In a time when words seem to lose their meaning, when the language of power tries to penetrate all our conversations, we think it is even more indispensable to make an effort in order to speak clearly. Let’s stop parroting what the newspapers say, television shows and the powerful want us to believe. The point is neither to agree at all costs nor to convert everything, but it is to try to speak with our mouth, our words, our pains and our hopes.
The beginning of Nato bombardments against the forces loyal to Gaddafi in Libya marked a fatal step. At the beginning, what was undoubtedly an armed insurrection of a significant part of the population against the regime, is slowly transforming into a military war. Apart from some self-organized forms of resistance, which all kinds of authority define as ‘irregular’, the insurrection in Libya seems to have degenerated in a conflict between opposing armies. And it is not by chance that the ‘irregulars’ down there have always been very suspicious towards the ‘official opposition’, which has copied the hierarchies, grades and structures of command of the Gaddafi’s army. As a matter of fact, the militarization of the conflict has buried the possibility of a radical overturning of Libyan society. New uniforms, new leaders and new authorities constitute an obstacle to those who want to experiment other social relationships, relationships of solidarity and reciprocity, self-organization of social life between people instead of a new regime, new social structures, new leaders and new privileges. Today in Libya the question is to support in all possible ways the insurgents who have struggled and who will struggle again in the future for a deep change of society. As a Libyan anarchist comrade said, the question is to refuse power’s blackmail – be it Gaddafi, the official opposition or Nato – which intends to suffocate the possibility of social revolution by pushing towards a merely military war. Let’s never forget those who have died while struggling for freedom and have challenged a monstrous regime by relying on their strength only, putting their life at risk.
What happened in Japan is not a natural disaster but a social catastrophe. What happened in Japanese nuclear plants is not a disgraceful incident but the sad consequence of a world full of industries that vomit poison., of nuclear plants scattered everywhere, which have heavily and tragically mortgaged life and freedom on the earth, of an economy that poisons the planet and human minds, by obeying only to the quest for more profit for the powerful and the rich. Entire regions in Japan are currently encircled and militarised. After building nuclear plants and putting the interests of capitalist economy ahead of everything else, the Japanese State now presents itself as the sole actor able to sort the situation out, to manage the disaster and to ‘help people’. By implementing a military regime in the devastated areas of the island and a regime of scientific control that reduces the inhabitants of the contaminated areas to simple numbers, radioactivity rates or guinea pigs, the State is strengthening its grip on the population. Frightened by the even too real nuclear threat, people are running towards their saviour… But the cause of a problem cannot be at the same time its solution; if the cause continues to exist, the problems grows. And the problem is not so much natural disasters but this world of industries and nuclear plants, metropolis where one cannot live and devastated countryside. The point is either to continue to make the catastrophe permanent in this world or radically change road, dethrone economy and its king the money, stop believing scientists and experts in order to find solutions to problems they themselves created, and invent new ways of living together. Either the catastrophe of this world full of horrors or social revolution.
After the cries of victory coming from Egypt and Tunisia, cries that our media transformed into a homage to western democracy, a new order is about to impose itself. Egyptian troops are once again shooting at the crowds in revolt, Tunisian jails are filling up with insurgents who struggled for much more than a simple change of regime, various political and religious rackets are doing their best to recuperate and channel anger into filthy nationalisms and oppressing religions. But, in spite of growing repression, fights keep on. While in Egypt wild strikes take place continuously against old and new bosses, entire areas in Tunisia are still today out of the clutches of the new State and self-organize themselves to face material needs, by putting into practice reciprocal solidarity instead of capitalist competition, by pushing back from villages cops, political leaders and judges, identified as the expression of the suffocation of freedom.
Everything is being tried in order to make people forget that there exist other possibilities beyond the alternative between dictatorship and democracy; that it is possible to experiment new ways of living together which are not run by the State, be it elected or imposed; that there exist other possible choices rather than be subjected to ferocious exploitation like in most parts of the world, or respect social peace between exploited and exploiters and be content with crumbs as often happens here. Everything is being tried to make people forget what the powerful of everywhere, be them democratic or dictatorial, rude or gentle, ferocious or human, fear most: a social revolution which puts an end to the causes of exploitation and oppression.
For those who choose to struggle for freedom, real freedom, in the end there are only two answers from their enemies: bullets or prison. Recently some Italian anarchists were hit once again by repression. Five comrades in Bologna are now being held in prison and sixty houses were searched all over Italy. Charged with ‘organized crime’, they are imprisoned by the State, which hopes to stop the struggles against migrants detention centres and the attacks against the responsible for the machinery of deportation; the solidarity with the insurgents on the other side of the Mediterranean and against the Italian companies that profit form Gaddafi’s regime to import gas and oil and export weapons useful to suppress revolts (after all the same companies are keen to build nuclear plants in Italy, which also provokes resistance); the comrades’ irreducible choice for revolt and their attacks against the structures of dominion.
If we talk about them it is because we recognize ourselves in those struggles and because we share, beyond borders, their desire for freedom which pushes them to struggle by words and deeds. No prison will ever stop our struggle for freedom. Solidarity with the Italian comrades and with the comrades imprisoned in other countries of the world consists in continuing, always continuing to attack dominion, with hope in our hearts and clenched fits.
Let’s give fire to the powder ked. May the wind of freedom blow, may the tempest of insurrection rage.
Anarchists