Category: anarchist

no gods no masters

Defense Committees in the Catalan Uprising: anarchist style People Power can Win

  
Activists around Europe are buzzing with the  arrival of a new revolutionary force. The Catalan CDRs.. the Republic Defence Committees, characterized by direct, decentralized assembly action. Anarchist organisations except for their aim for a new StateIn just a few weeks over 172 CDRs have sprung up. This is in response to the neo fascist paramilitary repression, jailings and abolition of limited local government. CDRs,, for example in Manresa have called demonstrations up to 5,000 strong a few days after being formed.

The Defence Committees can be traced back to those created by the CNT in the Spanish Revolution to defend the 2nd Republic from  a fascist takeover, which morphed into the revolutionary militias. This time round the CDRs have largely been inspired by the small but influential CUP, a remarkable ‘anarcho-republican’ anti capitalist party.

And then there was the 2nd General Strike on Wed 8th Nov. It was billed as a big flop, called by the tiny CSC, opposed or ignored by all the Trade Unions and faced with massive paramilitary police repression and a pending banning order. Just days before the  Madrid based regime had sponsored  fleets of coaches and even trains to bring in thousands of violent right wing ‘demonstrators’, for a huge demo openly led by thugs sporting swastikas, zieg heils and Francoist symbols.

Is this 1936?? People are pouring out of the barrios and blocking the roads

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Nevertheless before 6.00am  on 8th Nov.  thousands of people were blocking the main North -South A7 Motorway from France and Spain in the freezing winter night. Northbound the motorway was closed for over 13 hours at the  La Jonquera French border. Southbound it was still closed at 9.00 pm at Ampolla. Continue reading “Defense Committees in the Catalan Uprising: anarchist style People Power can Win”

6th Anarchist and Punk Film Festival of São Paulo (Brasil)

We can’t get to Brazil for a Film Festival.. but the Programme below is really interesting!

We came to the sixth year of the Anarchist & Punk Film Festival of São Paulo, with the proposal of visibilizing audiovisual productions and themes related to the counterculture of punk and anarchism, as well as guiding the use of this important tool in our struggles. This year the Festival will take place in the Centro de Cultura Social, an autonomous space of much history and contribution to anarchism in the city.

DOWNLOAD THE SCHEDULE IN PDF HERE   https://www.mediafire.com/file/bak4a7r4as6zkoy/ (EN PORTUGUÉS)

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

2 and 3 December 2017 | Centro de Cultura Social [General Jardim Street,
253 – room 22 – São Paulo] Continue reading “6th Anarchist and Punk Film Festival of São Paulo (Brasil)”

Anarchism through the Silver Screen: Film Reviews from CrimethInc

 

  By: thecollective..

Why Are Anarchists Suddenly Showing up in so many Korean Films?

From CrimethInc….This year, several major films from South Korea depict rebels or outright anarchists. Okja portrays the Animal Liberation Front; Anarchist from Colony tells the story of Park Yeol and Fumiko Kaneko, two anarchist nihilists who have become national heroes in Korea; A Taxi Driver dramatizes the Gwanju uprising of 1980. Why are anarchists suddenly appearing in Korean cinema? What’s the context behind these films? And how can they inform how we frame our own narratives in a time of resurgent nationalism and unrest

Anarchist from Colony tells the story of Park Yeol and Fumiko Kaneko,

South Korea, 2017. The new year arrived with a surge of demonstrations expressing disgust at the state of the nation. “Is this a/our country?” went a popular slogan. The state apparatus played for time by starting the impeachment process.

Continue reading “Anarchism through the Silver Screen: Film Reviews from CrimethInc”

New Catalan Strike for Prisoners and Republic amid Far-right Repression

Update Update Update The General Strike in Catalunya called for Wed 8th Nov by small Intersindical-CSC trade union has been supported by the USTEC education union and the main Republican civil groups, Òmnium and ANC .

The strike is to protest the jailing of protest leaders and Government ministers, the occupation of paramilitary security forces, the imposition of Direct Rule, etc

However the majority CCOO (ex comminist) and UGT (ex socialist) trade unions again came out against it and the anarchist  CGT made a statement in favour but left it to their members to decide individually, arguing they haven’t time to consult them. 

All schools and Universities and public offices will certainly close down as well as cities like Girona and LLeida which have a native Catalan majority.

But the bosses organisation Foment de Treball have taken a High Court case to declare the General Strike Illegal.

The neo-fascists in Madrid have been hiring fleets of coaches and even trains to bring in thousands of violent right wing ‘demonstrators’, as seen at last weekend’s huge demo openly led by thugs sporting swastikas, zieg heils and Francoist symbols.

The insidious campaign is to split Catalan society down the middle. over 40% of the population are workers from Spain, most are well integrated over generations with families who consider themselves Catalan. Mixed marriages are common and normal with the 2 languages coexisting perfectly in their homes. Tension between the communities has been minimal (as in ex Yugoslavia before politicians whipped up xenophobia for personal power).

The anarchists too are divided, actively calling and sup`porting the 3rd Oct General Strike from an anti nationalist workers standpoint, but reluctant to continue if a nationalist civil conflict in Catalunya is provoked.

The Spanish nationalist media these days has become a torrent of anti Catalan hatred and outright lies. With an explosion of racist attacks the General Strike on Wednesday and the ‘Mega Demo’ on Sat 11th could finally break the self imposed pacifist stance of the Catalan republicans, which is what the State needs to justify mass criminalization of the majority democratic movement.


                we include below a translation of a key text                

A triumph of popular mobilization


by LLuita Internationalista  on Barcelona Indymedia    The proclamation of the Catalan Republic is the expression of the will of the people of Catalonia to break with the Monarchy. It is the result of a permanent and massive popular mobilization (demos of over a million for 5 years) , which, until  now, has forced the governments of the Generalitat Catalan Govt to apply the popular mandate. The regime of the transition, which Franco left “tied up and well tied up “ (by his legacy) is in its most serious crisis, cracked and may not survive. Continue reading “New Catalan Strike for Prisoners and Republic amid Far-right Repression”

+KAOS.. ’10 YEARS OF HACKING AND MEDIA ACTIVISM’ .. free download

 FREE DOWNLOAD PDF … Click HERE

 +KAOS. Ten Years of Hacking and Media Activism

With forewords by Maxigas, Ferry Byte, and Sandrone Dazieri.
Authors: Autistici/Inventati
Editor: Laura Beritelli
Translation: Laura Beritelli, Trish Byrne, reginazabo, blicero, and other anonymous supporters who we are very thankful to.
Editorial Support: Miriam Rasch
Cover design: Katja van Stiphout
Design: Inga Luchs
EPUB development: Inga Luchs
Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2017
ISBN: 978-94-92302-16-8
English Edition, April 2017
First published in Italian as
+Kaos. 10 anni di hacking e mediattivismo , Agenzia X, 2012.
Contact
Institute of Network Cultures
Phone: +3120 5951865
Email: info@networkcultures.org
This publication is available through various print on demand services a
freely downloadable from
This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoD

Continue reading “+KAOS.. ’10 YEARS OF HACKING AND MEDIA ACTIVISM’ .. free download”

1917: Inspiring messages from the Anarchist un-Dead

Restless Specters: A Few Words from the Anarchist Undead from 1917

This year is the centennial of two revolutions in Russia: one in which the people toppled the Tsar and another in which the Bolsheviks seized state power.

”100 years later it’s easy to say that people were not prepared to leap directly from Tsardom to a real people power revolution. Millions of us tried to do it and were bitterly betrayed by charismatic and ruthless power seekers”.

Within twenty years, the Bolsheviks had executed or imprisoned most of those who carried out the revolution. Today, as the hashtag #1917live trends on twitter, we should remember the #1917undead, the anarchists who strove to warn humanity that statist paths towards social change will never bring us to freedom.

Some of them, like Fanya and Aron Baron, were murdered in cold blood by authoritarian communists in the Soviet Union. Others managed to survive, betrayed by their supposed comrades, to witness the totalitarian results of the Bolshevik coup. Their voices cry out to us today from the grave. Let’s listen.

Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin had sought total centralized power in the name of the proletariat, promising that this was a step towards the “withering away” of the state. From this historical vantage point, their cynical efforts to blot out any model for social change besides the tyranny of state capitalism are clear enough; if it is still difficult to envision what anarchist revolution might look like on a massive scale, we can blame those who systematically exterminated anarchists in the name of socialism.

Being the foremost opponents of tyranny, the anarchists were among the first victims of Soviet prisons and firing squads. Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and many others tried to warn the world of the horrors of Lenin and Stalin, but most people only learned about the gulag archipelago much later from Aleksandr Solzenhitsyn. Continue reading “1917: Inspiring messages from the Anarchist un-Dead”

ROJAVA: A Utopia in the Heart of Syria’s Chaos

 
   from KDN  with thanksWhile battling the Islamic state, Kurds and other ethnic groups in Northern Syria are trying to install a political project. They call it the “Democratic Federation of Northern Syria”.

This project is at opposite to the religious project of part of the Syrian opposition, but also to the Arab nationalist project of the Syrian government. And it’s also opposed to an independent Kurdistan.”

We don’t want a Kurdistan for Kurds, but a democratic federation for everybody,” they say. From Qamishli to Kobane, from Membij to Raqqa, this story describes the difficult implementation of a new political experience in Syria, despite the obstacles of a the war and a suffocating embargo.

A written version of this report can be found in the September 2017 issue of Le Monde Diplomatique: “Une utopie au coeur du chaos Syrian” and “Experiment in self-rule in Rojava” in their English-language version (partly reproduced  here below). a film made by Chris Den Hond and Mireille Court Duration: 45 min. Filmed in July 2017

Below is the first part of the script  for the above video from the English version of Le Monde Diplomatique

Experiment in self-rule in Rojava

Autonomous enclave amid violence of Syrian conflict. Continue reading “ROJAVA: A Utopia in the Heart of Syria’s Chaos”