Note by War On Society: We present this important communique from June 2011 mainly for the exemplary analysis on a number of themes, also because the CCF responded to it in their text ‘Fire and Gunpowder‘ and because it is cited in another communique which we are presently translating.
from liberaciontotal, translated by war on society:
Communique:
I.
The qualification of attacks is necessary considering that statist logic heightens and perfects itself with the same rapidity as the technology that enables, practically, the present societies’ whole apparatus of domination and control.
Society, as the primary origin of a good part of the worst present human situations, does not only worry about positioning itself as a condition for sustaining the existence of humanity, but rather it has also charged itself with violating the consciences of individuals as much as collectivities with the idea that it (society) is necessary for the development of the full human condition–that is, for individual and collective freedom. The overvaluation of “the social” has made it so that all references to “the wild*” are by definition absurd, not only in the sense of being somewhat distant from the present reality, but also as being opposed to society itself. This is why anarchism from the insurrectionalist perspective places itself in the anti-social position.
Without a true critique of the ENTIRE existent, we cannot decide to fully exist.
The negation of the existent (i.e. society) has as its result the affirmation of our individuality, integrity and free associations, prepared for everything that one’s own conscience tells one to do and pleased to act as one’s passions impel one, without judges beyond oneself. In this sense, our consciences are what take shape in the field of practice by means of actions that negate the established, the given, the preformed, the existent… that is: society, the State, the family, salaried work, among much more. The free life is what we seek in the extremes of that same negation, as absolute counter-parties of the crushing machine of the all.
Progress, as that which gives complete unity to the whole flow of history since modernity, is the greatest myth that governs conscious individuals and collectivities. From Marxists who believe in absolute and complete truths, to anarchists who admit that the most expeditious means to achieve the revolution is the internalization of the ideas of freedom in the collective conscience–that is, the same thing that capitalism does with the idea of “competency,” but with another meaning–all accept, perhaps without realizing it, the idea of progress. Thus, one must not only to spurn the idea of progress in its most rudimentary sense–that is, the idea of material progress as in technological development–one must also spurn the idea of progress as the development of certain ideas in human conscience. Consequently, the critique also goes for the other side–that is, the notion of capitalism.
It is important to realize that capitalism and everything that it involves does not advance nor progress, since it is already completely positioned, installed and mediates all social relations which accept, implicitly or explicitly, the logic of the market, of winning or losing, of truth or falsity, of benefit or harm. In this sense, capitalism does not progress (nor does it transform into something “better”), but rather it heightens, since it is already a compulsory part of reality.
This (i.e. reality) is what, through its complexification, becomes more dispersed, polyform, and thus more difficult to detect, analyze, combat and strive against. The qualification of the attack is a necessary response to the heightening of the logic of capitalism in the field of social relations. To blow everything up is not to blow up everything that can actually be blown up, it is to blow up the complex social structures that are determined by commerce and its flow, and which in turn legitimate the same social structure. It is a vicious cycle in which one thing sustains the other. One does not understand capitalism without the people who endorse it, and one does not understand the people who legitimate it without the capitalism that determines their forms. Thus, to physically attack the institutions of capital is not to attack symbols, it is to attack the same structure of reality that determines the field of social relations, in short, it is to undermine the legitimation of capitalism.
It is wager that is not random, to let’s say attack a bank — to attack a bank is to attack the reality that it determines, and to blow up the vicious cycle in which the present social relations are based.
This scenario clearly does not leave space, at least not relevant space, for the logic of “protest” in the historical/Marxist sense of the term and practice, which claims a posture, faced with a situation, in which what is sought is the propagation of an ideological position that is pre-formed, pre-configured, and–most importantly–pre-Reasoned by the never-wrong intellectual vanguard of the organized people. In which there simply is not room for the individual conscience, nor much less for collective dissent, since this kind of a posture brings out the “true truths” of a person much more intelligent than the common individual of the poor exploited people, such victims and so stupid that they do not realize what passes before their noses. They say that someone who loves you beats you, but to treat the people as naive, unconscious and even “asleep” is to say that love is like sending someone to the psychiatrist. A condition that can be expected of people who illusorily dream of “popular uprisings” and similar messianic yammering.
II.
It’s at this point that situations are intertwined, protests become platforms, the place that subjects occupy which they believe democratically contributes to the development of their civilized society, transforming street demonstrations into mere strolls or concentrations of bodies without initiative, groups that only follow their leader in the same way as the flock follows the shepherd, condemning all action that breaks their scheme. It is these spaces/situations that many times are approved by individuals and/or subjects who choose to organize collectively, with a critical point of view, in order to attack the entities of power with everything they have on hand. While this kind of action is important, mostly in order to leave evidence that an antagonist to the system exists, we consider nevertheless that those who remain stuck in these actions only serve as another cog of the system, a system that needs its “opposition” to validate its own existence and also to criminalize those who oppose it. With this we do not seek to prophesy, nor to guide the ways of focusing discontent, but rather to identify those demonstrations that do not seek to expand themselves into everyday life, in order to critique them and not become subject to them.
It’s at this point when we see that the most ideal way to manifest our discontent is the ATTACK, not only with the mere expression in demonstrations, where one begs for reforms to the system, we do not expect even the slightest response from the system, we do not want improvements in it, we fully reject everything that it is able to offer us. It is for this reason that we see the attack, in a concrete form and not in a symbolic or rhetorical way, as an option against power and the entities that it puts at the disposition of the population, since to disable a bank, to loot a store, to burn the products that they offer us in glass cases, to attack the protectors of the interests of power and to attack power itself, these carry immediate negative consequences for the globalized society in which we are embedded.
This is the position that we have taken in the war that we are enmeshed in; we believe that the maturative process of contextual analysis gives weight to the ATTACK as the best choice before the repressive onslaught of power. That is to say, it responds to a “reading” or interpretation of the reality and its circumstances. We are fully aware that this choice has as a side effect a qualitative growth of our capacities, as much for groups as for individuals, whether they be sabotage, dissuasion, planning, etc.
It’s at this point — the same qualification of attacks, together with the evident complexification of the scientific-technological components incorporated into the commerce society’s structural functioning — that an escalation in the mode of the attack becomes necessary, whether in the targets to hit, or in the places and situations to act. That is to say that, in addition to the recurring incendiary actions in the universities campuses and populations (those that have a character of attack and not of hippie marching) and the placements of explosive devices in ATMs (which in no way do we intend to dismiss), the nature of the attacks multiplies constantly and in a versatile way, turning to new products that can be robbed at the market, useful in the production of destructive devices, and/or focusing on new targets that come with the self-same technological developments. What the wide gamut of locations reveals is that with a minimum of security and planning, there can be targets of sabotage that are safe and quick for those who attack them, and that thus do not require high exposure or risk like that needed in excessively “frequented” locations.
In order to develop this qualification of the attacks it never hurts to share, through secure and trustworthy means, experiences of this kind and to contribute to the discussion that helps generate variety and creativity in the forms of attacking domination. Thus avoiding the repetitiveness that can be anticipated by the repressive apparatuses, and likewise avoiding falling into monotony as consequence of stagnation in the comprehension of socio-political conditions, having so close at hand the proliferation of the destruction and sabotage in every corner of society.
All of the above obviously requires the proper recognition and positioning as antagonistic to the social order, we dismiss halfway postures that utilize a negative discourse but do not develop autonomous critique in practice.
III.
It is not only that technology enables the pathogenic deepening of forms of control, but rather that all of this, without a legitimacy mediated through society, is simply impossible.
With regard to recent events, in which different freely-associated individuals (individualists tending toward the wild) have attacked institutions of higher education, specifically schools involved in nanotechnology research, it becomes necessary to sharpen the knife of critique towards the giant industries that play at manipulating life.
We believe that struggle is the consequence of our positions against the forms of life that are imposed by power and legitimized by the masses, and it is in the continual return to direct action that there exists the sole possibility to take our lives as really our own. We act without limits, without regret and without remorse. One cannot destroy the existent simply with the pretensions of doing so. These pretensions are the classic positions of class struggle. The Mexican comrades made the analogy that we ourselves had in mind, namely the following:
“The enlightened or the preachers are the ‘revolutionaries,’ maintained by the faith that is the blind confidence they have that someday the ‘revolution’ will come; the disciples are the ‘potential revolutionaries;’ the crusades and missions are carrying the word to the circles of people involved in green or anarchist struggles (where they would find the ‘potential revolutionaries’); and the atheists or sects are those who do not believe in their dogmas, nor accept their ideas as coherent with reality.” (23 May 2011)
Revolutionaries are the ones who have believed this story the most. The old story that the future will be better, that we are walking toward a better tomorrow, that sooner or later it will arrive. Nothing could be further from reality. A basic question in the face of this would be: What makes you think that the future will be better? And better yet: Is there something concrete that brings you to think this? Questioning ourselves in the first place is paramount to questioning everything else. No one is more blind than the one who does not want to see. In this sense, we believe that it becomes necessary for the comrades of Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, to state in what way they call themselves “revolutionaries,” and in what sense their organization (which is completely respectable and dignified) calls itself a “revolutionary organization.” Much more concretely, what “revolution” means for them. We do not believe in the revolution, but we believe that all action should be accompanied by a strong political content, and that that political content should be solidly argued. Actions do not speak for themselves, as so many comrades everywhere have already said. And thus it is necessary, taking into account the calling to international solidarity, that the networks of information are not so segmented. Through dialogue between comrades we sharpen the critique against the entire existent, never with power, nor with the political class, nor with reformism, nor much less with the masses that condemn everything that is not consistent with the social peace.
Speaking of which, critique is dead if it is not accompanied by that sweetest of nectars: direct action. It is this that marks an essential rupture between the false critics and those conscientious insurgents who have thrown themselves into the abyss of the nothing in search of questions, not answers. Eternal dissent, whose source is the infinitude of the human condition, is nothing more than the only answer to the question: What do we want? This is the sense in which insurgents take awareness of their infinitely infamous condition that answers to nothing, that gravitates toward nothing more than one’s own I. We do not have answers to the questions that everyone wants answered, we do not know where we are going, but we are clear on where we come from, and on what and whose side we are on. ALWAYS on the side of those persons who are consistent and not repentant in their decisions, ALWAYS in the path of confrontation, and NEVER with the timid who have sought to satisfy their egos with pseudo-positionings.
The masses, the people, the citizenry, civil society, humankind, the multitude, the exploited, the sheep. All names for the same thing: “cowards.”
With all the above we do not intend to instate anything, neither a unique form of positioning, nor much less the enlightenment of consciences. But rather to simply expose the point of view of distinct individualities, and to provide nuance to the always-fertile discussions in the intensification of critique and the offensive against the established. Since we are not those who fire the most accurate shots, nor the most gutsy, nor do we pretend to be. In such manner we claim responsibility for the attack made against the branch of the Banco Estado of Central Station, located in the intersection of Alameda and Ecuador.
Afterwards, in the morning of June 1st we found out what happened to the compa Luciano… the following (not alone) words are for him:
Tortuga, you were able to draw out the most difficult conclusions that exist, you confronted the most complicated paradigms for a person, and in spite of all this you were able to live with valor the consequences of your decisions, decisions that brought you to transport that cargo on that night.
We should say that when we found out about your “accident,” a day after having illuminated the night with those ATMs, it was the most difficult awakening that we could have wanted, imagining those interminable seconds that you had to endure in that street pierced our soul; great was the blow that we received on seeing how the press feasted on your image without any consideration, apparently unconcerned about the consequences that this would have for your friends and family.
If only the timer had been delayed a little longer, we would not be in this situation, there would have been another blow against the cheats, the usurers, but it is not so, instead on the contrary your physical condition was seriously affected, likewise those close to you are arduously harassed by the (un)intelligence agents of power.
From our point of view, and open to criticism, we want you free, even if this means that you stop breathing–we do not say dead because you will never die, you will always be at our side striking at what we so hate–this is what any of us would want if we had some mishap. We do not want anyone to be the scapegoat of power, we are free and we want to die free, which is why we chose the more difficult path, the path of the war against the established. Across the darkness and the distance, we carry your impetus in our hearts.
Mauricio Morales and Lambros Foundas live in every insurgent heart.
Freedom to the prisoners of CCF in Greece and to the captive comrades of the “bombs case.”
Solidarity with the comrade Theofilos Mavropoulos, who fell into the clutches of power in confronting the cops with dignity, and solidarity is not a written word between anarchists.
Diego Ríos, Gabriela Curilem, Theofilos M’s companion and Tortuga’s companion:
MAY YOU BE FOREVER FUGITIVES!!!
Strength to all those captive in the cages of power in whatever part of the world, may the fire of this night reach your cells. No one is forgotten!
Incendiary Antagonist Columns.
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* literally “the savage” or “savagery” – transl.