through europe - mossetti-eng

The New Black Jacobins: On the Rejection of the Clergy in the Ferguson Revolt

Paolo Mossetti — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 00:03:25 +0000

The cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression. For the one aims at perpetuating resented injustice, the other is merely a momentary passion soon appeased.

- C. L. R. James

Something new and important happened during the “weekend of resistance” in St. Louis, Missouri. The event, organized by the campaign group Hands Up United plus a myriad groups from across the US, was billed as four days of civil disobedience, mass protest and debates to respond to the killing of an unarmed 18 year-old by a white police officer on August 9 in Ferguson.

What happened there went beyond the routinely protest against police violence and grotesque militarization of urban space. It entered a deeper confrontation: that taking place between the younger and the older generation of black activists. A generational divide that may probably mark and set the tone for the future fights to come.

On October 12, I was one of the 2,000 people who attended an interfaith rally at St. Louis University’s Chaifetz Arena. The event featured noted author Cornel West as keynote speaker, in front of an audience composed by a majority of black people and a numerous contingent of “white allies” (as they are dubbed in activist circles) cheering at every intervention. It was the “American tradition” of civil rights movements ready for the usual show-off.

How the Town of Pomigliano Had Its Own Anarchic Carnival

Paolo Mossetti — Sun, 13 Apr 2014 14:59:34 +0000

The People’s Carnival that took place in the town of Pomigliano (Southern Italy) in 1977 was an exemplary moment in the history of the Italian Left. Combining folk music, art performance and a radical language, thousands automobile workers and their families gathered up against austerity. The event was depicted in a documentary that I screened (in an edited version) during the event New Politics of Autonomy, at Bluestockings Bookstore, New York, on October 27, 2013, together with Ben Morea (founder of the Black Mask group). This is an excerpt from the talk.

The “Dialogue”

I've been working in this factory

For nigh on fifteen years 

All this time I watched my woman

 Drowning in a pool of tears
And I've seen a lot of good folks die 

That had a lot of bills to pay 

I'd give the shirt right off my back 

If I had the guts to say

Take This Job And Shove It

David Allan Coe – Take This Job And Shove It (1977)

At the end of the 1970s, Italy was going through a traumatic yet extremely creative phase of its history. Those were the heydays of the Autonomia movement: radical extra-parliamentary groups (composed by students, unionists, workers, unemployed) were fiercely confronting the austerity politics imposed by the bigot, mafia ridden Christian-Democrats (DC) with the complicity of the Communist Party (PCI). While society was increasingly subjected to militarization, corruption was rampant; the decaying political establishment was more arrogant than ever. The party founded by Antonio Gramsci was seen as a Stalinist oppressor by the movement, the big unions as its partners in crime. Not a single day passed without a major demonstration or a few Molotov bombs thrown at the police.

The sadness of “I Quit” videos

Paolo Mossetti — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 19:04:21 +0000

Like many other viral videos on Youtube, this liberating, mildly choreographic effort to say “goodbye” to a despotic boss made me release more depressant toxins that it apparently did to other million viewers.

The story behind it is now a popular fabula: Marina Shifrin, 25, was employed by “an awesome company” (her words) that produces animation videos. “For almost two years”, she explains, “I’ve sacrificed my relationships, time and energy for this job”.

It’s 4.30am and she’s still at work. It doesn’t seem to be an exception.

She positions her camera in strategic spots, looking straight into it with her thick glasses, then she unexpectedly starts to dance around the office, lonely yet glowing. “I quit”, is the caption flashing multiple times under her moves.

I Have Never Loved You More: Obama and the Left

Paolo Mossetti — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 15:09:35 +0000

Memories.

On May 4, 2009, a few months before Barack Obama won his Nobel Peace Prize, a B-1 supersonic bomber dropped a 2,000 pound missile on the tiny peasant village of Granai, in Southern Afghanistan. About 140 people, mostly women and children, were torn to shreds and scattered in a range of hundreds of feet.

The Pentagon first tried to cover up what happened. But echoes of the massacre began to circulate among the foreign press, and the Army accused the Taliban of having used civilians as shields. The Afghan people reacted: a caravansary with the bodies of the victims stacked up on carts made its way to Kabul, with thousands of demonstrators shouting against the US occupants. The Pentagon then admitted that a few dozens of combatants and a few innocent people were killed. Finally, after a few weeks, almost no one outside of Afghanistan was still talking about Granai.

However painful it might be, we should oppose the Imperial Order regardless of what the Syrians think

Paolo Mossetti — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 15:18:15 +0000

Whenever pro-intervention liberals excoriate me for ignoring what Syrians ask, as long as it furthers my political goals, I say they’re absolutely right. In a certain sense, I am less sympathetic to the Syrian population – especially when it’s the orientalist kind of sympathy – than I am ideologically motivated against USA and the NATO.

And why should it be otherwise? Aren’t we struggling against the Industrial-Military complex, against the politics of drones, against a pseudo-feminist Kissinger like Hillary Clinton? This must be first of all our struggle, our own interest, regardless of what other communities think or say. Whatever 'call for justice' invokes the trigger-happy arm of the State, the supersonic precision bombers of the Empire, the death penalty for the offender, we should reject it without any bogus sense of guilt.

Resistance is an Electrical Property: On Desertion

Paolo Mossetti — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 16:11:39 +0000

“When you are away from the coast, to escape is often the only way to save the boat and the crew. Moreover, you will discover unknown shores appearing on the horizon of the waters, once the calm returns. Those unknown shores will be forever ignored by those who have the illusory chance to follow the route of cargo and oil tankers, the safe route imposed by shipping companies. Perhaps you know that boat called "desire"

Henri Laborit,Éloge de la fuite (1976)

There was a time, approximately twenty years ago, when topics like exile and escape were addressed in generous and original ways in the Italian culture. There was the cinema of Gabriele Salvatores (Mediterraneo, Marrakech Express) "dedicated to all those who are running away", and that of Mario Martone (Death of A Neapolitan Mathematician,War Theatre), filled with characters defeated by life. There were bands like 99 Posse, Almamegretta, Daniele Sepe & Rote Jazz Fraktion who celebrated the roots of militant anti-fascism, while suggesting desertion from Western society. And then, the nomadic literature of Pino Cacucci (Puerto Escondido), the anti-militarist comics of Sergio Bonelli (Tex, Dylan Dog) and Hugo Pratt (Corto Maltese) and overall in any field of the arts you could feel the influence of post-1977 counter-culture. In very different ways, those voices were describing a generation unwilling to enter ‘capitalist’ adulthood and to finally become ‘bourgeois’. They were talking about virile friendship, human cowardice, disgust for the so called ‘return of the Private’ (or ‘Reflux’) of the 1980s.

Confessions of a Troll - master-slave dialectic in the times of Facebook

Paolo Mossetti — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:22:21 +0000

1. Self-profiling.

A few days ago a friend of mine wrote to me: "I heard that you had a Facebook fight with ****, a rising star of Italian journalism. Be careful, it might be dangerous for your career."

My friend was right. I don’t know how many times I told myself: be more cautious, post a comment only when necessary. Click "like" only when it's not compromising. Avoid acid and polemical language.

It never worked. Most often, compulsion prevailed.

My only cold comfort is to know that I am not the only one afflicted by this weak spot. Another friend of mine once confessed: "When I read most online newspapers I get a surge of anger... Sometimes I can't help to speak out my mind, to do sharing, sometimes to insult. But for my job it's embarrassing. Sometimes I create fake profiles. Or I keep myself anonymous."

Solidarity in ruins. A reflection on the Freedom bookshop bombing.

Paolo Mossetti — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 19:50:18 +0000

Much has been said on the coward aggression Freedom bookshop was victim of. Founded by Charlotte Wilson and Peter Kropotkin and based in Whitechapel since the 1970s, Freedom was the oldest anarchic bookshop in the English-speaking world, home of the renowned Freedom Press - which sent into print names such as Clifford Harper, Vernon Richards, Colin Ward and his 'Anarchy' magazine, Murray Bookchin, William Blake and Errico Malatesta. It was already attacked by fascists in 1993 and since then metal bars were installed on the windows and the entrance door.

All major publishers, bookshops and leftist groups promtly expressed their solidarity, especially because Freedom Bookshop wasn't exactly a steady market competitor, but - like many anarchic organisations - a volunteer-run entity, struggling to survive. A spontaneous 'clean-up' soon followed, and many sincere militants, armed with broom, took part in this Red Aid intervention.

Ironically, with all due respect to those affected by the bomb -no one was hurt-, we could look at the bombing as exciting news for anarchism: for once, radical literature wasn’t confined to the spider webs and dust of academia. Not just another talk, another conference of self-boosting egoes and parboiled lectures. Most importantly, not another publisher whining about censorship before billing their authors as 'dangerous' on the back cover of their books (dangerous for whom, and how?). It was, surprisingly, a physical target to be physically attacked.

Django Uncharted: Stirner, Obama & The Good Ol’ White Guilt

Paolo Mossetti — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:04:59 +0000

America, 1858. Two individuals, an ex-doctor and a freed slave, turned into bounty-killers. They have zero concern for the welfare of their society and seem to be irreconcilable to each other but actually, as the tradition of spaghetti-westerns wants, they are associated by practical, monetary and private reasons. A true 'union of egoists' in the Old West, as Max Stirner would put it.

This was the intriguing subject of films as the Dollar Trilogy or Butch Cassidy, to which Tarantino owes more than a reference. “Egoistic unions” Leone-style have emerged, in fact, as an opposition to the lovely “liberal unions” of Traditional WASP Western movies – where the autonomy of action of the Lone Gunman, even when motivated by personal issues, was only a replacement of an evanescent State. On the contrary, in their temporary alliance, the bounty killers keep a healthy distance from an oppressive Society: they don’t respect it – they only utilize it. They transform the Law into their own property and their own creature.

The Legend of a St.Entrepreneur

Paolo Mossetti — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:41:27 +0000

Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology — where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!

- 1984 (advertisement)

  "He lives! He lives! He lives!", those hashtags accompanying the virtual coffin of Steve Jobs seemed to repeat, like a white lie. You could have memorial candles left outside Apple stores, but #iSAD, #Thankyousteve and whatever else was trending in those hours of grief on Twitter were the true keywords following the dead, joining the endless wake where the body of the Martyr was carried from hand to hand, reduced in millions of pixels, re-tweeted from fingertip to fingertip. And as the corpse of the mahatma – “great soul” – was driven through the immaterial crowd, everybody tried to stretch a finger and make contact with him. Everyone had something to say: “You’ll be missed”, typed a 14-yr-old Chinese boy. “Gracias”, typed a Mexican girl studying in Chicago. “Merci”, typed a DJ from Senegal.