we sought to use the latest technology to provide a site which would make international connections and act as a hub of resistance and emergence...
Deletetheborder.org is designed to be a place for information sharing through the use of open posting, news feed collection, media galleries, blogs and forums. We are currently in the midst of the largest migration in human history. The intense processes of neoliberal enclosure continue on despite unprecedented levels of resistance across the world. Thus, migration continues, from South to North, from colonized to colonizer. Most recently, under the guise of the war on terror, States are retaliating against this migration with repressive measures and elaborate systems of control and exploitation that function much like in-country colonization.
Against this murderous violence, movements have sprung up to work in conjunction and solidarity with migrant people. Our site seeks to aid the growth of these movements by providing information about borders and resistance to borders, but also by providing support for organizers including forums, hosting for data sharing and event calendars.
Our site currently offers visitors the option to see the site's interface elements such as menus and buttons in English, Spanish or French. It also allows visitors to post translations for their stories. We frequently have posts in each of these languages as the posts often originate in the US, Canada, Mexico and Spain. Our contexts are some of the most contentious and violent borderlands of the world.
The project was begun, and is maintained by the o.r.g.a.n.i.c. collective and the borderlands hacklab in San Diego, California. The content of Deletetheborder.org is contributed by numerous organizers, hackers and bloggers in the US, Canada and Mexico. Stories are regularly posted by members of o.r.g.a.n.i.c, by organizers with No One Is Illegal in Canada and by net activists such as Ricardo Dominguez. Moving forward, the o.r.g.a.n.i.c collective and the borderlands Hacklab is working on a more formalized North American Network For Freedom of Movement. The administration of the site therefore, will soon include members of various groups around the country, including the Bay Area Coalition to Fight the Minutemen.
Within the last month our site traffic has doubled as the largest mobilizations ever seen in many cities across the US have taken place, including self-organized spontaneous walkouts by tens of thousands of students.
Deletetheborder.org is based on the Civicspace content management system, which is a variant of Drupal. It is composed of a PHP/MySql environment with various modules to provide different functions of the site. It runs on a GNU/Linux server running Fedora. The software that runs the site is GPL and the server runs on Free Software as well. The content posted on the site is licensed under the Creative Commons, By Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share-Alike license, unless otherwise specified.
Deletetheborder.org is designed to be a place for information sharing through the use of open posting, news feed collection, media galleries, blogs and forums. We are currently in the midst of the largest migration in human history. The intense processes of neoliberal enclosure continue on despite unprecedented levels of resistance across the world. Thus, migration continues, from South to North, from colonized to colonizer. Most recently, under the guise of the war on terror, States are retaliating against this migration with repressive measures and elaborate systems of control and exploitation that function much like in-country colonization.
Against this murderous violence, movements have sprung up to work in conjunction and solidarity with migrant people. Our site seeks to aid the growth of these movements by providing information about borders and resistance to borders, but also by providing support for organizers including forums, hosting for data sharing and event calendars.
Our site currently offers visitors the option to see the site's interface elements such as menus and buttons in English, Spanish or French. It also allows visitors to post translations for their stories. We frequently have posts in each of these languages as the posts often originate in the US, Canada, Mexico and Spain. Our contexts are some of the most contentious and violent borderlands of the world.
The project was begun, and is maintained by the o.r.g.a.n.i.c. collective and the borderlands hacklab in San Diego, California. The content of Deletetheborder.org is contributed by numerous organizers, hackers and bloggers in the US, Canada and Mexico. Stories are regularly posted by members of o.r.g.a.n.i.c, by organizers with No One Is Illegal in Canada and by net activists such as Ricardo Dominguez. Moving forward, the o.r.g.a.n.i.c collective and the borderlands Hacklab is working on a more formalized North American Network For Freedom of Movement. The administration of the site therefore, will soon include members of various groups around the country, including the Bay Area Coalition to Fight the Minutemen.
Within the last month our site traffic has doubled as the largest mobilizations ever seen in many cities across the US have taken place, including self-organized spontaneous walkouts by tens of thousands of students.
Deletetheborder.org is based on the Civicspace content management system, which is a variant of Drupal. It is composed of a PHP/MySql environment with various modules to provide different functions of the site. It runs on a GNU/Linux server running Fedora. The software that runs the site is GPL and the server runs on Free Software as well. The content posted on the site is licensed under the Creative Commons, By Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share-Alike license, unless otherwise specified.
Κυριακή 8 Φεβρουαρίου 2009
give up activism
taken from the blogzine "apples from the underground''
yes i posted this article for obvious reasons, unless otherwise specified
 Pavlov is alive and well... |
In 1999, in the aftermath of the June 18th global day of action, a pamphlet called Reflections on June 18th was produced by some people in London, as an open-access collection of "contributions on the politics behind the events that occurred in the City of London on June 18, 1999". Contained in this collection was an article called 'Give up Activism' which has generated quite a lot of discussion and debate both in the UK and internationally, being translated into several languages and reproduced in several different publications.[1] Here we republish the article together with a new postscript by the author addressing some comments and criticisms received since the original publication.
[See also the Postscript to this article]
One problem apparent in the June 18th day of action was the adoption of an activist mentality. This problem became particularly obvious with June 18th precisely because the people involved in organising it and the people involved on the day tried to push beyond these limitations. This piece is no criticism of anyone involved - rather an attempt to inspire some thought on the challenges that confront us if we are really serious in our intention of doing away with the capitalist mode of production.
Experts
By 'an activist mentality' what I mean is that people think of themselves primarily as activists and as belonging to some wider community of activists. The activist identifies with what they do and thinks of it as their role in life, like a job or career. In the same way some people will identify with their job as a doctor or a teacher, and instead of it being something they just happen to be doing, it becomes an essential part of their self-image.
The activist is a specialist or an expert in social change. To think of yourself as being an activist means to think of yourself as being somehow privileged or more advanced than others in your appreciation of the need for social change, in the knowledge of how to achieve it and as leading or being in the forefront of the practical struggle to create this change.
Activism, like all expert roles, has its basis in the division of labour - it is a specialised separate task. The division of labour is the foundation of class society, the fundamental division being that between mental and manual labour. The division of labour operates, for example, in medicine or education - instead of healing and bringing up kids being common knowledge and tasks that everyone has a hand in, this knowledge becomes the specialised property of doctors and teachers - experts that we must rely on to do these things for us. Experts jealously guard and mystify the skills they have. This keeps people separated and disempowered and reinforces hierarchical class society.
A division of labour implies that one person takes on a role on behalf of many others who relinquish this responsibility. A separation of tasks means that other people will grow your food and make your clothes and supply your electricity while you get on with achieving social change. The activist, being an expert in social change, assumes that other people aren't doing anything to change their lives and so feels a duty or a responsibility to do it on their behalf. Activists think they are compensating for the lack of activity by others. Defining ourselves as activists means defining our actions as the ones which will bring about social change, thus disregarding the activity of thousands upon thousands of other non-activists. Activism is based on this misconception that it is only activists who do social change - whereas of course class struggle is happening all the time.
Form and Content
The tension between the form of 'activism' in which our political activity appears and its increasingly radical content has only been growing over the last few years. The background of a lot of the people involved in June 18th is of being 'activists' who 'campaign' on an 'issue'. The political progress that has been made in the activist scene over the last few years has resulted in a situation where many people have moved beyond single issue campaigns against specific companies or developments to a rather ill-defined yet nonetheless promising anti-capitalist perspective. Yet although the content of the campaigning activity has altered, the form of activism has not. So instead of taking on Monsanto and going to their headquarters and occupying it, we have now seen beyond the single facet of capital represented by Monsanto and so develop a 'campaign' against capitalism. And where better to go and occupy than what is perceived as being the headquarters of capitalism - the City?Our methods of operating are still the same as if we were taking on a specific corporation or development, despite the fact that capitalism is not at all the same sort of thing and the ways in which one might bring down a particular company are not at all the same as the ways in which you might bring down capitalism. For example, vigorous campaigning by animal rights activists has succeeded in wrecking both Consort dog breeders and Hillgrove Farm cat breeders. The businesses were ruined and went into receivership. Similarly the campaign waged against arch-vivisectionists Huntingdon Life Sciences succeeded in reducing their share price by 33%, but the company just about managed to survive by running a desperate PR campaign in the City to pick up prices.[2] Activism can very successfully accomplish bringing down a business, yet to bring down capitalism a lot more will be required than to simply extend this sort of activity to every business in every sector. Similarly with the targetting of butcher's shops by animal rights activists, the net result is probably only to aid the supermarkets in closing down all the small butcher's shops, thus assisting the process of competition and the 'natural selection' of the marketplace. Thus activists often succeed in destroying one small business while strengthening capital overall.
A similar thing applies with anti-roads activism. Wide-scale anti-roads protests have created opportunities for a whole new sector of capitalism - security, surveillance, tunnellers, climbers, experts and consultants. We are now one 'market risk' among others to be taken into account when bidding for a roads contract. We may have actually assisted the rule of market forces, by forcing out the companies that are weakest and least able to cope. Protest-bashing consultant Amanda Webster says: "The advent of the protest movement will actually provide market advantages to those contractors who can handle it effectively."[3] Again activism can bring down a business or stop a road but capitalism carries merrily on, if anything stronger than before.
These things are surely an indication, if one were needed, that tackling capitalism will require not only a quantitative change (more actions, more activists) but a qualitative one (we need to discover some more effective form of operating). It seems we have very little idea of what it might actually require to bring down capitalism. As if all it needed was some sort of critical mass of activists occupying offices to be reached and then we'd have a revolution...
The form of activism has been preserved even while the content of this activity has moved beyond the form that contains it. We still think in terms of being 'activists' doing a 'campaign' on an 'issue', and because we are 'direct action' activists we will go and 'do an action' against our target. The method of campaigning against specific developments or single companies has been carried over into this new thing of taking on capitalism. We're attempting to take on capitalism and conceptualising what we're doing in completely inappropriate terms, utilising a method of operating appropriate to liberal reformism. So we have the bizarre spectacle of 'doing an action' against capitalism - an utterly inadequate practice.
Roles
The role of the 'activist' is a role we adopt just like that of policeman, parent or priest - a strange psychological form we use to define ourselves and our relation to others. The 'activist' is a specialist or an expert in social change - yet the harder we cling to this role and notion of what we are, the more we actually impede the change we desire. A real revolution will involve the breaking out of all preconceived roles and the destruction of all specialism - the reclamation of our lives. The seizing control over our own destinies which is the act of revolution will involve the creation of new selves and new forms of interaction and community. 'Experts' in anything can only hinder this.The Situationist International developed a stringent critique of roles and particularly the role of 'the militant'. Their criticism was mainly directed against leftist and social-democratic ideologies because that was mainly what they encountered. Although these forms of alienation still exist and are plain to be seen, in our particular milieu it is the liberal activist we encounter more often than the leftist militant. Nevertheless, they share many features in common (which of course is not surprising).
The Situationist Raoul Vaneigem defined roles like this: "Stereotypes are the dominant images of a period... The stereotype is the model of the role; the role is a model form of behaviour. The repetition of an attitude creates a role." To play a role is to cultivate an appearance to the neglect of everything authentic: "we succumb to the seduction of borrowed attitudes." As role-players we dwell in inauthenticity - reducing our lives to a string of clichés - "breaking [our] day down into a series of poses chosen more or less unconsciously from the range of dominant stereotypes."[4] This process has been at work since the early days of the anti-roads movement. At Twyford Down after Yellow Wednesday in December 92, press and media coverage focused on the Dongas Tribe and the dreadlocked countercultural aspect of the protests. Initially this was by no means the predominant element - there was a large group of ramblers at the eviction for example.[5] But people attracted to Twyford by the media coverage thought every single person there had dreadlocks. The media coverage had the effect of making 'ordinary' people stay away and more dreadlocked countercultural types turned up - decreasing the diversity of the protests. More recently, a similar thing has happened in the way in which people drawn to protest sites by the coverage of Swampy they had seen on TV began to replicate in their own lives the attitudes presented by the media as characteristic of the role of the 'eco-warrior'.[6]
"Just as the passivity of the consumer is an active passivity, so the passivity of the spectator lies in his ability to assimilate roles and play them according to official norms. The repetition of images and stereotypes offers a set of models from which everyone is supposed to choose a role."[7] The role of the militant or activist is just one of these roles, and therein, despite all the revolutionary rhetoric that goes with the role, lies its ultimate conservatism.
The supposedly revolutionary activity of the activist is a dull and sterile routine - a constant repetition of a few actions with no potential for change. Activists would probably resist change if it came because it would disrupt the easy certainties of their role and the nice little niche they've carved out for themselves. Like union bosses, activists are eternal representatives and mediators. In the same way as union leaders would be against their workers actually succeeding in their struggle because this would put them out of a job, the role of the activist is threatened by change. Indeed revolution, or even any real moves in that direction, would profoundly upset activists by depriving them of their role. If everyone is becoming revolutionary then you're not so special anymore, are you?
So why do we behave like activists? Simply because it's the easy cowards' option? It is easy to fall into playing the activist role because it fits into this society and doesn't challenge it - activism is an accepted form of dissent. Even if as activists we are doing things which are not accepted and are illegal, the form of activism itself - the way it is like a job - means that it fits in with our psychology and our upbringing. It has a certain attraction precisely because it is not revolutionary.
We Don't Need Any More Martyrs
The key to understanding both the role of the militant and the activist is self-sacrifice - the sacrifice of the self to 'the cause' which is seen as being separate from the self. This of course has nothing to do with real revolutionary activity which is the seizing of the self. Revolutionary martyrdom goes together with the identification of some cause separate from one's own life - an action against capitalism which identifies capitalism as 'out there' in the City is fundamentally mistaken - the real power of capital is right here in our everyday lives - we re-create its power every day because capital is not a thing but a social relation between people (and hence classes) mediated by things.Of course I am not suggesting that everyone who was involved in June 18th shares in the adoption of this role and the self-sacrifice that goes with it to an equal extent. As I said above, the problem of activism was made particularly apparent by June 18th precisely because it was an attempt to break from these roles and our normal ways of operating. Much of what is outlined here is a 'worst case scenario' of what playing the role of an activist can lead to. The extent to which we can recognise this within our own movement will give us an indication of how much work there is still to be done.
The activist makes politics dull and sterile and drives people away from it, but playing the role also fucks up the activist herself. The role of the activist creates a separation between ends and means: self-sacrifice means creating a division between the revolution as love and joy in the future but duty and routine now. The worldview of activism is dominated by guilt and duty because the activist is not fighting for herself but for a separate cause: "All causes are equally inhuman."[8]
As an activist you have to deny your own desires because your political activity is defined such that these things do not count as 'politics'. You put 'politics' in a separate box to the rest of your life - it's like a job... you do 'politics' 9-5 and then go home and do something else. Because it is in this separate box, 'politics' exists unhampered by any real-world practical considerations of effectiveness. The activist feels obliged to keep plugging away at the same old routine unthinkingly, unable to stop or consider, the main thing being that the activist is kept busy and assuages her guilt by banging her head against a brick wall if necessary.
Part of being revolutionary might be knowing when to stop and wait. It might be important to know how and when to strike for maximum effectiveness and also how and when NOT to strike. Activists have this 'We must do something NOW!' attitude that seems fuelled by guilt. This is completely untactical.
The self-sacrifice of the militant or the activist is mirrored in their power over others as an expert - like a religion there is a kind of hierarchy of suffering and self-righteousness. The activist assumes power over others by virtue of her greater degree of suffering ('non-hierarchical' activist groups in fact form a 'dictatorship of the most committed'). The activist uses moral coercion and guilt to wield power over others less experienced in the theology of suffering. Their subordination of themselves goes hand in hand with their subordination of others - all enslaved to 'the cause'. Self-sacrificing politicos stunt their own lives and their own will to live - this generates a bitterness and an antipathy to life which is then turned outwards to wither everything else. They are "great despisers of life... the partisans of absolute self-sacrifice... their lives twisted by their monsterous asceticism."[9] We can see this in our own movement, for example on site, in the antagonism between the desire to sit around and have a good time versus the guilt-tripping build/fortify/barricade work ethic and in the sometimes excessive passion with which 'lunchouts' are denounced. The self-sacrificing martyr is offended and outraged when she sees others that are not sacrificing themselves. Like when the 'honest worker' attacks the scrounger or the layabout with such vitriol, we know it is actually because she hates her job and the martyrdom she has made of her life and therefore hates to see anyone escape this fate, hates to see anyone enjoying themselves while she is suffering - she must drag everyone down into the muck with her - an equality of self-sacrifice.In the old religious cosmology, the successful martyr went to heaven. In the modern worldview, successful martyrs can look forward to going down in history. The greatest self-sacrifice, the greatest success in creating a role (or even better, in devising a whole new one for people to emulate - e.g. the eco-warrior) wins a reward in history - the bourgeois heaven.
The old left was quite open in its call for heroic sacrifice: "Sacrifice yourselves joyfully, brothers and sisters! For the Cause, for the Established Order, for the Party, for Unity, for Meat and Potatoes!"[10] But these days it is much more veiled: Vaneigem accuses "young leftist radicals" of "enter[ing] the service of a Cause - the 'best' of all Causes. The time they have for creative activity they squander on handing out leaflets, putting up posters, demonstrating or heckling local politicians. They become militants, fetishising action because others are doing their thinking for them."[11]
This resounds with us - particularly the thing about the fetishising of action - in left groups the militants are left free to engage in endless busywork because the group leader or guru has the 'theory' down pat, which is just accepted and lapped up - the 'party line'. With direct action activists it's slightly different - action is fetishised, but more out of an aversion to any theory whatsoever.
Although it is present, that element of the activist role which relies on self-sacrifice and duty was not so significant in June 18th. What is more of an issue for us is the feeling of separateness from 'ordinary people' that activism implies. People identify with some weird sub-culture or clique as being 'us' as opposed to the 'them' of everyone else in the world.
Isolation
The activist role is a self-imposed isolation from all the people we should be connecting to. Taking on the role of an activist separates you from the rest of the human race as someone special and different. People tend to think of their own first person plural (who are you referring to when you say 'we'?) as referring to some community of activists, rather than a class. For example, for some time now in the activist milieu it has been popular to argue for 'no more single issues' and for the importance of 'making links'. However, many people's conception of what this involved was to 'make links' with other activists and other campaign groups. June 18th demonstrated this quite well, the whole idea being to get all the representatives of all the various different causes or issues in one place at one time, voluntarily relegating ourselves to the ghetto of good causes.
Similarly, the various networking forums that have recently sprung up around the country - the Rebel Alliance in Brighton, NASA in Nottingham, Riotous Assembly in Manchester, the London Underground etc. have a similar goal - to get all the activist groups in the area talking to each other. I'm not knocking this - it is an essential pre-requisite for any further action, but it should be recognised for the extremely limited form of 'making links' that it is. It is also interesting in that what the groups attending these meetings have in common is that they are activist groups - what they are actually concerned with seems to be a secondary consideration.
It is not enough merely to seek to link together all the activists in the world, neither is it enough to seek to transform more people into activists. Contrary to what some people may think, we will not be any closer to a revolution if lots and lots of people become activists. Some people seem to have the strange idea that what is needed is for everyone to be somehow persuaded into becoming activists like us and then we'll have a revolution. Vaneigem says: "Revolution is made everyday despite, and in opposition to, the specialists of revolution."[12]
The militant or activist is a specialist in social change or revolution. The specialist recruits others to her own tiny area of specialism in order to increase her own power and thus dispel the realisation of her own powerlessness. "The specialist... enrols himself in order to enrol others."[13] Like a pyramid selling scheme, the hierarchy is self-replicating - you are recruited and in order not to be at the bottom of the pyramid, you have to recruit more people to be under you, who then do exactly the same. The reproduction of the alienated society of roles is accomplished through specialists.
Jacques Camatte in his essay 'On Organization'[14] makes the astute point that political groupings often end up as "gangs" defining themselves by exclusion - the group member's first loyalty becomes to the group rather than to the struggle. His critique applies especially to the myriad of Left sects and groupuscules at which it was directed but it applies also to a lesser extent to the activist mentality.
The political group or party substitutes itself for the proletariat and its own survival and reproduction become paramount - revolutionary activity becomes synonymous with 'building the party' and recruiting members. The group takes itself to have a unique grasp on truth and everyone outside the group is treated like an idiot in need of education by this vanguard. Instead of an equal debate between comrades we get instead the separation of theory and propaganda, where the group has its own theory, which is almost kept secret in the belief that the inherently less mentally able punters must be lured in the organisation with some strategy of populism before the politics are sprung on them by surprise. This dishonest method of dealing with those outside of the group is similar to a religious cult - they will never tell you upfront what they are about.
We can see here some similarities with activism, in the way that the activist milieu acts like a leftist sect. Activism as a whole has some of the characteristics of a "gang". Activist gangs can often end up being cross-class alliances, including all sorts of liberal reformists because they too are 'activists'. People think of themselves primarily as activists and their primary loyalty becomes to the community of activists and not to the struggle as such. The "gang" is illusory community, distracting us from creating a wider community of resistance. The essence of Camatte's critique is an attack on the creation of an interior/exterior division between the group and the class. We come to think of ourselves as being activists and therefore as being separate from and having different interests from the mass of working class people.
Our activity should be the immediate expression of a real struggle, not the affirmation of the separateness and distinctness of a particular group. In Marxist groups the possession of 'theory' is the all-important thing determining power - it's different in the activist milieu, but not that different - the possession of the relevant 'social capital' - knowledge, experience, contacts, equipment etc. is the primary thing determining power.
Activism reproduces the structure of this society in its operations: "When the rebel begins to believe that he is fighting for a higher good, the authoritarian principle gets a fillip."[15] This is no trivial matter, but is at the basis of capitalist social relations. Capital is a social relation between people mediated by things - the basic principle of alienation is that we live our lives in the service of some thing that we ourselves have created. If we reproduce this structure in the name of politics that declares itself anti-capitalist, we have lost before we have begun. You cannot fight alienation by alienated means.
A Modest Proposal
This is a modest proposal that we should develop ways of operating that are adequate to our radical ideas. This task will not be easy and the writer of this short piece has no clearer insight into how we should go about this than anyone else. I am not arguing that June 18th should have been abandoned or attacked, indeed it was a valiant attempt to get beyond our limitations and to create something better than what we have at present. However, in its attempts to break with antique and formulaic ways of doing things it has made clear the ties that still bind us to the past. The criticisms of activism that I have expressed above do not all apply to June 18th. However there is a certain paradigm of activism which at its worst includes all that I have outlined above and June 18th shared in this paradigm to a certain extent. To exactly what extent is for you to decide.Activism is a form partly forced upon us by weakness. Like the joint action taken by Reclaim the Streets and the Liverpool dockers - we find ourselves in times in which radical politics is often the product of mutual weakness and isolation. If this is the case, it may not even be within our power to break out of the role of activists. It may be that in times of a downturn in struggle, those who continue to work for social revolution become marginalised and come to be seen (and to see themselves) as a special separate group of people. It may be that this is only capable of being corrected by a general upsurge in struggle when we won't be weirdos and freaks any more but will seem simply to be stating what is on everybody's minds. However, to work to escalate the struggle it will be necessary to break with the role of activists to whatever extent is possible - to constantly try to push at the boundaries of our limitations and constraints.
Historically, those movements that have come the closest to de-stabilising or removing or going beyond capitalism have not at all taken the form of activism. Activism is essentially a political form and a method of operating suited to liberal reformism that is being pushed beyond its own limits and used for revolutionary purposes. The activist role in itself must be problematic for those who desire social revolution..
[See also the Postscript to this article]
Notes
1) To my knowledge the article has been translated into French and published in Je sais tout (Association des 26-Cantons, 8, rue Lissignol CH-1201 Genève, Suisse) and in Échanges No. 93 (BP 241, 75866 Paris Cedex 18, France). It has been translated into Spanish and published in Ekintza Zuzena (Ediciones E.Z., Apdo. 235, 48080 Bilbo (Bizkaia), Spanish State). It has been republished in America in Collective Action Notes No. 16-17 (CAN, POB 22962, Baltimore, MD 21203, USA) and in the UK in Organise! No. 54 (AF, c/o 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX, UK). It is also available on-line at: http://www.infoshop.org/octo/j18_rts1.html#give_up and http://tierra.ucsd.edu/~acf/online/j18/reflec1.html#GIVE If anyone knows of any other places it has been reproduced or critiqued, I would be grateful to hear of them, via Do or Die.
2) Squaring up to the Square Mile: A Rough Guide to the City of London (J18 Publications (UK), 1999) p.8
3) 'Direct Action: Six Years Down the Road' in Do or Die No. 7, p.3
4) Raoul Vaneigem - The Revolution of Everyday Life, (Left Bank Books/Rebel Press, 1994) - first published 1967, pp.131-3
5) 'The Day they Drove Twyford Down' in Do or Die No. 1, p.11
6) 'Personality Politics: The Spectacularisation of Fairmile' in Do or Die No. 7, p.35
7) Op. Cit. 4, p.128
8) Op. Cit. 4, p.107
9) Op. Cit. 4, p.109
10) Op. Cit. 4, p.108
11) Op. Cit. 4, p.109
12) Op. Cit. 4, p.111
13) Op. Cit. 4, p.143
14) Jacques Camatte - 'On Organization' (1969) in This World We Must Leave and Other Essays (New York, Autonomedia, 1995)
15) Op. Cit. 4, p.110
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