through europe - struggle

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.

Catastrophic Socialization, Apocalyptic Capitalism and the Struggles (Version 1.0)

Sabu Kohso — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 14:34:37 +0000

The world is already apocalyptic. Just not all at the same time.

To be overcome: the notion of apocalypse as evental, the ground-clearing revelatory trauma that immediately founds a new nomos of the earth. In its place combined and uneven apocalypse.

--Evan Calder Williams[1]

I am not referring here to the microapocalypse of death: everybody dies, and even if everybody dies at the same time (I mean everybody), what is the problem? The earth becomes a cleared tape and why the angels grieve?

--George Caffentzis[2]

There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons.

--Gilles Deleuze[3]

1. Catastrophic Events Articulating Apocalyptic Process

Due to the magnitude of calamity, there have been many discourses seeking to make sense of the Fukushima disaster and its aftermath: on the worsening dread of the crippled reactors; on radiation spread via distribution of irradiated food products and imposition of disaster debris by the central government; on the renewal of pro-nuclear, re-armament and market-centrist policies of the present Liberal Democratic Party administration; and finally, various types of voluntary actions of the people beginning from radiation monitoring of food and environment to information exchanges via internet to legal battles to street actions.

It all started with a siege: what happened in Italy on October 18th and 19th

Oana Parvan — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 14:02:02 +0000

Hopes and dreams in the Susa Valley

Some two months ago the national housing activists met the NO TAV* movement in the sunny green Susa Valley. The plan was a week of national mobilization culminating with a general strike (of the rank-and-file unions) followed by a mass demonstration against austerity and precarity in Rome. Putting together the whole Italian movement sounded like wishful thinking. No one could imagine what was going to happen.

Weeks of hard work and national coordination followed. Bit by bit the 19^th October general uprising was taking shape. The week before was marked by numerous appropriation events: from empty buildings being squatted by students to families sieging shopping centers for food at fair prices.

From Resistance to Victory: on the logic of emancipatory warfare

Federico Campagna — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 10:11:25 +0000

Resistance

Humans seem to be inescapably bound to a position of double pressure. On the one hand, they are constricted by the limits of the mortality of their flesh, and by the finitude of the resources which surround them. On the other, they endure the weight of a system of abstract thoughts which, as well as ‘lifting’ them above the mortal world, also threatens them with sets of impossible demands. It is within this structure, I believe, that we should understand the meaning and practice of resistance.

At the same time stuck and enhanced by these two invisible neighbors, human life unfolds as constant negotiation between them. In its struggle to resist the pressure of mortality, and in their quest for what we could define synthetically as ‘health’, humans employ their ability for abstract thought. This is what is at heart, for example, of the development of science, technology, art and philosophy, but also, and most importantly, of politics. Perhaps it is politics, understood as the management of all available resources with the aim of enabling the enjoyment of life, above any other human practice, that constitutes our way of resisting the uncanny proximity of death.

Per Una Società Senza Capitalismo, Per Una Democrazia Senza Parlamento

Giovanni Dursi — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 16:56:49 +0000

La prima idea da dimenticare, quando si comincia ad occuparsi della “trasformazione sociale” ed a viverla quotidianamente, è che la “politica” possa essere un quieto mestiere con cui si costruiscono perfetti edifici di parole. Le passioni che animano l'attività trasformatrice della presente realtà sociale non sono alimentate dalla “necessità di pensiero”; semmai, alcune fantasie e visioni corroborano, come “gioco di pensiero”, il concreto percorso antagonistico-duale di fuoriuscita dall'atrocità d'una condizione materiale che codetermina forme individuali di vita da negare e formazioni economico-sociali da mutare radicalmente ed irreversibilmente.

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.

Weaponising Workfare

Aaron Peters — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:06:39 +0000

The potential list of objectionable adjectives that have been extended to the medley of policies collectively understood as ‘workfare’ is, much like any credibility once invested in the present coalition government, indubitably nearing the point of expiry. Indeed workfare, and its present puppeteer the Home Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, are now not not only regarded as mad, bad and malicious but alsothoroughly inept. Surely even ‘IDS’ thought the numbers, the returns on government ‘investment’ in awarding these deals to A4E and others would not be so precociously dreadful as to place the programs beyond the parameters of any credible defence?

The contribution of groups such asBoycott Workfare,DPAC and Solfed, among others, in discrediting workfare programmes is impressive. At the same time such a contribution has undoubtedly been embedded within a defensive approach that has come to characterize anti-austerity struggles throughout the OECD. At times, as with workfare, such a response can be impressive. The student movement of 2010 was similarly a defensive struggle but was nonetheless possessed of admirable flexibility, scale and intensity. The same is true, indeed to a greater extent, with the ultimately victorious Quebecois student movement of the last two years, impressively coordinated byClasse. Conversely the UK ‘pensions fightback’ by public sector unions in 2011, again essentially defensive, shared few if any of these qualities. This is for a variety of reasons and has nothing to do with the intelligence or integrity of those involved, nor the quantity or quality of legitimate grievances they possessed. Indeed for all its scale, tenacity and openness the UK student movement of 2010 likewise failed to achieve its objectives or indeed really catalyse a larger movement beyond itself - although in retrospect it undoubtedly undermined any credible argument the coalition could communicate about its ambition to ‘share’ the burden of austerity.

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.

La sconfitta dell’anti-Europa comincia in Italia

Franco Berardi Bifo — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:21:01 +0000

L’unione europea nacque come progetto di pace e di solidarietà sociale raccogliendo l’eredità della cultura socialista e internazionalista che si oppose al fascismo.

Negli anni ’90 le grandi centrali del capitalismo finanziario hanno deciso di distruggere il modello europeo, e dalla firma del Trattato di Maastricht in poi hanno scatenato un’aggressione neoliberista. Negli ultimi tre anni l’anti-Europa della BCE e della Deutsche Bank ha preso l’occasione della crisi finanziaria americana del 2008 per trasformare la diversità culturale interna al continente europeo (le culture protestanti gotiche e comunitarie, le culture cattoliche barocche e individualiste, le culture ortodosse spiritualiste e iconoclaste) in un fattore di disgregazione politica dell’unione europea, e soprattutto per piegare la resistenza del lavoro alla definitiva sottomissione al globalismo capitalista. Riduzione drastica del salario, eliminazione del limite delle otto ore di lavoro quotidiano, precarizzazione del lavoro giovanile e rinvio della pensione per gli anziani, privatizzazione dei servizi. La popolazione europea deve pagare il debito accumulato dal sistema finanziario perché il debito funziona come un’arma puntata alla tempia dei lavoratori.

Cosa accadrà? Due cose possono accadere: o il movimento del lavoro riesce a fermare questa offensiva e riesce a mettere in moto un processo di ricostruzione sociale dell’Unione europea, o il prossimo decennio vedrà in molti luoghi d’Europa esplodere la guerra civile, il fascismo crescerà dovunque, e il lavoro sarà sottomesso a condizioni di sfruttamento ottocentesco.

Ma come fermare l’offensiva?

Suicidio e Lotta

Paolo Mossetti — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:07:15 +0000

Congedarsi dalla lotta: il suicidio nell’antropologia politica.

Si parla molto di suicidio, di questi tempi. Sembra che il corpo del suicida sia tra i pochi elementi, nella narrazione della crisi attuale, capaci di scalfire la criminale impeccabilità del potere. Il corpo del suicida e’ esibito, sfruttato, sballottato, impiegato come metafora, come arma emotiva e fisica. Di fronte alla sofferenza di milioni le leggi non si piegano, ma di fronte al gesto suicidario si fermano i carri armati.

Si è popolato di gesti suicidi l’immaginario degli ultimi vent’anni, a partire da quei corpi che precipitavano dalle Torri Gemelle in fiamme, e subito dopo la sequenza infinita di attacchi kamikaze in Iraq e Afghanistan – attacchi, va detto, che hanno causato più morti tra le file dell’esercito USA che le azioni di combattimento vere e proprie. È stata poi l’autocombustione di Mohamed Bouazizi a scatenare la rivolta in Tunisia l’anno scorso, e non certo il passaparola su Twitter o Facebook – come invece hanno tentato di farci credere i giornalisti occidentali. E sono gli atti suicidari delle vittime della crisi finanziaria a conquistare, forse più delle proteste di massa, le pagine dei quotidiani d’Occidente.