ANTI-AUTHORITYANTI-AUTHORITY DAILYDAILY REVOLTREVOLT RETURNRETURN FIREFIRE

INDIVIDUALINDIVIDUAL WILLWILL DE-CIVILISATIONDE-CIVILISATION

We Can Be Worse Still 'At the Root of My (for one who died in the Survival' battle for life) (reflections on mutilation, facing Who Is It? terrorism charges, & democracy's and not abandoning our discontents own)

Veganism: Why Not Wild Plants: (an alienated solution to Hawthorne (berries) a problem of & Sweet Chestnuts alienation?) …and more!

VOLUME VOLUME 5, 5, CHAPTER I CHAPTER I II II [email protected]@riseup.net AUTUMN AUTUMN 20120177 … the unknown, the uncertain, seduces me. I’m filled with a desire for adventure, and I don’t give a damn for success. I hate your society of bureaucrats and administrators, millionaires and beggars. I don’t want to adapt to your hypocritical customs nor to your false courtesies. I want to live out my enthusiasms in the pure, fresh air of freedom. Your streets, drafted according to plan, torture my gaze, and your uniform buildings make the blood in my veins boil with impatience. And that’s enough for me. I’m going to follow my own path, according to my passions, changing myself ceaselessly, and I don’t want to be the same tomorrow as I am today. I stroll along and I don’t let my wings be clipped by the scissors of any one person. I share none of your moralism. I am going forth, eternally passionate and burning with the desire to give myself to the world, to the first real person that approaches me, to the ragged­trousered traveller, but never to the grave and conceited wise­men who would regulate the length of my stride. Nor to the doctrinaire who would like to clutter my mind with formulas and rules. I am no intellectual; I am a human being – a woman who feels a great vibration within herself before the impulses of nature and amorous words. I hate every chain, every hindrance; I love to walk along, nude, letting my flesh be caressed by the rays of the voluptuous sun. And, oh, old man! I will care so very little when your society breaks into a thousand pieces and I can finally live my life.

Who are you, little girl, fascinating like a mystery and savage like instinct?

I am Anarchy. being captured, an area that had been raked multiple times by family and friends. “Santiago WE CAN BE WORSE STILL Maldonado who fought on the barricades of Chiloé [ed. – see Return Fire vol.4 pg24], defending the – reflections & thoughts on the month following sea. Santiago Maldonado who fought for the immense southern land. Every time the strong the disappearance of Santiago Maldonado Patagonian wind blows, he will be there. Whenever the rebels of the world try to storm the heavens, he will be there. Rest comrade, the sea, the land and [ed. – Report by 'Some anarchists in Buenos Aires', and other extraction elsewhere on more than million the forests for which you gave your life are waiting to concerning the rage unfolding in Argentina, a hectares it owns in Argentine Patagonia (see provide you shelter ” (statement by comrades of the country haunted by the ghosts of 30,000 Return Fire vol.3 pg66). The Chubut province near Ghiraldo Library). They have taken the comrade disappeared during the 1976­1983 military the Chilean border has become a focus point for away from us, but we hope all that remains in their dictatorship, and more continuing into democracy... landless indigenous workers who since 2015 have hands is the compost that will fertilise a thousand To update so far: one month to the day after set up the Pu Lof community on unused rural tracts more rebellious roots, nourished by the ash of this Santiago's disappearance, tens of thousands of around the town of Cushamen (Mapuche territory genocidal, ecocidal system and its components. people demonstrated on September 1st in Buenos for over 1,400 years, which Benetton now holds the And indeed, within 24 hours of the expert's Aires, with six cops wounded in the capital and deeds for), and has seen an explosion of violence proclamation on the body, the municipal Casa de la more coming under molotov fire in Bolsón, from authorities intent on breaking the recuperation Provincia in Rio Negro was trashed and left with a Patagonian region. Across the Brazilian border, the movement, with the first brutal mass raids ordered banner for the freedom of Facundo Jones Huala, Argentine consulate in Porto Alegre was paint­ by Benetton in June 2016. (Among the dwellings, the Argentine Military Attaché’s office facade in splattered, while barricades were erected and police clothes and equipment torched by police have been Montevideo (Uruguay) was badly fire damaged, and attacked in Valparaíso, Chile. So far, aside from stocks of organic autochthonous seeds; this is we imagine more by the time this reaches you... embassy rallies in a couple of capitals and attacks because Mapuche still preserve their seeds without on Benetton stores (see below) in Milan and Madrid, genetic modification which stops multinationals from In the broader context, (by surely conservative there has been little reaction on the so­called 'Old selling their own tailored stock and creating a figures) in 2017 so far almost four people a week Continent'... This was also noted by some comrades dependence on copyrighted versions. Since the (largely indigenous) are killed worldwide defending postering “in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula: raids, others have pointed out Benetton's political's political the land, especially from mines, plantations, wild A Corunha, a port city from which hundreds of relations with the Minister of Homeland Security, animal exploitation and infrastructure projects, and immigrant ships left for Latin America. But Patricia Bullrich.) A pamphlet distributed in particularly in Latin America. Agribusiness has practically nil is the information on this side of the Pontevedra (Spain) reminds us that “while exhibiting comparatively come to the fore compared to the Atlantic[...] Nor did we expect it to be any different. disgusting advertising where they show people of all composition of these figures in recent years, as Colonizing Europe has never ceased to be so, but colours and ethnicities smiling and so happy (but all industry demand grows for soy, palm oil, sugarcane little is said here about the devastation European following the racist and colonial stereotypes of and beef (which, besides the aforementioned wool, multinationals and their allies carry out in South Western civilisation, of course), [United Colors of Argentina is famous for). However also in the America: it is hidden behind the mask of NGOs and Benetton] crush the Mapuche communities that try 'richest' countries, defenders of the earth are the most hypocritical and paternalistic charity.” to recover their land, today bought by that company increasingly under the gun as the scrabble for to pasture the 1,000s of sheep they have enslaved 'resources' heats up further; for example during These events unfolded as part of the struggle of the to produce wool. ” the Standing Rock mobilisation in the U.S.A. (see Mapuche people (see Return Fire vol.3 pg59, also Return Fire vol.4 pg16) North Dakota legislators including a glossary of the Mapudungun vocabulary Anarchists, for almost as long as they have called only narrowly decided against a bill allowing drivers below), fighting against European colonisers more themselves such, have a history that in it's better to run over and kill protesters without being jailed than 500 years (immediately before which they moments has always included solidarity with anti­ (similar laws have in fact passed in other U.S. stalled and defeated the Inca Empire's southward colonial insurgencies; while in 1850, in New States in response to confrontational road, dock and push). Wallmapu, their historic territory, is cut in half Orleans, Joseph Déjacque (see Return Fire vol.4 airport blockades), while on its heels in that colonial by the nation­state borders of Argentina and Chile, by the nation­state borders of Argentina and Chile, pg29) dreamed of slave rebellions and the territory 66­year­old James “Jim” Leroy Marker died so they cannot move freely around their native land. so they cannot move freely around their native land. dissolution of racial boundaries, Louis Michel in Florida in defense of the Withlacoochee River The Mapuche are also no stranger to forced police The Mapuche are also no stranger to forced police embodied these dreams quarter of a century later after firing on the protested Sabal Trail pipeline and disappearances, including under democracy; such disappearances, including under democracy; such by joining her force with rebels of so­called New its construction equipment and getting into a fatal as José Huenante, detained September 2005 in the as José Huenante, detained September 2005 in the Caledonia and Algeria (see 'The Matter of high­speed chase by County Sheriffs. (He may have Chilean city Puerto Montt, never to be seen again. Knowing Who We Are'). Likewise today, as in other chosen the date and location to coincide with a call “to honor the anniversary of the 1973 Wounded Especially in light of the history of colonists from the parts of the world, in Argentina anarchists and “to honor the anniversary of the 1973 Wounded Knee Stand­off on the Pine Ridge Reservation [ed. U.K. (famously from Wales) emigrating to Argentina, Mapuche find themselves side­by­side facing the Knee Stand­off on the Pine Ridge Reservation [ed. – see the companion piece to Return Fire vol.3; we'd like to add some words to counter the'd like to add some words to counter the historical enemy, as was the case when Diego Sebastián – see the companion piece to Return Fire vol.3; amnesia so many of us seem to find ourselves in Petrissans and Leandro Sebastián Morel went to Colonisation] and to stop the pipeline from going in right now. Following the British­funded 'Conquest of'Conquest of prison (with a third comrade of the Anarchist Black the ground through the wetlands and endangered the Desert' genocides (see below), the Argentine Cross of Buenos Aires forced underground) after species habitat of Halpata Tastanaki Preserve (a President donated 900,000 hectares to the British Leandro robbed a T.V. production company owned site named after a Seminole leader of the armed company Argentine Southern Land, to construct a by a host, media producer and businessman known resistance that fought U.S. invasion of indigenous railroad for the country’s export system to better for evicting Mapuche from their own land to build communities in the mid­1800s).”) vast tourist complexes. Rather than an expression of profit from the expropriation. Today, the case is not Finally, just in these last days of autumn, young an updated third­(fourth?­)worldism, “allyship” (see atypical of Joseph “Joe” Lewis (British business Mapuche warrior Rafael Nahuel fell to Argentinian Return Fire vol.3 pg67) or common Western fetish magnate among the 300 richest people on the police bullets on November 25th in Río Negro as the for indigenous culture (see Fraud, Fantasy & planet), whose massive purchase on Patagonian for indigenous culture (see Fraud, Fantasy & eviction of the mountain­top Lafken Winkul land Fiction in Environmental Writing/'The Invention land included the Hidden Lake, a Mapuche site of Fiction in Environmental Writing/'The Invention recuperation, which he had travelled to join along ), the facet we find vital in anarchist high significance, to which he subsequently closed of the Tribe'/Q), the facet we find vital in anarchist with his aunt and cousin, ended in a shoot­out. access. Last summer, Mapuche fighters burned his involvement in such struggles is the survival of other excavators preparing a hydroelectric dam along the ways of being in this increasingly monocultural and Enough being said, let's hear the words of Río Escondido, on Lewis’ private property, being totalitarian world, as imagination itself becomes an imprisoned anarchist Marcelo (see Rebels Behind built in cooperation with Edenor electric company, of endangered species; and lessons we could learn Bars; Concerning the Juridical Situation of Our which Lewis is the biggest stock owner. (That attack along these lines from engaging with indigenous Comrade Marcelo Villaroel Sepulveda) about his was also in solidarity with Facundo Jones Huala of examples that Chilean agitators of Sin Banderas Ni relation with Santiago. “Since we were taken the Cushamen community (see below), wanted for Fronteras describe as “[o]ffensive actions of prisoner in the region dominated by the Argentine extradition to Chile over Mapuche land recuperation resistance that, combined with the propagation and state [ed. – see Return Fire vol.1 pg72], our paths actions, in the end released only to be re­arrested implementation of ways of living and relationship crossed. There were us, the prisoners in the and now awaiting transportation over the border to modes contrary to those imposed by the state, province of Newken and there was Santiago, in the face 'terror' charges for arson on a colonist farm.) capitalism and civilisation, build an antagonistic city of La Plata, next to us in a universe of active reality that preoccupies power and keeps it busy comrades, sharing complicity and standing in Since 1991, Argentine Southern Land was acquired with its eradication, isolation and extermination.” solidarity… It’s been more than 9 years since our by the Bennetton family of Italy, where it produces footsteps have crossed the continuous path of the 10% of the wool for fashion chain United Colors of October 20th, the Argentinian State announced brotherhood, this path that sets both of us on the Benetton, in addition to the mining, deforestation, what we had intuited already with heavy hearts; same side of the trench[...] The rebellious and transgenic soy plantations (see Market Pressured the body of Santiago had just been “found” (i.e. ancestral fire is incinerating the machines of to Temporarily Drop G.M. Product Lines After planted) in the icy waters of the Chubut River, 300 predatory capital, the insurrectionist blood spilled Contamination Campaign Claimed, Lombardy) meters upstream from the place where he was seen from our fallen comrades is among our war rituals...” 56. On August 1st, members of the Pu Lof more leftist organizations bringing together of anarchists. During the march, there was Mapuche community in resistance in the a “peaceful” gathering in the Plaza de vandalism on some of the central streets of province Cushamen barricaded National Mayo, in front of the Pink House, the seat the city. The march ended in the same Route 40, along with allies in solidarity. of government. In front of the multitude, plaza where it had begun, across the street They cut off traffic in solidarity against the one of Lechuga’s brothers read some of from the Buenos Aires Senate. Under the legal proceedings confronting el Lonko his writing, leaving his anarchist, anti­ astonished gaze of several indignant Facundo Jones Huala (for the second time). police position completely clear. citizens, the street was cut off, a well­ Minutes later, cars and trucks arrived placed truck was destroyed, and the carrying about thirty border police armed One of the things that makes us quite senate was attacked with rocks and a pair with rifles. The peñis (Mapuches) began angry is the way these events have been of molotov cocktails, resulting in some throwing rocks, responding to the presence used by political parties – the PO, the destruction and burning the facade of the of the bastard forces of order. The MST, the MAS socialist convergence, and building. Two hours later, two individuals [1] [3] Gendarmerie advances to the shots, Kirchnerist parties – as well as NGOs, left large cans filled with naphtha , burning burning the precarious houses and and unions like the CGT [General two cars parked next to the senate. No one belongings of the Lof, forcing the occupiers Confederation of Labor], with its dark claimed responsibility for the attack. history during the Peronist period,[2] to retreat across a river. Santiago Several days later, the intelligence chief of involving the Argentine Anticommunist Maldonado (“Lechuga” [Lettuce] or “el the Buenos Aires police was fired. Alliance and para­police groups. They use Brujo” [the Witch­Doctor]) fell behind partial images and histories of our In some of these gatherings and the rest. Some of the inhabitants of the comrade to give themselves a few more marches, as well as in the streets and Lof saw that the Gendarmerie grabbed kernels of legitimacy in the middle of an universities, and above all on social Santiago; others testified as to hearing the electoral process. The kidnapping of networks, we have seen that the a police say they “got one.” Lechuga is not a political campaign. majority of the public has empathized Afterwards, images and testimony began These scavengers would never feel with Santiago, and a smaller part has to circulate about how Santiago was strange defending private property, the supported violent actions. It is true missing, and that it seemed the border police, or even the same that in Argentina, to speak of forced Gendarmerie had taken him away in a governments that repress them and disappearances is to speak of the bury them in the misery of everyday life “unimog” all­terrain military vehicle. The military dictatorship and of histories – because they themselves desire to authorities were silent through this whole that have been engraved in social process. obtain that same power, and exercise sensibility. The vast majority of that same authority. We have nothing to On Friday, August 4th, various anarchists do with them, or with their conciliatory politicians try to hide the and individuals in solidarity entered the responses to our comrade's kidnapping. continuation of the repressive seat of government in Chubut province, apparatus – hide the similarities demanding Santiago’s return. The place On Thursday the 17th, a march was called between the dictatorship and the was ripe for destruction. Computers, in Córdoba Capital, where a great current democratic government. notebooks, windows, and decorations were multitude demanded that Santiago be Repression, torture, and forced all viciously destroyed, and fliers and returned, alive and whole. The police disappearances never really ended… graffiti were left behind referring to the deployed a massive riot­control apparatus. repression in Cushamen. That same night, in the early morning, We believe that it is necessary to expand some anonymous deployed a rudimentary this conflict. From the first moments, On Monday, August 7th, a gathering was device that burned out the doors at the comrades and allies creatively called in the Plaza del Congreso, bringing entrance to the Association of Non­ demonstrated around the world, first in various organizations and groups together commissioned Officers of the National Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, and Peru, but then with Santiago’s family. The gathering Gendarmerie in Córdoba. No one claimed in the U.S., Spain, India, France, Syria, ended up being quite large, and many responsibility. Days later, a national march Colombia, Mexico, and many other corners comrades showed up. Enraged not only against trigger­happy cops resulted in of this worn­out planet. These because of what had happened, but also confrontations and destruction throughout demonstrations have spread not only the because the political apparatus – getting the center of Córdoba. Later, various news of what happened to Lechuga, but ready for their elections – had been anarchist, platformist, and political spaces the fact that solidarity must be distributing fliers for their Leftist Front. On were raided, including a dining hall, as well internationalist and without borders other the same day, after the gathering, Entre as the homes of mothers whose children than the limits that we set for ourselves. Ríos street was cut off, and the occupiers were murdered by the police. Here, they threw rocks and firecrackers at the infantry, only left with posters, flags, and fliers that The Press Takes Aim fending off the two city police and one had to do with Santiago’s case (as well as & the State Pulls the Trigger the milk from the dining hall). A few people National Congress guardsman who had What to say about the news articles and were detained, but they were released been stationed nearby. Afterward, two journalistic investigations by mercenaries after a few hours. police motorcycles were set ablaze. In the like Jorge Lanata, Mauro Viale, Eduardo end, the group dispersed, without any arrests or injuries on our side. On Thursday the 24th, the group On Friday, August 11th, marches and H.I.J.O.S. (made up actions were coordinated throughout of children of the various parts of the country: Bolsón, disappeared) and Bariloche, Rosario, and Buenos Aires. In other leftist groups the capital, human rights groups (including called for a gathering a section of the Madres de la Plaza de and march in the Mayo, the mothers of individuals Plaza San Martin in disappeared during the period of La Plata. Quite a few dictatorship), gathered alongside family people attended, members and friends of Lechuga’s, with including a black bloc 57. Feinmann, and other information lackeys in conspire to kill and disappear someone. As buildings. The result was not only a visible the press? They put forward the name of she says, this police force is not the same increase in the number of police (in plazas, the Mapuche Ancestral Resistance (RAM, as it was 40 years ago, always playing the border police buildings, train stations, a separatist guerrilla group), crediting them same game of “bad dictatorship, good police precincts, and troubled with more than thirty actions from one day democracy [ed. – see Who Is It?].” neighborhoods), but that they brought out to the next, from flyering to the burning of the shiny toys that we hadn’t seen for a ranches, the death of a border policeman The Bullrich family has always known how long while: Federal Police armored in San Martin de los Andes, and the sale of to defend their ideological and economic vehicles, water cannon trucks, and troop weapons and drugs. They pass along interests. Adolfo Bullrich headed a transport vehicles all over the place. images of possible future Santiago business that auctioned land off after the Everything but the army in the streets. Maldonado's – individuals who could face disastrous Conquest of the Desert – a the same fate – in Mendoza, Entre Rios, campaign pushed forward by the ten­ This new escalation of repression that has and Buenos Aires; they put together president Avellanada and continued by been taking place – and will continue – in theories that Santiago was a hostage of Julio A. Roca, the goal of which was to the streets of the Capital, demonstrates the Mapuches, that he had died in an annihilate the native peoples who lived in that the ministry of security, as well as the attack on a ranch, that he was never in the Patagonia, seize immense land holdings, bosses of police “intelligence” intend to Lof, or that he was a simple artisan or reaffirm national sovereignty, and generate restrict all solidarity, rage, and the actions hippy backpacker. juicy business contracts with English and that were unleashed following Santiago’s Welsh companies, as well as whoever disappearance. Perhaps these sparks can After the attack on the seat of government wanted to invest. Esteban Bullrich, bring us to break new limits… in Chubut, the press attributed the attack to Patricia’s brother, left his post as Minister In some of our spaces, their harassment is a cell of the RAM, stating that the attack of Education in order to stand for election. plainly visible. Now it’s not just phone taps “alarmingly” took place two blocks from the In an election ad, Esteban spoke of the and cops following some comrades home, obelisk, and that they went in shooting; but positive changes that the Cambiemos but investigative teams taking pictures, if we look at the place for two seconds government had generated during those infantry trucks on the corner, and patrols through the photos that were released, we months, stating “We have put more kids in coming and going. can see clearly that there were several school, more pavement on the streets, and circle­A signs painted up, and that the more young men in prison…” Are these All of this responds to a specific damage was not done by bullets. Their words surprising, coming from someone context. In some neighborhoods of the exaggerations really are limitless… who defended the repressive murderer province of Buenos Aires, police have [5] Luis Patti so that he could exercise his been stopping members of collectives to The state needs to vindicate its position in congress? He did declare that in ask for their documents and check their own authority – it needs to a democracy, there is space for debate belongings; the notable increase in patrols between different ideologies… create internal enemies. The and police officers is not just an effort at control and surveillance, but also at the After the proposal for a week of action for unemployment crisis and the same time, an attempt to clean up the Santiago went out over the internet, state general economic crisis have terrible image of both the border police and security forces were put on alert – so much the cops. During Children’s Day, border resulted in an emergent malaise so that a senior official in the intelligence police brought trucks of toys to different that can be felt clearly in the department of the federal police sent a schools and cafeterias – that is to say, they [4] document to the governor of the province streets ; what could be better shamelessly repeated slogans of of Buenos Aires, María Eugenia Vidal (of than blaming the economic “solidarity” in the same places where they the center­right PRO party) ordering an perform intelligence work, go in shooting, collapse on non­Argentine increase in security and patrols in the and carry out fierce repression. If their streets. The document described possible students, like Jorge Lanata’s intelligence work was designed under the attacks, and risks to individuals belonging news program argued? Or framework of Project X in the Kirchner to the security forces, infrastructure, and blaming the destruction of the epoch, when they built a database formal economy on pirate disc vendors, like the América 24 news channel tried to do? What could be better than the president Mauricio Macri saying that the workers have to stop messing around with all of this about blocking roads, have to going over their bosses heads – because this discourages foreign investment?

Declarations from Patricia Bullrich (the Minister of National Security) have said that she won’t allow the Gendarmerie to be crucified (“…I’m not going to throw the Gendarmerie under the bus…”), claimed that the Maldonado case is not a forced disappearance, and declared through 31.08.17, Buenos Aires: headquarters of the “anti-terrorist” Federal Operations clenched teeth that she thinks it’s Special Group burns; after the demonstration the next day, the 35th Gendarmerie impossible that thirty border police would Battalion near met the same by molotovs, and still the revolt wasn't over... 58. following militants and organizations, now they’ve come out onto the field of play more than ever before, becoming one more shock force that the State can employ in its favor.

Of course, the law follows not far behind, not only with the reform to law 24.660 (which removes almost all prison benefits and temporary releases, giving more decisive power to the Penal Service), but also the increases in sentences, Left: 31.12.12, Police post totally burned, including state-of-the-art technology broadening legal definitions of illicit delivered the week before, at the Cardenal Samoré international mountain pass in the Andes (the only one open year-round) closing it to freight for two weeks. association, carrying weapons, and Right: 28.08.17, as the 'Luchsinger case' (see Return Fire vol.1 pg67) trial damage to private property. against 10 Mapuche opens, 29 forestry trucks in Los Ríos ('Chilean' Wallmapu) torched by arms-wielding fighters of Weichan Auka Mapu (Fight of the Rebel Territory); who incinerated 18 more in the two weeks before. Relationships Between Mapuches [6] [7] Mapuche, as well as the Qom , the Wichí , López. Although Hebe de Bonafinni (one & Anarchists [8] We have seen that in the last couple years, or the Guaraní , not to mention the tribes of the founders of the Madres de la Plaza some Mapuche communities have been living in the Amazon, who resist the de Mayo) might have said that López was leaving aside legalistic angles of struggle, advance of the machines and “human a jailer and that Santiago was a social and have decided to occupy the properties progress” understood as civilization. We activist, she said it to defend Kirchenerism. of large landholders and portions of state share much with the Mapuche who are And what’s more, it’s a lie – López was a land. Machines have been burned, there fighting in the south of the region, but there carpenter and was disappeared in 2006 have been coordinated attacks on various is also a chasm distancing us from them. because he was going to testify against positions on single ranches – similar to Their forms of organization and the Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, a leader of what is going on in the Wallmapu on the relationships that they have developed, the forces of repression during the Chilean side. involving themselves with nature and the dictatorship. López’ disappearance land are a demonstration of their own, demonstrates that even after 15 years, the The media have taken it upon themselves specific cosmovision. As anarchists, we military still has plenty of power. Nor do to declare that all Mapuches belong to the recoil from their desire to advance and they want to talk about Luciano Arruga – a RAM, or that the Mapuches who live in the obtain their own Mapuche nation. We youth from the marginal neighborhood Lof belong to the RAM, generating a respect their rebel dignity, and will stand in Lomas de Mirador, who was kidnapped, perfect internal enemy. In reality, the RAM solidarity, but we do not share in the totality murdered, and buried as a John Doe in the [9] are nothing more than the abbreviation of their struggle . la Chacarita cemetery, because he refused with which some Mapuches claim their to steal for the police. Nor do they want to actions in the Wallmapu in Argentina. No Demands on the State; remember Cristian Ibáñez, who was Permanent Conflict detained by the police only to later appear El Lonko Facundo Jones Huala is Against Authority to have “killed himself” in his cell in a police recognized as belonging to this Mapuche We all desire that our comrade be returned precinct in Jujuy, or Marcelo Cuellar, who group. At the moment, he is detained in the alive, that he might follow whatever path he was murdered in the town of Libertador prison at Esquel, where he spent 18 days might desire. We know that the state is General San Martín in 2003, at a march on hunger strike, awaiting a presumed responsible for this disappearance, following Ibáñez’ murder – both were extradition to Chile. He has recognized the because that is one of the functions of militants with the Combative Classist occurrence of a historic confrontation not persecution and the “extermination” of the Current. They don’t want to talk about only with the Argentine state, but the “disturbing elements” that impede the Carlos Fuentealba, killed by police Chilean state as well, along with the normal functioning of society. For the same repression in Neuquén during a labor corporations that have devastated reason, we cannot demand anything of our organizers’ roadblock of Route 22nd in indigenous territories without fear of persecutors. They are responsible for the 2007, or Juan Carlos Erazo, killed in reprisal, with the excuse of “progress” [ed. disappearances for trafficking, connections Mendoza in 2008 following a brain abscess – see Return Fire vol.1 pg11]. This is an between the narcos and the police, resulting from an injury when he was hit by ancestral struggle that has lasted more executions of youth in our neighborhoods a rubber bullet and tear gas, during a than 500 years. The RAM is only a small at the hands of the cops, the approval of factory takeover where he worked. They expression of this long struggle. laws raising sentences, playing with the want to forget that on June 17th, 2010, lives of prisoners, responsible for the Diego Bonefoi was murdered by police in Harassment and persecution not only by application of new technologies for social Bariloche, shot in the back of the head. On the forces of order, but also by the control, for the destruction of natural the next day, the neighborhood organized business owners and the media is territories in order to put up concrete walls a protest, and two more youths were killed disgusting. They try to justify both and plantations of soy or GMO corn – in the resulting police repression: Nicolás repression and the advance of everything that turns the wheels of Carrasco and Sergio Cárdenas. On neocolonialism. They throw out headlines capitalist progress. October 20th of the same year, Mariano alleging that the Mapuches are connected Ferreyra – a militant in the Workers’ Party to the FARC [ed. – Revolutionary Armed We feel that they have tried to – was shot twice and killed by Forces of Colombia, Marxist­Leninist depoliticize our comrade. They have strikebreakers from the Railway Union, guerrillas], that they have military assault attempted to deny his anarchist during a protest organized by workers weapons, that they are “fake indians”, and convictions, and they have tried to hold him whose jobs at Roca Railways in many other idiocies. up as a slogan for one more political Avellanada had been outsourced. During campaign. On one hand, Cristina Kirchner the Kirchner era, indigenous peoples For us as anarchists, it’s impossible not to and her bootlickers seem to have very have had the same fortune. The be angry with the ways that the state short memories: They talk about Santiago, indigenous community member Javier harasses, attacks, and disappears the but they evaporate when we bring up Julio Chocobar, part of a Diaguita community in 59. Tucumán, was resisting displacement long as they remained subservient to the Fascist aforementioned Facundo Jones Huala, asserts alongside other members of the State. Mussolini's problem was that he never that “I'm not Argentine or Chilean. I'm Mapuche. community. On October 12th, 2009, an ex­ had the support of the working class and thus I am pre­existing to both States. I do not want to police member in service of the had to turn to the traditional middle classes. build another nation.” Albeit spoken from a very Thus much of his revolution only remained on different context, we find it interesting to think landowners drove in and started shooting, paper. This was not the situation which faced the over the words of one anarchist in Barcelona: killing and injuring other inhabitants of the Perons. More than 15 years before they took “There's certainly an anarchism as a radical community. On November 23th, 2010, in power, the generals smashed the powerful extreme of liberalism, in which rights are purely Formosa, some indigenous Qom members anarcho­syndicalist trade unions and only small an individual affair, and therefore questions like of the community La Primavera blocked a remnants remained. [...] Eva Duarte­Peron was culture and language – these are collective road to reclaim their lands. The police able to build a labour movement by filling an realities, realities that don't make sense on an repressed them violently, murdering two organizational vacuum (and where necessary individual scale – don't have any importance; members of the community, Sixto Gómez smashing her weakened opponents). Thus and that strain of anarchism in my mind takes a and Roberto López… Peronism (Argentine fascism) had a solid base fairly Eurocentric read of national liberation among the workers. With prodding from the ever­ movements, only understanding them in a energetic Evita, the movement nationalized the European or Western context in which national This has not only taken place under banks, insurance companies, mines and liberation movements are always nationalist and Kirchenerism. All governments are of one railroads. As a result, Argentina had probably always seek the creation of a new nation­state. color, and have dozens of repressive the largest state­capitalist sector outside of a Whereas a vision that focuses more on cultural murders on their hands. Further back there Stalinist regime. Wages were forced up by and linguistic self­determination would realise are Víctor Choque, Teresa Rodríguez, decree and a host of social benefits introduced that nationalist movements also destroy that self­ Mauro Ojeda, Francisco Escobar, Aníbal for Los Descamisados (literally “the shirtless determination [through the homogenizing force Verón, Carlos Santillán, Oscar Barrios, the ones,” the working class followers of the Perons). inherent to all State­building projects.] Such a youths Maximiliano Tasca, Cristian Gómez, Even the Church was attacked. The “anti­ view would also take into account various anti­ imperialist” game was played to an excess, colonial struggles that were not fighting for a new Adrián Matassa, Miguel Bro, Javier alternating between violent anti­Americanism State but that were fighting against the Barrionuevo, Petete Almirón, Dario and anti­British sentiment. The foreigner was imposition of the State (as a Western artifact). Santillán and Maximiliano Kosteki, and so made the scapegoat for all of Argentina's And you could also consider that probably the many more who have been beaten, problems” (Larry Gambone). The Peróns gave four most revolutionary, multitudinary examples tortured, disappeared, and murdered by their name to the political movement known as of anarchism in practice would be the forces of order – in neighborhoods, in Peronism (a political phenomenon that draws Cataluña/Aragón 1936, Machinovchina in 1919, police precincts, in psychiatric hospitals, in support from both the political left and political the Balkans commune in 1903 and the Shinmin brothels and jails. right), which in present­day Argentina is commume in Manchuria in 1929; three out of represented mainly by the Justicialist Party. four of those arose in part because anarchists took part in an anti­statist, anti­nationalist way. Their hands are bloody – soaked with the 3. ed. – A flammable oil containing various So there's certainly a rich history there and a lot blood of the marginalized, the blood of hydrocarbons, obtained by the dry distillation of of room to maneuver that doesn't put us in the illegals, the blood of rebels. Passivity is not organic substances such as coal, shale, or dead­end of nationalism.” More strongly, another an option: it’s time to demand vengeance petroleum. comrade from the same territory describes the Vengeance against the executioners, and 4. ed. – Rising prices for transport, electricity, more 'radical' version of this liberalism: “Starting vengeance for the life of misery they have gas and food as well as austerity measures are from the fact that “every nation and all cultural imposed. Vengeance for their constant a part of this, having provoked a general strike in identity is an artificial social construct of violence. There has never been peace, April. domination,” there is a cosmopolitanism straight with so many dead, and we know who is out of a catalog that, under the mask of a sort of fictional “nihilism” (culture is domination, ergo, responsible. We know their names, their 5. ed. – Argentine politician and a former senior police officer responsible for various tortures and deny culture, we deny civilisation completely, titles, and their intentions. They try to call murders from the 1970's onwards, now jailed. In forgetting that our own anarchist ideas and us infiltrators, to call us violent, and we 2008 while Patti's actions during the 1970's were nihilism itself are cultural constructs and fruit of reply: WE CAN BE WORSE STILL… still under formal investigation the Supreme that same civilisation) plays the game of Court of Argentina ruled that he should still be domination without even stopping to reflect on it. allowed to take his seat in Congress. It is common to find among anarchists, 1. ed. – A political group formed by supporters of especially those anarchists born in the so­called the late Néstor Kirchner, president of Argentina 6. ed. – The Toba people, also known as the “First World” and in countries or regions where from 2003 to 2007; and of his wife Cristina Qom people, are one of the largest indigenous there have been no centrifugal tensions, that Fernández de Kirchner, president 2007­2015. groups in Argentina, and historically inhabited slogans, in principle valid and legitimate, such as the region known today as 'the Pampas' as well “Neither Homeland nor Borders” or “The Poor 2. ed. – “Peronismo, largely the invention of as parts of Bolivia and Paraguay. Have No Country”, become an apology for a sort [Juan Domingo] Peron's brilliant wife, Eva, was of “citizenship of the world” more false than a 7. ed. – The Wichí are a large group of peoples the nearest thing to perfect fascism that ever plastic coin. I ask all these people: what is more ranging about the headwaters of the Bermejo existed. Forget about all the propaganda and cosmopolitan than neoliberal globalisation, River and the Pilcomayo River, in Argentina and foolishness that has encrusted around the word cultural homogenization, the disappearance of Bolivia. “fascist.” Forget about Nazi­fascism and the identities and cultures, the ways of being, clerical fascism of Franco [ed. – see Who Is It?] 8. ed. – The traditional range of the Guaraní is in existing and acting in a territory, and the and [António de Oliveira] Salazar [dictator of present­day Paraguay between the Uruguay imposition of what I would call “substitutes for Portugal 1932­1968]. By fascism I mean the true River and lower Paraguay River, the Misiones uprooting”; that is, this vulgar culture of essence of that was a revolutionary movement – Province of Argentina, southern Brazil, and parts emptiness, where no­one knows, understands or or left­wing fascism. True pure fascism, as of Uruguay and Bolivia. relates to their territory and environment envisioned by Mussolinin [ed. – see Who Is It?], because of the lack of a worldview that allows grew out of the militant left­wing of Italian 9. ed. – We don't know enough about the them to understand and attack their conditions of Socialism. It was an attempt to impose the Argentine context to say, but for sure there are existence from their own context; where the Social Democratic program through dictatorship Mapuche in struggle in Chile who do not want to same products are consumed here as in China, and armed force. The movement dispensed with erect an 'independent' nation­state, Mapuche or with the same canned flavors; we speak the the sterile positivism and evolutionism of otherwise (see Return Fire vol.1 pg68, not to same colonising languages, and we think of the Orthodox Marxism, substituting romantic mention problems equating indigenous concepts same terms and the same frameworks that have emotionalism, extreme nationalism, a cult of the of place to a possessive, territorial, noun­based been instilled in us all, without even asking will and of the “man of action.” The goal was to language like English); obviously alongside ourselves where all that comes from: beyond nationalize industry and subordinate all classes others who do, comprising a very heterogeneous repeating that “everything is a construct” and to the needs of the State. The working classes movement. Hence there is no single 'Mapuche conforming to that?” (The Unbearable Folly of were to benefit from this revolution – but only so struggle'. In Argentina, Isabel Huala, mother of Being: a Critique of Referendums & Anarchism). 60. When one speaks of totalitarianism, thought runs immediately to a form of WHO IS IT? implacable domination that has historically been embodied in the figure of a single [ed. – This text dates back to the early 2000's; germinates in. But we could also say that despite dictator. Hitler the Fuhrer [Germany, 1934­ since then, if anything we have seen an the legitimacy the figures of the banker, the cop 1945], Mussolini the Duce [Italy, 1922­1943], intensification of the totalitarian aspects that and the politician have lost, it is precisely democracy exhibits, for example in the wave of democracy that has rejuvenated that system in Franco the Caudillo [Spain, 1939­1975], expansionist wars the Western powers have country after country via people's enchantment Stalin the Little Father [Russia, 1922­1953], undertaken to install regimes (itself nothing new, with the new political parties that rose from the Ceausescu the Leader [Romania, 1965­ but with an more explicit emphasis on the ashes of abandoned self­organised forms 1989], Mao the Great Helmsman [China, compulsory moral character of democratic values coalesced during those uprisings or movements; a 1949­1976], Pinochet the generalissimo than they permitted themselves when they still had recuperation aided in some places by some to compete with the Communist powers for an anarchists misplaced promotion of so­called 'direct [Chile, 1972­1990]: all are examples of image of liberty; in the age of 'anti­terrorism', democracy' (see 'The Matter of Knowing Who dictators from a not too distant past that is anything to endow the cowed mass with an illusion We Are'). We would do well at such moments to nevertheless considered difficult to repeat. of protection or integrity against the phantasmal remember how alone we stood against this In the course of the past few years we threat is justified as de facto 'democratic'). For democratic totalitarianism in the days before have been experiencing the end of the era example the previous Prime Minister of the U.K. austerity or whatever other flash­points, because of individual dictatorship as this form of passed laws giving police powers to apply for court this is both the place referenced in this text, and power receives nearly unanimous orders to limit the “harmful activities” of individuals the place we are returned to in the places where creating a “threat to the functioning of democracy” passing anarchist influence in moments of rupture condemnation. And if in a few parts of the (more specifically citing those whose activities aim has again waned. world, regimes still survive that are led by at a “purpose of overthrowing democracy”); bans strongmen, the tendency to replace them include publication on the web and social media or Finally, we join the author/s in emphasising the with modern democracies is taking hold in print anything not submitted to the police for falseness of the dichotomy between dictatorship without much dispute. The Fuhrer, the approval, and power to close premises where and democracy; the latter has been swift to resort 'extremists' seek to influence others. (One could to welcoming the former when situations get out of Duce and their like have had to give up point out that these measures initially target hand (Franco and Pinochet, both mentioned their place to somewhat disembodied, Muslim cultural groups or others 'at risk of below, both served democratic governments in cold systems of domination, without radicalisation', while at the same time seeing 'anti­ militarily vanquishing rebellions before coming to surprise, from which the human hate' discourse already levelled against anarchists power as autocrats), and comrades of countries element is almost completely banished. and other liberationists, as in the U.S. to designate that have transitioned from dictatorship (including anti­police violence, or the trial (still) pending but not limited to Greece, Indonesia, most of Latin But a dictatorship – a totalitarian against comrades in Belgium (see Return Fire America, etc.) frequently point out the continuation system – does not necessarily have to vol.4 pg68) for actions and propaganda against of one in the other; see our ending chronology...] be led by a single individual to be 'victimised' Eurocrats...)

However, it's important to mention one difference today; for the first “ “And that reminds me,” [the driver said,] “you better get out soon[...] time in decades, the elite I got orders wherever there's a family not moved out – if I have an accident – you know, consensus over the neo­liberal strategy of capital (free trade get too close and cave the house in a little – well, I might get a couple of dollars. And my agreements, de­regulation, etc.) youngest kid never had no shoes yet.” which has dictated the world “I built it with my own hands. Straightened old nails to put the sheathing on. Rafters are wired to system politically and the stringers with baling wire. It's mine. I built it. You bump it down – I'll be in the window with a economically since the second Great World Slaughter appears rifle. You even come too close and I'll pot you like a rabbit.” to be crumbling. But it's probably “It's not me. There's nothing I can do, I'll lose my job if I don't do it. And look – suppose you kill too soon to say where these me? They'll just hang you, but long before you're hung there'll be another guy on the tractor, and cracks actually lead (for example, he'll bump the house down. You're not killing the right guy.” although not limited to the U.S. – “That's so,” said tenant said. “Who gave you orders? I'll go after him. He's the one to kill.” the U.K. exit from the European Union being one obvious correlate “You're wrong. He got his orders from the bank. The bank told him: 'Clear those people out or – the failure to resolve this tension it's your job.'” is perhaps personified for many by “Well, there's a president of the bank. There's a board of directors. I'll fill up the magazine of the U.S. President Donald Trump, who rifle and go into the bank.” mouths off against global trade to win votes but has yet to prove The driver said, “Fellow was telling me the bank gets orders from the east. The orders were: himself willing or capable of 'Make the land show profit or we'll close you up.'” changing this very basis of U.S. “But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don't aim to starve to death before I kill the man wealth; and despite press and that's starving me.” leftist alarmism – amounting to little more than a revision of the “I don't know. Maybe there's nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn't men at all. Maybe, like you authoritarianism of the Obama said, the property's doing it. Anyway, I told you my orders.” presidency before him – and his “I got to figure,” the tenant said. “We all got to figure. There's some way to stop this. It's not like proven willingness to grant the lightening or earthquakes. We've got a bad thing made by men, and by God that's something we resurgent right license to target social movements, is ultimately can change.” The tenant sat in his doorway, and the driver thundered his engine and started off, more an expression of American tracks falling and curving, harrows combing, and the phalli of the seeder slipping into the ground. white supremacist democratic Across the door-yard the tractor cut, and the hard, foot-beaten ground was seeded field, and the traditions than 'fascism'). tractor cut through again; the uncut space was ten feet wide. And back he came. The iron guard bit This was written in the deathly into the house-corner, crumbled the wall, and wrenched the little house from its foundation so that it silence before the wave of fell side-ways, crushed like a bug. And the driver was goggled and a rubber mask covered his nose insurrections finally broke and mouth. The tractor cut a straight line on, and the air and the ground vibrated with its thunder. through to the Global North The tenant man stared after it, his rifle in his hand. His wife was beside him, and the (France 2005, Greece 2008, England 2011, U.S.A. 2014, etc.) quiet children behind. And all of them stared after the tractor.” Today the system must overcome – The Grapes of Wrath more visible social crises than the '90s years that this article surely 61. considered such. One can consider any cudgels except under very specific Today more than ever before, regime in which power is concentrated circumstances; rather it uses the organs of politics is action as an end in absolutely into the hands of a group of information. These don’t leave bruises on people who, thus, come to have control the skin, but preventatively nullify all itself, particularly in its over all aspects of everyone’s existence to awareness, extinguish every desire, parliamentary form in which the be such. From this one can deduce that placate every tension; the individual shuffling of people and things the most important element in a totalitarian dissolves and her [sic] alienation from the serves no other purpose than that world becomes irreconcilable. system is not so much who holds the of disguising not only the power as how it is exercised. It does not matter what reasons such a system adopts Freedom is simply self­determination. It is uselessness of the work, but also to justify absolute control, whether racial the choice each individual makes its essential unity. The numerous purity or the development of markets. It concerning his existence and the world in political parties that throng into isn’t even particularly important whether which she lives. But a choice in a situation the parliament today are the control is secured violently through the in which there is nothing to choose, “natural” heirs of the different presence of tanks in the street or gently by because conditions determined by others means of media anesthesia. It is the limit the situation, is a choice only in name. factions that battled inside the old inexorable application of this control to all Thus, a regime that represses challenges single dictatorial party. As in the aspects of life that counts, the fact that it with blood is denounced as totalitarian; it case of the factions, the various leaves no loophole, it gives no possibility of hinders different choices. But what can parties share the same vision of escape. one say about a regime in which no significant social tumult ever breaks out, a the world, the same values, the Thus, democracy itself is also a form of regime that has nothing to hinder because same methods. Only the details dictatorship – certainly less obvious, it does not even provide for the possibility differentiate them. but not for this less effective, quite the of different choices. As someone has said, Totalitarianism has met with almost “The most perfect police state has no need contrary – that must impose its values universal condemnation everywhere, and for police.” A decisive aspect of the in every field on all individuals and yet every day we can see how democracy totalitarian form – the single party – can social classes for its own self­ is just another form of totalitarianism. And express itself completely now even within preservation. From this perspective, many one of the worst. A modern democracy is the western political systems. consider it the most perfect totalizing rarely shaken by revolt. Democracy has system. The main reason that it has taken hold as the political system most succeeded in replacing the old and Contemporary political analysts themselves are forced to admit that when impermeable to the risk of revolt. Even if obsolete forms of power is that it is not such a revolt managed to emerge, it would merely one of the various forms power can one takes the economic bonds and the increasingly clear agreement on the have difficulty fueling the passions of assume; democracy corresponds to the individuals since it no longer has a role in very essence of capitalism, to the normal principles of the market economy between the left and the right into account, the the collective imagination. And this still functioning of market society in its doesn’t take into account that even in such expansion. Within the marketplace, social discourse and the programs of the great parties overlap more and more. Instead of a hopeful case, the wrath generated would classes don’t exist; there are only “free and not find anyone against which to direct equal” consumers. This “freedom” and presenting objectives that obviously differ from one another, developed through the itself, precisely because in democratic “equality” covers a basic role in the systems power is not embodied in a gathering of consensus, that consensus use of opinion polls, the great governing parties have reached the point where they human being, but is represented by an which represents the highest virtue of the entire social system. democratic system in the eyes of its no longer divide on specific objectives… supporters. These considerations no longer succeed in It goes without saying that the rousing amazement, expressing a situation parliamentary and union institutions never In fact, the classic totalitarian regimes are that has in fact become familiar. Among furnish the governed individuals with based on an exercise of violence that is, the apologists for the totalitarianism of the adequate means for making their claims, paradoxically, a profound sign of market, this familiarity loses all shame and while dissatisfaction – even when weakness. The conditions of life that are becomes inescapable. In his last book generalized – leads in the best of cases to imposed are intolerable – everyone knows celebrating global capitalism, journalist the formation of some current of this – and it is up to the forces for the Thomas Friedman – columnist for the New opposition. When there is not a figure in a maintenance of order to materially obstruct York Times, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes – position to polarize the totality of the the realization of a different life, the does not hide his satisfaction in opposition against itself in an enduring possibility of which still remains as the establishing that political choice has been manner – precisely when there is no conscious aspiration of the majority of reduced to Pepsi against Coca Cola – dictator – in a situation where a governing people. On the other hand, in slight nuances of taste, slight functionary becomes the object of a democratic systems the very possibility political variants, but never any widespread challenge, the normal interplay of a different life is to be deviation from the respected of institutions can even act to eliminate him assumption of the rules of eradicated. To maintain order, the [sic] in order to mollify at least a part of the gold, those of the main democratic state does not take out discontent. The lack of a king whose head street, the multiplicity of its can be cut off, of a strong authoritarian parties, which has been figure capable of drawing popular hatred proclaimed as a sure sign of onto itself, in other words of someone to democratic health because it whom we can attribute the responsibility supposedly guarantees the for the exercise of power, constitutes the possibility of choice, thence of genuine great bulwark in defense of “freedom”, is seen ever more democratic totalitarianism. In the old and clearly for what it is: a caricatured dictatorships, power had the competition between moustache of Hitler or the jaw of Mussolini, identical things. and it could be seen goose­stepping in the street or wearing the black shirt. But today 62. in the modern democracies, who is power? And the aim of the question is not to identify the particular people who exercise power, which is still possible on some level, but to attribute the responsibility for the existence that we lead to them. Over and over again it is said that today there is a single social system managed by people who are mere cogs in a machine, petty functionaries who cover most administrative roles. The very concept of (Not-so-wild)fires rage this September across North America's Pacific coast responsibility comes to lose all meaning. Responsibility is the possibility of can imagine what would happen when consider the functioning of wheels and foreseeing the effects of one’s behavior other factors can be planned. cogs as a global support to a collective and changing this on the basis of such undertaking, rather than to speak in the Here is another example. Numerous customary manner of obedience to foresightedness. But the cog in a machine “experts” have had to agree that the origins has no foresight; it has no need of leaders. In this light one would never have of the huge storms that periodically strike to ask those who collaborated and obeyed foresight; it can never do anything but spin. the coasts of the United States and Therefore, it is no longer possible to “why did you obey?” but “why did you give eastern Asia are undoubtedly found in support?” If these observations don’t attribute the fault for an action to anyone, climactic changes brought about by human even if the action was most aberrant. minimally shake up the conscience of activity. On the other hand, in the face of anyone who finds themselves reading the series of earthquakes that shook the Let’s look at an example taken from the them today, naturally it is because they entire planet in the summer of 1999, the realm of what is commonly called “judicial refer to persons who served a dictatorship experts thought it good to reassure public errors”. Consider a man who has been of the classical type. Under Nazism – opinion that in this case at least the sentenced to prison for life but actually did Hannah Arendt tells us – all those who responsibility lies elsewhere, in the not commit the crime of which he was collaborated with the regime were equally unfathomable workings of nature. This may accused. He is placed under investigation, responsible. When power is embodied in be true, but whatever they say about the arrested, incarcerated, tried, sentenced one man, the Man himself is responsible causes, they fail to consider the effects of and kept segregated for the rest of his life. for it as well as the “black shirt”, as the these cataclysms. If seismic tremors Who is responsible for all this? In the old partisans who shot the adolescent “black escape human control, we are facing a totalitarian systems, the response was shirts” without posing themselves too many natural fact in which we are unable to much too simple. Everyone would have ethical questions well knew. On the other intervene and to which we can only submit; seen the unfortunate fellow dragged away, hand, when power has no name or but when these tremors destroy the condemned and locked up by the hired surname, no single person is more modern cities of Greece causing deaths thugs of the dictator who would have been responsible than any other. Thus, the very and injuries while leaving the acropoli considered responsible for the injustice people who justify the shooting of a 16­ intact, then we are facing a social question. perpetrated. In modern democracies, on year­old “black shirt” are horrified, at the To build houses, apartments, entire cities, the other hand, no one is held responsible. same time, by the violent death of a using building techniques and city planning The police officer who arrested him is not personage of the democratic state. projects intended to bring the highest level responsible since he was limited to of economic profit and social control carrying out orders from someone else. without considering even the most Nor can we blame the prosecutor although But were these young “black shirts” of elementary safety precautions cannot be he asks for the sentence, because he does yesterday actually more responsible than considered among the inborn human not decree it; this is done by someone the president of the United States for characteristics. else. Even the judges are not at fault since rendering our existence intolerable? We they have to make a decision on the basis In the end, who is responsible can’t get rid of the thought that personal responsibility persists not of evidence presented to them by for the thousands of deaths on someone else and then apply the only under the Nazi dictatorship but provisions of a penal code compiled by the job? Who is at fault for under the democratic one as well. It someone else. Finally, one cannot blame poisoning nature? Who do we doesn’t nullify the responsibility of its the guard, who as the last link in this chain, hold accountable for the wars, functionaries. If it dilutes this is certain to have a clean conscience responsibility, it does so to disguise it, unlike someone else. Yet that man finds the massacres, the deaths of to render it impalpable, invisible to our himself there in prison, and it is his body millions of people? Is it possible eyes. In the threadbare dialogue with that is enclosed behind bars, not that of to exit from this dense fog? which dominant thought has entertained someone else. Thus, in the dictatorships itself for decades now, responsibility is said that once existed the fact that power was In a famous essay entitled “Personal embodied in one man made him Responsibility Under Dictatorship”, which responsible along with his underlings, but took a polemic that arose from the trial of in modern democracy the distribution of Nazi Adolf Eichmann as its starting point, power through out the social apparatus Hannah Arendt recalled that the principle removes responsibility from everyone argument of the defense was that without distinction. Eichmann had been a mere cog, but regardless of whether the defendant is This exists as a social reality that is quite incidentally a functionary, he is in fact tangible, concrete and above all tragic. It is accused because a functionary remains able to grind up human life without anyone a human individual. In order to clear the being blamed. And if this happens when field of a confusionism that could only 14.06.17, London, U.K.: Grenfell flats, human responsibility is indisputable, we serve self­interest, the writer invites one to after repeated legal threats to the residents who warned likelihood of fire 63. to have gone through the same shipwreck that is supposed to have made History, “Democracy is not something supernatural, DEMOCRACY'S Meaning, Reality sink forever. All one something far from our selves. It’s our daily life. needs to do is stop listening to this DISCONTENTS chattering for a moment and here is what It’s the way we describe the cultural poverty of the 19.11.17, Viña del Mar, Chile: Street one would see: these alleged shipwrecks modern mega-cities; the emptiness, the poverty, the loneliness, the alienation. Today, democracy blockade on the voting day for the that never were such reappearing. first round in the Presidential receives proud laudations by ‘inflated’ politicians, All discourse that sets out to compare Elections. “Each Forest cut, each ‘firm’ prosecutors, ‘uncorrupted’ cops, ‘truth- Lake and River that dries, each Hill human life to the functioning of a loving’ journalists, ‘charity activist’ wealth owners. devastated, every species that is machine, in that unrelenting process of And is now the time that we have to strip extinct ; each one of the Cabros that making the individual disappear, omits democracy from its ‘sanctity’ and throw it where it falls into the trap, who are repressed one thing: individuals are not cogs, and beaten by the police and live deserves: in the cesspool of history. And it’s now they are human beings. They were through the abyss that is prison; that we have to finish with this alienation that human animals under the Nazi dictatorship every Peñi and Lamgien beaten, and are such under that of the democratic submits subconsciously the illusions – the illusion tortured and killed in Wallmapu [ed. – see We Can Be Worse Still]; each state as well. The difference between a of the ‘most perfect’ regime in history, the illusion of normality, equality and peace.” Woman abused by a priest, each cog – which is a mere piece of metal – and Child violated and killed in the youth a human being should be evident. A – December 6th (see Return Fire vol.2 pg98) detention centres… each, and more person is always in a position to discern of these same miseries that are and choose. If this is not so now, if one has “Carl Schmitt, the influential German political endorsed by the violence and the indeed become a mere cog, this would be theorist, jurist, and unrepentant Nazi whose work very existence of the state, they are further confirmation of the totalizing and was later taken up by the neoliberals at the also the miseries that are totalitarian reality in which we find University of Chicago, said that government was guaranteed to those who believe in and perpetuate democracy.” ourselves unable to live, and of the urgent not a monopoly on violence, but a monopoly on necessity of its overthrow. In any case, the decision. This seems true. In fact, the State permits 18.10.17, Santiago de Compostela, social system in which we live is not an and depends on private violence in the form of Spain: An early­morning molotov is inherent aspect of the world; it is a patriarchy, racism, employment conditions, fascist launched against the residence of the president of the Xunta de historical project. We are not free to decide street gangs, and so on, in order to maintain itself. Galicia, currently occupied by the whether or not we are born into it, but we What the State requires, in order to maintain power, president of the PP (ruling Popular can decide whether and how to live with is the prerogative to decide, in increasingly Party, directly set up by the fascist it. From the moment we accept taking on miniscule spheres of life, what is allowed and what regime during the transition to one of its roles, participating in its isn’t; to decide the course of the country and post democracy to retain the old guard). The same night, three ATMs are also administration, we accept the facto legitimate and regulate the initiatives taken by responsibilities implicit in this. Being easily torched, as is another one dawn the the capitalists. And when some social power interchangeable particles of a very following day. The first wave of contests the reigning order, the State must be attacks coincides with a day called in complex system does not free us from our involved in the resolution. The pacifists are wrong all Galicia to demonstrations about responsibilities, because we could have when they say that violence is the government’s the recent wave of over 50 chosen to refuse that system. Thus, even concurrent fires in the Galician and strong suit. If they ruled through violence they in this case one cannot excuse herself by Asturian mountains (the worst for saying that he only obeyed, that she only would never have legitimacy. In fact, the years in these 'green deserts' of followed the current, that he only did what government’s strong suit is communication. It is to eucalyptus/pine monoculture everyone else did. Because before occupy the central position, the role of mediator and forestry, itself already an industrial obeying, before following the current, protagonist, in any decision. It will make itself disaster and plan of Franco's regime before imitating others, a human being feared if it has to, but above all it survives by to turn the region's ecology into a sacrifice zone). The PP maintain poses herself, must pose himself, a making itself heard and making itself necessary, to very close ties with the paper­ question: would I consider it appropriate to the point where people cannot imagine a solution to pulping company ENCE, the main do this? And then she must answer a social problem that is not tailored first and responsible for much of the Iberian himself. Just like the Germans of whom foremost to the needs of state. This is exactly why Northwest monoculture; including Hannah Arendt spoke – we too are in the [anarchists] refuse to make demands. We will not the marriage of the much­hated situation of having to choose whether to ENCE plant in Pontevedra's director dialogue with the State, we will not sit down to chat give our support or at least our consent to to the Deputy Director General of with Capital. We will not tell them what we want this social organization or not. Once again Environmental Coordination of the because they already know: we want them to die. choice comes into play. In the myth of Er, Department of Environment, Territory and Infrastructure of the Plato makes the destiny of each person [...] The police know that we propose solutions to Xunta de Galicia. This PP president depend on the choice each one makes of their violence because they use the literature seized from our homes as evidence in the trials against us. had just extended the life of the their model for life: “There was nothing ENCE plant another 60 years... necessarily preordained in life because The politicians know we envision a world without each person had to change according to their authority because we talk about it in the July 2016, Sydney, Australia: “Over the past two months some the choice she made.” Now, we can communiques that accompany the bombs placed anarchists around Sydney mounted choose to give our contribution to the outside their houses. The journalists know we a campaign against politics and the maintenance of this world. Or else we can criticize their control of culture and information democratic process. This election choose to withhold it. In either case, we because they fancy themselves investigators and we takes place in a period of historic make a choice for which we alone are put these texts for free on the internet. And what disillusionment with the political spectacle and the politicians who responsible, not someone else. If it is true they all know is precisely what they refuse to say in that “the original choice is always present represent it, and never before have those embarrassing moments when they must admit so many parties been on offer, to in each subsequent choice”, then we must that we exist: they have no place in our future. We direct that mistrust back into the also know how to accept the are going to destroy them.” electoral process. We reject this consequences of our actions. All of us, process in its entirety. Elections are – The Logic of Not Demanding no­one excluded. a charade to confuse us about where power lies, and how things can be 64. changed. With the following petty acts of anti­ political sabotage, we draw a line. Thousands of anti­electoral posters were pasted up throughout VEGANISM: WHY NOT Sydney. Hundreds of anti­political slogans were painted across the city. A dozen banners were – an anarchist perspective tied to highway overpasses. Political advertising of every party was vandalised, or taken down lifestyles that could be and later burnt. Party activists caught spreading described as vegan. It is political propaganda were confronted, harassed and sometimes relieved of their material. Unlike rather directed at the very every political party we do not measure success intersectionality that people based on opinion polls or ballots.” choose to identify as an important common ground – 18.06.13, Paris, France: “A week after the based on the argument that murder of a comrade[*] in Paris by fascists, a week after the ever­so­democratic police raid there actually is no common [against undocumented people] in Barbès… a ground there – and at the bank ATM burned[,] the window of the Pré St­ motives and beliefs behind Gervais Socialist Party section shattered by that identification. blows, [the headquarters of the Left Front] completely covered with tags. […] Neither democracy nor fascism!” The New Thing * ed. – Clément Méric, militant syndicalist and anti­ The rate at which veganism is fascist, beaten to death by two neo­nazis being promoted by hipsters, Proponents of an ideology typically fail to 31.03.13, Aceh Tamiang, Indonesia: “[W]e NGOs, and – increasingly – businesses, burned down 3 buildings owned by the Major of distinguish between those who have not leaves no room for doubt that capitalism, Aceh Tamiang, Hamdan Sati. […] We have no yet encountered the new ideas they offer, the perennial opponent of animal citizenship because we are borderless. We are and those who have absorbed these ideas liberation, to say the least, has become the the angry ones who light the fire of freedom.” and moved on. The very point of an new best friend of veganism. Of course, ideology is that you’re not meant to move capitalism also buddied up with the 17.06.12, Athens, Greece: In the early evening of the election day, around ten people enter a on from it; however every ideology, at the feminist movement, and only the stupidest polling station and burn the ballot box. Two very best, has only been a resting point in anarchists took that as a reason not to fight police officers guarding the polling station are an onward theoretical journey. patriarchy. However, the fight against attacked and have to be taken to hospital. patriarchy and the feminist movement are “Everything around us seems to unwind in Anarchism, I would argue (perhaps simply not necessarily the same thing; there have coercive binaries: memorandum/anti­ because I don’t wish to move on from it), is also been intelligent critiques of particular memorandum, drachma/euro, fascism/anti­ more a body of thought, a legacy and feminist movements as the best form of fascism. […] Yet we don’t for a moment forget tradition of revolt aiming towards total struggle against patriarchy, which, the only real binary: Revolution or consistency freedom from all coercive authority. Its with the existent. [The 1,000ml of petrol that we regardless of their validity, have made for various ideologies – syndicalism, placed in the ballot box] are our 1,000 votes, they healthy debate. Likewise, fighting the are our 1,000 challenges in an unpacifiable war.” primitivism – have constituted resting exploitation of animals and veganism are points, while a few guiding principles have not the same thing, and the question of 30.05.12, Bristol, U.K.: Broken windows, paint­ remained permanent, but by no means whether the latter is useful for the former is bombs and tags for the Bristol Conservative ahistorical. Association. “Brand A, or Brand B, Pepsi or also necessary to debate. Cola, Labour or Conservative, we are allowed to It would be a mistake to critique It is vital to note that green capitalism is chose anything we want as long as it’s within the becoming the predominant strategy to pre­written guidelines of capitalism, the state, veganism as an ideology, or as a and the myth of democracy.” body of thought and tradition of allow Capital to survive what may be the practice, because there do not even biggest crisis it has ever created [ed. – see 21.05.12, Genoa, Italy: A device blows up in a exist any vague guiding principles New Technologies, Extraterrestrial skip next to the polling station in Rapallo, two Exploitation & the Future of Capitalism]. cop cars are torched in the same area outside that all or nearly all vegans share. A Veganism plays a demonstrable role in the police HQ, and more skips were burned great many vegans do not believe it is greening capitalism. Every vegan who has outside another polling station. absolutely wrong to kill other animals absolutely wrong to kill other animals ever spouted a statistic about the amount 24.10.11, Montevideo, Uruguay: Arson on the for food, and an increasing number of water used to produce a pound of beef seat of the Communist Party; “we decided to hit do not believe in animal liberation in or the amount of methane emitted by the the democracy/dictatorship of the progressive any radical sense of the term. world’s sheep is actively supporting government. […] Against the milicos of [ ] capitalism by participating in a great smoke dictatorship and the squaddies of democracy! * ” Veganism can only be fairly critiqued as an * transl. – The democratic regime had granted the screen which hides the true nature of how former dictatorship amnesty. intersectionality, a minimal practice of the present economic system actually abstinence that for a variety of reasons 09.01.10, Athens, Greece: Bombing outside the functions. All talk of efficiency is coming very different people choose to identify as out of the mouth of Capital itself. Greek parliament. “Democracy’s new social an important common ground. For many, contract is ratified across western capitals: in­ Historically, capitalism has needed an ever between confiscated cars, endless queues the motive is social, to signal belonging to growing population, although in the future it forming outside social security services, the a group or completion of a trend, justified may find a way out of this obligation. But torturing take place inside police stations, new on the grounds of health or ethics. For for the meantime, capitalists must find a cell phone special offers, flat­screen TVs, others, the motive is revolutionary, to way to feed a larger population on less, unemployment benefits, psychological problems develop that minimal practice of and in the wealthy metropolis, veganism and loneliness, upsurges of nationalist pride and abstinence into a maximal practice that provides the perfect solution[1]. unpaid loan installments. And most importantly, might seek, among other things, animal non of this was forced upon anyone, nor was it rights, animal liberation, or the abolition of As stated in the introduction, veganism in carried by the order of some junta generals. [...] This is why we claim that democracy is the all domination and exploitation. its totality is not an ideology or a tradition technique and the ability of power not to be of struggle; it only exists as these things for understood as oppression.” As such, this critique of veganism is not a minority of those who identify as vegans. at all directed against particular diets or In its totality, veganism is only the identity 65. of those who choose it. Because veganism exists as a chosen common “In some manner or another all forms of life eat some other living thing and then, ground between those who struggle for in turn, are eaten by someone else. Our deaths are usually sad for ourselves but, as Juan animal liberation and those who are Matus [ed. – of the Yaqui; see Return Fire vol.3 pg59] points out so well, our deaths are actively working to save capitalism, not also gifts for someone else, if only for micro-organisms. Human beings, for example, to mention to vacate any struggle they stalk and eat all manner of plants, animals and birds, but we in turn are hunted and eaten come in contact with of its radical by other living animals as well as by bacteria and other tiny living things. Ultimately, of content, it could only be justified if it course, worms, bugs and plants will feed upon our bodies and help [the earth] to digest inarguably were the only way to us. [Earth's surface] is largely comprised of the transformed bodies of our relatives who coherently live and fight for anarchist have been dying for millions of years. “Soil fertility” is, in large part, nothing but a ideals. This, I will argue presently, is not measure of the extent to which a particular bit of ground is saturated with our dead the case. (One could also counterargue ancestors and relatives. Death, then, is a necessary part of life. […] Killing is a serious that veganism is potentially useful as a business and it requires spiritual preparation. Moreover, one should feel the pain and common ground if it serves subversively as sorrow of killing a brother or sister, whether it is a weed, a tree or a deer. If one does not a sort of gateway drug into more radical feel that pain, one has become brutalized and “sick.” ” – Jack D. Forbes politics. Given the self­evident facts that more people are turned away by veganism than attracted to it, and that those who are people whom anarchists wish to dominate project of engineering the very meaning of attracted to it tend to be wealthier and at the end of the day. Rather, kings and life. A right to life could also be hipper, veganism makes for a other authorities constitute a political safeguarded by a shared community simultaneously uninviting and anemic project of domination, and killing them is a ethos, but such a community determination gatekeeper.) rejection of their project, a demonstration would be powerless against the realities of that their control is imperfect, and an nature (unlike the State, which has the Animal Rights invitation to more acts of rebellion and capacity to reengineer nature). And nature Animal rights is a common objective for disorder that will end, if successful, not knows no rights; once it gives us life, it only those vegans whose motivations are with more subjects, but with no subjects, guarantees us the certainty of death. The ethical, and not only based in health or and therefore no domination. Western tragic ideal, which is inextricable fashion. I don’t know why these people from the capitalist war against nature, hate other animals so much that they Killing need not be an act of negation, presents death as a bad thing, and would wish rights on them, but I imagine either. It can also be the foundation of a apparently so do some vegans, but to the their malice stems from an ignorance of relationship. The lion is not the king of the rest of us, this only appears as the meaning of rights, of the policing of jungle (nor is it even a typical member of a philosophical immaturity. living relations in a legal framework, of the jungle ecosystem, to get pedantic). The democratic project [ed. – see 'The Matter predator does not dominate the prey, nor One could, in counterargument, make a of Knowing Who We Are']. Because a does it negate them. It enters into a distinction between death by natural propensity towards democracy is one of relationship with them, and this relationship causes and death by killing, but this only the most common strategic and theoretical is mutual – or in other words, of a sort that increases a separation between humans faults among anarchists at this time, one anarchists should find interesting and and other animal species. If human ethics must again skeptically question the potentially inspiring. Many animal and the behavior of other animals exist selection of this common ground that liberationists have human exceptionalism in completely separate spheres, then it breeds so many vices. Because the animal so ingrained, they actually reproduce the becomes impossible to talk about rights agenda is so naïve and reformist, I ­ism they are combating (this at least they animal liberation without “liberation” will subsequently focus on the framework would have in common with other identity taking on an entirely Christian or of animal liberation, in an attempt to avoid politicians). If human morality must stand colonial meaning (such as the creating an easy­to­demolish strawman. above natural relations such as the one “liberation of Iraq”). If a human killing for between predator and prey, then it is food is not natural, then we have nothing in Thou Shalt Not Kill hypocrisy to talk of speciesism; we could common with other animals, in which case One of multiple ethical justifications for only talk of salvation. And if we then shift the only honest vegan discourse would be veganism argues that a vegan lifestyle is the terrain of the argument to point out that one of “charity towards defenseless the only coherent realization of the moral the natural relation of predator and prey is animals.” Of course, “natural” is a sophistic truth that it is wrong to kill other animals. If absent in industrial food production, we and often manipulated category anyways the moral prohibition against killing is not would be dishonest to not also admit that [ed. – see Return Fire vol.4 pg92], but coming directly from pacifism or we have no coherent moral qualm against let’s remember that this line of argument Christianity, it can only base itself on an killing for food, merely a contextual begins with a vegan attempt to separate analogy with the fundamental anarchist rejection of killing as an industry. But this “natural” and “cultural” forms of eating. prohibition against domination: killing is a would make us luddites at heart, not Having thus alienated us from nature, a form of domination, and thus it is contrary vegans. to anarchism, except possibly in cases of vegan could make the irrefutable argument self­defense. The analogy is a flagrantly Speaking from the gut for a moment, I find that we have the choice whether or not to false one. Though Authority has long the moral against killing to be utterly kill other animals for food, but this flaunted its legitimate ability to kill, repulsive. I think it’s a disgusting reasoning is circular, resting again on the annihilation of its subjects has always been disconnection from the natural world and assumption that killing other animals is a last resort, and this last resort is always our animal selves. Killing can be a wrong and should be avoided if possible. taken in order to educate the living. beautiful thing. It can also be a tool in the (They may tack on a multicultural [ed. – Domination is only successful when the service of domination. It is not simply and see Fraud, Fantasy & Fiction in subject is kept alive so its activity can be inherently one or the other. Environmental Writing/'The Invention of disciplined and exploited: there’s got to be the Tribe'/Q], demeaning, and victimistic something to dominate. A prohibition against killing seems to be exception for hunter­gatherers, poor people just the idea of rights in disguise. The right with limited food access, and others who There’s nothing un­anarchist about killing a to life is meaningless without a political “don’t have a choice”). It would be more king, because kings are not a type of authority to enforce it and to engage in the logically coherent to argue, also irrefutably, 66. that eating anything is a choice, and given democratic rights from an elite to human involvement in so many world the majority of humankind. This problems, we should stop eating extension was not a gradual altogether. sequence of delayed charity but a violent process that Which brings up the question of eating incorporated the new citizens plants. It’s unfortunate that so many into the rationalistic Cartesian[2] facetious jackasses, when they first hear conception of man [ed. – see about this weird thing called vegetarianism, 'The Matter of Knowing Who think they’re being so clever when they ask We Are']; rights were a trojan why it’s okay to eat plants if it’s not okay to horse for a more detailed eat animals, because there is actually an domination. Vegan morality, in important point to be made here. other words, constitutes another alienation from nature; to The consensus view on why it’s okay to eat prevent killing or the infliction of plants and not animals is because plants pain, human society would have do not have central nervous systems to remove all remnants of (although neither do several members of ecosystem relations from our the animal kingdom) and therefore can feel food production, producing no pain. There are a number of things “There is no difference [between plants and animals human and natural spheres that wrong with this argument. First of all, it is in terms of their aliveness]. That we think there is is ideally do not touch at all. not falsifiable and not empirical (in the best a direct result of our schooling, which has taught us possible sense of this term) to assert that inaccurate maps of the reality around us. Plants have This alienation is most obvious plants do not feel. A great many cultures as sophisticated a neural network as most animals, in in the bizarre aversion to pain that have an infinitely better track record – expressed by some ethical some instances their neural networks dwarf our than the consumer culture that birthed vegans. Rather than own. We are the only culture in the history of the veganism – in living as a respectful part of constructing a sensible ethical world that has forgotten this. To think that plants are their ecosystem and not exploiting animals framework, in which it is simply sentient, as we are sentient, is a huge step. For many insist that all living things have personhood wrong to lock up another living people taking the next step and understanding that [ed. – including much beyond Western thing or to enforce coercive non­ places also contain livingness, that they extend concepts of living/dead; see Return Fire reciprocal relationships with meanings outward to us is even harder. Still, all of vol.4 pg39]. And within the skeptical and other living things, the veganism us have walked into a restaurant with a friend and mechanistic confines of Western science, which is based on a prohibition suddenly stopped and said, “This place feels funny, there are also a number of indications, on of killing permits the the level of organic electrical activity for let’s leave.” If we extend that feeling capacity contradiction of killing plants by outwardly into the wild of the world we immediately example, that plants interact with their elaborating an immorality of the environment in a way that could feel the livingness and intelligence of place. All causing of pain. (As a side note cultures prior to the emergence of Christianity and encompass feeling. They inarguably regarding non­reciprocal Islam understood this. Once we reclaim that display rejection or attraction to different relationships, it is important to understanding it is much harder to treat the outside stimuli, depending on the consequence of recognize the centrality of those stimuli for their wellbeing. coercion in order to distinguish world carelessly, for we know, deep within between non­reciprocal ourselves, that it is as alive as we are alive and that On the other hand, if a complex central caring that we feel interferes with careless attitudes nervous system is the sole basis, in human Authority and non­reciprocal and behaviors. [M]ost of us have been trained to see beings, for the capacity to feel pain, there parasites, the latter inhabiting an the plant world as a simple, and unintelligent are a great many animals with such simple important ecosystemic niche). background to the human world. It takes many years nervous systems that it would be hard to believe they could feel anything more than I find it hard to understand to escape that training, still it proceeds in slow attraction or repulsion to different stimuli. someone who does not increments. The first step is to allow the sense of Exactly why a living being should be comprehend that pain is natural, wonder we had as children to return, to let ourselves valued based on what comes down to its necessary, and good. When we feel the touch of the world upon us and to follow its supposed similarity to human beings is inflict pain on others, our lead. It begins with simple things such as coming something that vegans should have to faculties of sympathy provoke upon a magnificent old growth tree in a forest and explain. a conflict within us, and such being overcome with the feeling that it engenders conflict is also good, because in us.” – Stephen Harrod Buhner If it is domination to kill, why do we respect it makes us think and animals and not plants? If it is wrong to question what we’re doing, cause pain, why do we give animals the whether it’s necessary, and cause for conflict, sympathy, or doubt. benefit of the doubt, and give other living whether there’s also an element of the The depersonalization and degradation of things the short shrift when in neither case beautiful in it. Evolving to eat animals animals that accompanies ideas of human is it certain if or what they feel? Is our only and also to feel sympathy, our biology supremacy is one such ideology that criterion their similarity to us? Could the saddles us with a choice. Either we accomplishes an end run around emotional advanced ethical arguments of veganism form an intimate relationship with that conflict. Veganism, which extends human be little more complex than those PETA which we eat, understand it as a supremacy downwards to include the posters that always champion cute privilege to accompany the other whole of the animal kingdom and puppies, and never crabs or cockroaches? creature in its last moments, and look depersonalizes the rest of the natural world, is another. With both the loud, proud In any case, the downward extension of forward to the day when we will also be meat­eaters and the vegans, the effect is the right not to feel pain to those creatures killed and eaten; or we avoid this the same: to not have to feel sympathy or most similar to ourselves (but only similar difficult process by forming an ideology to us in a mechanical understanding of so we know that what we are doing, a respect for the living beings which you ourselves) closely mirrors the extension of priori, is right, and therefore not a must kill in order to survive. 67. From Boycott to Insurrection are fertilized with manure or slurry from represents how environmental movements A great many vegans do not believe that it industrial meat farms. The commercial of various stripes have aided capitalism. is fundamentally wrong to kill for food, but alternative to this, generally, is chemical they understand the shamefulness of fertilizer, which constitutes mining and the When the reformist environmentalists of locking living beings up in cages, and destruction of the oceans: is veganism in the ’80s promoted responsible therefore of the meat industry. As long as this case any kind of step forward? (Or, to consumerism (e.g. 101 Things You Can Do the meat industry exists, they want no part use another example, when a friend asked to Save the Planet), they played their part of it. Maybe they see their veganism as a me to hand her her jacket, which, she self­ in increasing domestic electricity efficiency boycott of the industry, which, along with righteously pointed out, was not made from in the US. This increase in efficiency other tactics, will bring it down, or maybe it animal skin, her sense of superiority was enabled a decrease in prices, which is simply a coherent emotional response. quickly deflated when I said, “Here’s your allowed an increase in total electricity More likely to approve of freeganism[3], this jacket made from petroleum products.”) consumption, and all the accompanying type of vegan will say that they might eat consequences for the environment. Within meat if they lived in a healthy, ecologically It goes further than this. Imagine a vegan a market economy, a decrease in meat sustainable society, but within industrial vertical monopoly that produces food, from consumption could lead to a decrease in society they consider it impermissible. It is start to finish, without bees, without meat prices, which would lead to a net important to distinguish between these two manure, and hell, let’s pretend they even increase in meat consumption as those types of radical vegans – those who think it use organic fertilizers and pesticides, and segments of the population not yet won is absolutely wrong to eat meat and those don’t use giant tractors that crush moles, over by veganism take advantage of the who think it is situationally wrong, leaving insects, and other animal life. Only rich drop in prices. aside for now non­evangelical vegans who people would be able to afford this food, see veganism as a choice befitting their but regardless of the final price, all profit Some mythical vegan movement that particular struggle – because the moral made from the buying and selling of this became large enough to cause a collapse vegans will often respond to criticisms of food represents a return on investment, a in the meat industry through boycotts and vegan ethics with arguments based on the cash flow that a diverse web of banks, accompanying sabotage would find itself in tenets of situational vegans, confusing the insurance companies, and investors turn a dead end, having promoted a change in distinction between the specific context right around and put into other industries – capitalism that would allow greater they use rhetorically, and the absolute the weapons industry, clothing efficiency in world food production, a ethics they use it to defend. For example, a manufacture, vivisection, adventure higher world population, and the typical response to the first version of this tourism, prosthetic devices, turkey destruction of article deliberately conflated the two factories, cobalt mining, student loans, ecosystems on a arguments, dodging the ethical criticism of it doesn’t matter. greater scale. The veganism by falsely painting it as an alienation from ethical apology for the factory system of Let’s put this more concretely. Every nature would food production. As can clearly be seen in single vegan restaurant in the reach its the preceding section, the ethical criticism world, as long as they meet the logical is based in the possibility of a healthy, minimum definition of a restaurant conclusion: ecological, non­industrial relationship with (selling food) supports the meat most animals our food. In this section, the struggle industry, because in industrial would be against industrial food production is taken civilization, there is no meat freed from as a given, and the only criticism made industry and vegetable industry, there their cages, but against veganism in this respect regards is only Capital, expanding at the they’d be fucked its efficacy in challenging and undermining expense of everything else. all the same. this industry. The vegan argument against stealing meat Not only does veganism While they can be counted on to be less is indicative: if you steal meat, the encourage an ignorance of market manipulative than moral vegans, practical supermarket may lose money, but they will mechanisms, it also conflates vegans generally obscure the true order more meat product to replace their consumption with agency and thus functioning of capitalism and thus hinder stock, so more meat will be consumed. promotes a fundamental democratic the struggle against animal exploitation However, it is the profit made by the myth. People are held responsible for what and ecocide, two phenomena which supermarket that is reinvested primarily in they buy and consume, and therefore the cannot be viewed entirely separately, even food distribution of all kinds, and consumer arena is portrayed as one of free though animal rights, and certain versions secondarily in all other industries choice, rather than a violently imposed role of animal liberation, highlight the former at imaginable. What’s good for veganism, in [ed. – see Return Fire vol.3 pg87]. All the the expense of the latter. this case – buying vegetables and not violence and domination of the capitalist stealing meat – is good for capitalism, bad system is ingrained in the role of the Although it seeks to be strategic for the planet, bad for animals. Ethical consumer, in every corner of a society in nature, practical veganism consumption of any kind is a mirage. All based on the production, buying and creates a false understanding of consumption fuels Capital and hurts the selling of commodities. Except for the most capitalism and a false sense of planet. Stealing meat is better for animals skilled of evaders, and the inhabitants of a than buying vegetables from a few remote jungle and mountain regions moral purity or superiority, both supermarket, but both stealing and buying (all of whom base their antiauthoritarian of which are fatal to the struggle are a dead end as long as we don’t subsistence strategies in part on hunting[4]), against domination. dismantle the industrial civilization that is it is impossible to opt out of capitalism. A destroying the Earth and exploiting or vegan lifestyle in no way damages In the first place, true veganism is liquidating all its inhabitants. capitalism, ends ecocide or animal impossible for anyone who lives within exploitation, or severs one’s material capitalist society. Most fruits and Not only is there no modern example of an connections to even just the animal vegetables are pollenated with bees or effective boycott against an entire product industry, given the interlaced nature of wasps, many of which are commercially category as opposed to a single brand, the industrial society. Assuming that veganism farmed. A substantial proportion of fields very idea of better consumer choices has anything to do with animal liberation 68. would be like calling an anarchist a evolved to absorb their nutrients from food you never were,” simply doesn’t apply to hypocrite for having a job, driving on state and not from pills (in the case of iron, her. She’s someone who is extremely highways, going to a hospital, or dietary pills and “iron­fortified” foods dedicated to animal liberation, who has put occasionally opting to follow the law. The contain the inferior non­heme iron from her freedom and her body on the line, who exploitation of animals and the destruction plant sources); has always been conscientious about her of the environment are hardwired into the diet. In the first few years, she did great – heme iron, which is only found in animal present system. What matters is that we with a vegan diet, but after long enough sources, has an absorption rate of fight this system. What we eat and what she caused herself health problems that between 20% and 35% whereas the non­ we buy or don’t buy in the meantime are she could no longer ignore. Her case is heme iron found in plant sources has an choices whose only ramifications are more dramatic than most, but it’s probable absorption rate of between 2% and 20%; personal. that a lot of the time, what appears to be – absorption rates of heme iron is always the loss of motivation to maintain a diet is The nature of industrial society is high, whereas absorption rates of non­ related to the general loss of motivation completely missed when we see agency heme iron are affected by other dietary that accompanies anemia or a B12 in consumer choices. As long as we take elements (animal protein and Vitamin C shortage. Other times it’s just the case that care of ourselves and our comrades, how raise non­heme absorption rates, soy people are listening to their bodies without we survive the blackmails of capitalism is proteins and the phytic acid found in leafy realizing that’s what they’re doing. unimportant. The only thing that matters greens lowers the non­heme absorption are our attacks against the existing rates); Regardless, when we hear someone tell us system. Political veganism is an exercise in that a vegan diet can work for anyone, and irrelevance. – unabsorbed iron, whether from pills or if we gave up on it it’s because of a non­heme iron, damages cell tissue and personal failing, we know in our bones and It is no coincidence that many of those causes health problems; in our guts that this is just ideological anarchists who reconquered the ability to – lack of iron or especially B12 can build authoritarianism. When we weren’t eating feed themselves – rewilding, scavenging, up over time and take years to manifest in meat, we experienced it the same way or setting up farms – were among the first health problems, but when such problems when some jerk told us we had to eat to abandon veganism. They had left arise they can be gravely serious; animals. Eating, ultimately, constitutes a consumerism behind, inasmuch as they very personal relationship. A sure way to could, and were coming in contact again – there are no vegan foods that are make an enemy is to devalue their diet. with natural realities, and reciprocal naturally high in iron; Which again raises the question of the relationships that don’t fit into easy ethical strategic common ground constituted by – zinc, another important mineral, is frameworks [ed. – see Return Fire vol.4 veganism. Looking at vegans as a whole, lacking in many vegetarian diets, and is pg95]. and at anarchists as a whole, with whom also blocked by the phytic acid in leafy do we feel more affinity? greens; The Healthiest Diet Before I point out some common vegan – B12 is not found in plant sources, a B12 The supposed health benefits of veganism health misinformation, it’s only fair to point deficiency is extremely dangerous but it are not as simple as they are often out the lies on the other side. The most can take 5–20 years to manifest, and its presented. Many of the studies cited by common scientific argument I’ve ever symptoms are masked by the folic acid vegans to their favour do not actually heard against the universal applicability of which abounds in vegan diets; measure a strictly vegan diet, but mix a vegan diet states that people of certain vegans in with those who eat very little in – vegan B12 can only be reliably gotten in blood types need to eat meat in order to the way of animal products (i.e. the studies certain brands of nutritional yeast, survive. I looked it up, and the study is will ask respondents if they eat meat “less although some people’s bodies reject the thoroughly discredited, and it was flimsy to than once a week, two or three times a yeast, or in pills or artificially fortified foods, begin with. Furthermore, to the best of my week, once a day” and so on). Once there which often have low absorption rates. (For knowledge, the dairy industry propaganda are more vegan capitalists, such studies myth­busting regarding vegan foods that that milk is good for your bones is also will surely find their funding[5] (it won’t be are supposedly high in iron, or the false; broccoli, in fact, is much better. But a long now), but until recently, the scientific argument that humans are naturally lot of research and a determination not to establishment hasn’t been so interested in vegetarian, see the appendix [ed. – be suckered by fables from either side has reifying veganism as a category so much omitted for lack of space, but available with led me to the conclusion that not everyone as comparing relative amounts of different can be healthy on a vegan diet. Most of all, the original text at theanarchistlibrary.org]). food groups in a diet. These studies are personal experience and the experiences also affected by the fact that vegans and of friends has corroborated that It follows from the above facts that vegetarians tend to be more health conclusion. some people, provided they are conscious and wealthier, meaning that extremely conscientious about their regardless of the meat question, they’re To the best of my knowledge, the following diet, can live healthily and happily on a putting higher quality food in their bodies. facts are solid, and rarely mentioned by vegan diet. A few will feel bad on such a those vegans who ply the supposed health diet from the get go. And a larger The arguments about meat consumption advantages of their diet: group, after a matter of years, will being bad for the heart are complicated, become increasingly unhealthy and – humans evolved on an omnivorous diet; but vegan interventions in these arguments even develop anemia or other have tended towards simplification. High – different people need different amounts conditions. A friend of mine who had cholesterol in the blood can be bad for the of various nutrients, such as iron and B12; never accepted my arguments against heart, and meat is astronomically higher in veganism finally ended ten years of cholesterol. However, the body is not a – some people have lower or higher veganism only after her body demanded it machine you pour ingredients into. absorption rates of these nutrients; of her. She had developed anemia, a There is no strong connection between – dietary pills are often an unreliable severe shortage of B12, and depression, cholesterol in the diet and cholesterol in source of nutrients, not only because they and was feeling so bad that she was the blood stream. Furthermore, cholesterol are generally produced by profit­interested becoming suicidal. The arrogant, cultish is an important nutrient. Some studies companies, but also because humans commentary of, “if you’re not a vegan now have suggested that animal fats trigger 69. cholesterol build­up in the bloodstream, but Religious Tendencies other studies point out that the former The almost systematic presence of conflate saturated fats from animal sources misinformation in specifically vegan circles with transfats, which come from processed indicates a religious quality to veganism. vegetable oils and abound in many vegan Many vegans consistently formulate their diets. There is a general consensus on the lifestyle as part of a dedicated struggle for harmfulness of transfats, and a multiplicity liberation, but those who are exempt from of studies that allege some health risks the critique of dogmatism should still be and some health benefits from animal fats. asked why they choose to create common What seems to be undisputable is that ground with those vegans who are there are many benefits from animal fats, moralistic and manipulative. and all of the health risks are neutralized by sufficient physical exercise and enough Dogmatism is in many ways reinforced by fiber in the diet. On the other hand, the very construction of veganism. someone who does not lead an active life Veganism creates a righteous in­group on animals struggle against being locked up, and has little access to fresh food should the basis of an illusion of purity. Many of us and nature in general throws down walls not eat red meat, although baked, boiled, have had the frustrating experience of and erodes boundaries. But veganism, in or raw fish will generally improve their arguing with vegans who go in circles, the minority occasions when it is health. claiming that they do not support the meat accompanied by actions for animal industry even after they are forced to An undisputed fact is that in the countries liberation, imposes an ethical space on the acknowledge that all industries are animal kingdom that other animals had no with the longest life expectancy, and interconnected; we are reminded of hand (paw?) in creating. Veganism generally also those with high rates of arguing with Christians whose every proof refuses the possibility of learning from heart health, people tend to eat moderate comes back to the bible, or more precisely, other animals – for me a precondition to high amounts of animal fats, but very their desire to believe in it. The fact that the for real solidarity, but evidently not for low amounts of processed foods. idea of purity or non­responsibility does not them – by rejecting the development of square with how capitalism actually As far as the heart goes, what is most functions, and thus a vegan diet which an ethical framework in which we all certain is that fiber is good for it. There’s does nothing to materially attack the depend on each other and sometimes no point beating around the bush: meat structural causes of animal exploitation eat each other, as in the animal world. has no fiber. But if meat is not crowding cannot be accepted, because the actual On the vegan sanctuary farms, do they put plants out of one’s diet, it probably isn’t bad meaning of veganism, as such, is the the rescued foxes in with the rescued for your heart, and no study I’m aware of embrace of the illusion of purity, the chickens? And if they feed the rescued has demonstrated that meat in moderate entering of the in­group. dogs and cats meat instead of tofu, is it quantities is bad if it is accompanied by okay because they’re just animals, but lots of fiber and exercise. In other words, The existence of this in­group can also be we’ve risen above that kind of behavior? by most accounts, a diet based on fruits, seen in the place of vegetarians on the Such an attitude crosses the line between vegetables, and meat is healthier for most moral hierarchy. Any well read vegan ally and savior. people than a diet based on fruits, knows that, within their own logic of vegetables, and grains. But the heart is responsibility, a vegetarian is just as Go Omnivore not the only organ in the body. What I’ve responsible as a meat eater for animal There are innumerable ways for never heard a vegan mention are the exploitation, because the production of omnivorous anarchists to live coherently studies documenting the negative health eggs or dairy is integrated with meat and formulate a diet that realizes their consequences of a diet lacking animal fats, production, in that morally direct way they struggle for total liberation in their daily life. such as higher rates of depression, fatigue, find somehow more visible than, say, the Necessarily, this great diversity of diets and violent death. Nor do many vegan integration of the transport industry with would have one point in common: the websites mention that soy is toxic when meat production[6]. However, the vegan recognition that, because capitalism is a unfermented (nearly all commercial tofu, who is prone to judge or prosyletize (who coercive and totalizing imposition, purity is and all TVP, is unfermented). Only tempeh is not every vegan, and perhaps not even neither desirable nor possible, thus what a and authentic bean curd pass this hurdle. the majority, but a common enough figure) person eats should not model an ideal but As for seitan, though it is not a soy will place the vegetarian who consumes highlight a conflict. product, the gluten it is made from is bad milk daily higher up on the moral scale for a comparable percentage of the than the omnivore who eats homegrown This could take the form of scavenging or population as the cow milk which vegans fruits and vegetables and eats meat once a stealing to feed oneself. Both of these often demonize. Soy dust is also an week. activities cultivate low intensity illegality allergen that increases asthma rates, and thus antagonism with the dominant particularly in port cities where rainforest Another religious feature of veganism can system. And both, if they are realized soy is unloaded and sent to market. be found in its concept of liberation or within an expansive anarchist practice, solidarity. The vegan model is remarkably suggest possibilities for elevating tactics Given the moralistic weight of the concept similar to the militant Christian charity of and moving towards collective action. In of the “natural” [ed. – see Return Fire the abolitionists, given the fact that they the former case, one can sabotage trash vol.1 pg24], it is no surprise that some are speaking in the name of beings who compactors and other capitalist techniques vegans have alleged meat consumption to do not speak for themselves, and of enclosing an inadvertently created be unnatural for humans. The fossil record, building solidarity with allies who will commons [ed. – see Return Fire vol.4 the diets of the most closely related never criticize or demand anything of pg55] (the trash). In the latter case, one primates, the length of our intestines, and them (in the case of the abolitionists, the can organize proletarian shopping or our ability to digest raw meat all point to an ideal of the mute slave was not a reality but supermarket raids [ed. – see Return Fire omnivorous diet going back to the a desired condition reinforced by the vol.2 pg25]. beginning of the species. The specific general lack of direct communication allegations regarding evolution are between the abolitionists in the North and In places with easier access to physical debunked in detail in the appendix. the slaves in the South). Clearly, many space, such as rural areas or decaying 70. urban areas, one can seize land to create exploiting and betraying ourselves. None why those of us who have already passed gardens and farms and promote the self­ of this is a choice, just a reflection of the through veganism and out the other side organization of our own food supply. This fact that we live in hell. Until the present should be closeted in common anarchist tends to work better, and enable a fuller social order is destroyed and all of the spaces, or treated as less dedicated in the realization of anarchist ideals, if it is cages and prisons opened and razed, the struggle for the end of all forms of modeled on an ecosystem rather than a only choice we acknowledge is negation. domination. factory, which means gardens and farms Unlike the naïve vegan novice out to with animals. Depending on the scale this change the world, we don’t kid ourselves Against consumer society, could include bees, fish, chickens, goats, into thinking we can live our ideals. That’s against civilization, and more. Such projects will pose the exactly why we’re at war. until no one has to live in a cage! difficult but necessary challenge of figuring out a mutual and respectful If we seek to realize our struggle in our relationship among all the species that diet, abandoning veganism creates more live off the farm; planning from within possibilities for self­organization of food, a rather than from above, learning how to mutual relationship with our environment, listen to the other beings that use the bioregional flexibility and sensitivity, and farm and allow them to impact the anticivilizational ethics. If we reject the plans; and adapting new norms for totality of this society or lack access to an dealing with the emotional conflict we autonomous space for maneuver, the only should feel when we kill other living thing that matters is attacking the existent beings. and sustaining ourselves in the meantime. In either case, an omnivorous diet makes In places where we have contact with sense. 1. ed. – “The Animal Aid Society's “Campaign to wilderness, we can – as many people are Promote the Vegetarian Diet” calculates that ten doing now – relearn many important skills Stay Vegan acres will feed two people keeping cattle, ten related to feeding ourselves. If this is truly There is a major operative difference eating maize, twenty­four munching wheat, and done not as a hobby but as the realization between the statements “I don’t eat any sixty­one gulping soya. The same space would of a desire for liberation, it will necessarily animal products” and “I am vegan.” All probably support one or fewer hunter­gatherers. entail conflict with the State and interrupt identity, on some level, is a political choice. There is nothing wrong with their humane effort state narratives of progress [ed. – see The strategy behind the identity of “toward fighting hunger in the Third World” of course, but what is life to be like for the sixty­one Return Fire vol.1 pg11] and citizenship veganism is poorly thought out. The practice of not eating animal products, on people and what do we do when there are 122 [ed. – see 'The Matter of Knowing Who or 488? And what becomes of the Fourth World the other hand, may have a number of We Are']. Where indigenous peoples of tribal peoples or the Fifth World of nonhuman continue to practice their traditional forms justifications. life? The quantitative­mindedness links them of food production, they almost always find philosophically with the nationalistic maximizers themselves in conflict with the State. I don’t care to convince anyone to abandon who assume that military advantage belongs to a vegan lifestyle. There are plenty of good the most populous countries, with the politics of And then there’s another take entirely, reasons to live that way, though the only growth­economists and with the local greed for sales” (Paul Shepard). in which neither our diet nor anything ones I can think of are strictly subjective: some people feel healthier on a vegan diet; else about our lives is purported to be 2. ed. – “[René] Descartes was the man who some people find it emotionally easier or consistent with our ideals. It’s a famously said “I think therefore I am” for those more sensible to struggle for animal possibility that veganism seems to miss who haven’t studied classical philosophy (which liberation if nothing they eat once had a entirely, and it goes like this: many of us is generally, in my opinion, a bunch of white men face; some people do not want to put are poor. We eat whatever we can get from trying to place humans above the rest of the anything in their bodies that lived a tortured world, but that is a whole other can of worms). the dumpster, steal when the security life, and veganism serves as an effective He is also the philosopher responsible for the guard isn’t looking, or buy what we can on psychological barrier against some of the popularization of the contemporary concept of a shitty wage. There is no dietary option in worst atrocities of capitalism, even if the mechanization of the body and the body as this world that satisfies us, not in the practically speaking it makes no difference an individual thing, separate from the context of its existence. Prior to Descartes, people thought expensive eco­friendly supermarket, not in in ending those atrocities or one’s material that their bodies were part of a greater whole: the cheap bulk section of a discount store connection to them. that may or may not exist in our their community and the larger community of the land they lived on. Descartes’ ideas were very neighborhood, and certainly not in the What I intend with this article is to appealing to the ruling class, who were trying to permaculture farm outside of our city indignantly reject the much­tossed­around establish a new order: capitalism. In the infancy where the escapist hippies spend all their argument that it is incoherent for of capitalism, ideas about the body needed to time feeding themselves while the world anarchists to eat meat, and morally change. Waged labour turned the body into goes to shit. superior for them to be vegans. I want to capital, something that exists beyond the natural reach people who are dedicated to the cycles of a wild human body. Capitalism required We eat whatever food we can, sucking principles behind veganism but whose that the ruling class have more control over bodies in order to extract higher profits. down the poisons of this shitty world, just bodies are suffering from the diet, to Reconceptualizing the body as machine, as to live another day and gain another emphasize that it doesn’t work for something that existed to be controlled and put opportunity to wreak destruction, to attack, everybody. I want to attack an ethical to work, served the ruling elite in their to destroy a small piece of what degrades framework I find immature and overly enforcement of budding capitalism. Capitalism us. Cannibalism is the norm in our world. civilized. And most of all I want to also required the newer idea of land We eat our fellow animals, raised in contribute to an end to the days when privatization. Descartes ideas of the “individual”, extermination camp conditions, we wear veganism is the norm in collective something separate from all else, created a clothes made by fellow workers in anarchist spaces, and anyone who does philosophy where land exploitation was sweatshops, we breathe air so polluted it not follow this lifestyle is marginalized in justifiable. Humans who are not connected to a land base have an easier time exploiting it. gives us cancer, we walk down streets every social center, at every conference. There was much rebellion against Descartes paved with petroleum byproduct, and we’re There are a great many reasons against ideas and against the beginnings of capitalism. forced to spend a large part of our time generalized veganism. There is no reason 71. The peasantry did not easily accept the view of law of the human hero. The latter is promised he that for many people it has in fact become body as separate and rebelled against land will become a great hunter if he follows certain synonymous with problem solving. Even people privatization and waged labour. So it was in this rules: “When you kill goats, treat their bodies who are critical of most other aspects of the time that almost 200 different crimes were respectfully, for they are people. Do not shoot culture we live in, find themselves reverting to punishable by death as a means of the ruling the female goats for they are your wives and will science when pushed to defend their ideas, e.g. class to enforce capitalistic ideas and force bear your children. Do not kill kids, for they may anti­civilization anarchists who refer to biology bodies to act as controllable machines” be your offspring. Only shoot your brothers­in­ when attempting to convince about an optimal (Descartes & the Creation of the Individual). law, the male goats. Do not be sorry when you diet, or to anthropology to prove the superiority kill them, for they do not die but return home. of their blue print for future societies. [...] On a 3. ed. – Freegans refuse non­vegan food/goods if The flesh and skin (the goat part) remain in your practical level there is the understanding that they have had to pay for it, but will use it in some possession, but their real selves (the human part) scientists are operating within a system that is cases if they have stolen, found, or been given it. lives just as before, when it was covered with based as much (if not more) on hierarchy and In this way they claim not to support the industry. goat’s flesh and skin.” In other Amerindian funding as it is on paying attention to what is narratives, the hunter becomes a privileged son­ actually going on around us. There are multiple 4. ed. – “Hunting is a social relationship between in­law of the spirit master of the game species by accounts (even from conventional sources) humans and animal persons carried on in terms mating with the master’s daughter. Although the showing that who is funding a study has a and acts that signify, among other forms of neo­Darwinian sciences of our animality, substantive impact on what the study discovers, sociality, respect, reciprocity, propitiation, culminating in the current Evolutionary from tobacco’s impact on health to the possibility sympathy, taboo, seduction, sacrifice, coercion, Psychology, would have it that we still suffer of restricting the spread of genetically modified recognition, compassion, domination, genetically from the ferocity that the human organisms, but these examples are merely the temptation, surrender and various combinations species found adaptive in its long history of most obvious. The more subtle ones have to do thereof. Hunting is a culturally­informed, surviving by the killing of animals, the with how we ask questions (“when did you stop transpecific sociology. People are thus engaged ethnographic evidence is that hunting is beating your child?”), who we ask questions of in transactions with the spirits of animals that generally more involved with making love than (related to the questioner’s access, biases, correspond to exchanges between human making war” (The Western Illusion of Human language, etc.), what questions we think to ask, persons and groups. Especially these Nature). and how we understand the answers we get, as transactions are likely to resemble exchanges well as what meta­interests the questions serve with relatives by marriage, insofar as the latter 5. ed. – One of the reasons we chose not to (how are the assumptions of this culture fed similarly involve fraught negotiations for the prioritise space for the appendix here is a and/or challenged by who, how, and of whom transfer of life­powers from one group to another. skepticism we hold in general towards these these questions get asked?). [...] While on one [Claude] Levi­Strauss relates a tradition kinds of studies (though it's certainly worth hand science is a response to the superstition (originally recorded by J.A. Teit) concerning the reading for description of vegan ideologues' and hierarchy associated with religion, it also origin of the wild goat hunt along the Thompson manipulations within the scientific realm they continues christianity’s theme of a pure abstract River people of Northwest America, in which the appeal to the authority of). Dot Matrix's words on and universal truth, separate from the sludge of goat principal is not only human but a brother­in­ this resonate: “Science is so widely accepted everyday life, with scientists and doctors in the position of clergy that is, people who know more about us than we do. Some people believe in science (as something they don’t understand “My relationship to other animal species is mechanical and that can solve their problems) in ways similar to disconnected. Aside from pets and pests, I relate indirectly to livestock how others believe in god. Some people cite through mediation of an enormous industry which uses techniques I barely scientific references the way that other people understand and which I am shielded from by my life in a city. Unlike with pets, I can cite scripture. Traditionally, science posits a neutral objective observer, a fantastical being to only relate to livestock categorically. I can form no bonds with particular cows, compare to any angel or demon: this neutral chickens, pigs, and fish. I can only consider them all generally, as the multiplied observer has no interest other than truth, which reiteration of livestock I have met and the treatment I am aware that they receive. What comes from information, and information is I am actually presented with in my everyday life are various cuts of raw meat, received inside of laboratories, with carefully products which may or may not be based on animal substances, menus with pictures identified variables and carefully maintained control sets. (The mystification of this awesome of prepared dishes, items that were tested first on other animal species, and observer is only magnified, not ameliorated, by propaganda put out by corporations and/or activist groups. Livestock and lab animals the addition of peer review, in which a body of are represented to me, but they aren’t actually a part of my experience. This is true for knowledgeable colleagues examine the everything I eat, wear, medicinally treat myself with, and use. The world that I live in experiments and data to verify their validity).” is a giant, illustrious production that has been designed by human beings, for human 6. ed. – “Oil spills damage bird­nesting sites, beings… to shelter each of the individuals who can afford it, away from the coat beach habitats in sludge, and poison and wilderness, from agriculture, from mass-production, from landfills, and from slums. directly kill fish, birds, and other marine life. [...] Although there are some cracks through which unwanted elements seep through Pipeline construction destroys wildlife habitat. Oil and into my everyday life: pollution lowers the air quality, global warming fucks with refineries spew pollution into waterways, the weather, a disease will gain entry through products, the tap water tastes terrible, poisoning animals and destroying their breeding sites. This says nothing of the resource wars for animals being transported can sometimes be seen on the roads, a forest fire will make oil that have claimed hundreds of thousands of the headlines, etc. Regardless, the way in which consumption takes place – although lives, and continue to, in Afghanistan, Iraq and changing – doesn’t speak to the origins of the materials very loudly. Before the Africa, as well as destroyed the ecological problem of what to consume is the problem of how to go about consuming. Perhaps integrity of those regions. The fact is, organic even the question of how to go about producing! What would most effectively change soybeans used for tofu, tempeh, and fake meats, just like any other product in the store, use the my relationship to other animal species is those more basic questions which would same industrial distribution system that dramatically alter the way I confront that which I consume. Without those changes, all consumes enormous amounts of oil and other of my consumption choice is derived from abstract considerations, from the world of resources to package, store, transport, and representation. […] There are times when I may feel like I have been tricked and if I distribute food and non­food commodities the had known better, would not consent to the consumption of one product or another. world over. This translates into mountainsides But the fact of the matter is that where consent is concerned, it is my own consent and rivers destroyed from mining fossil fuels, forests cleared for packaging materials, chemical which is to be questioned and not that of the entities which I am making decisions for pollution from the manufacture of the inks, one way or another… whose life quality and quantity is calibrated by the mechanisms adhesives and lubricants, and so on and so of markets and conditions produced by human civilization.” – squee forth. All these industrial processes poison animals and destroy their habitats” (The Harvest of Dead Elephants). 72. ' CONNECTIONS & TRANSFORMATIONS '

[ed. – Drawn from two Paul Shepard essays, 'Animal Rights & Human […] The crucial moment in the hunt is not the “taking” of a life but Rites' and 'Searching Out Kindred Spirits'.] the moment of respect and affirmation for a giving world. […] In the hunt, we focus our attention on the mystery of life-giving [Today's concern for the well-being of animals] has an Oriental[1] substance – a substance available only in death (whether that of expression, a logic by which rights of creatures, so frustrating in plants or animals). [“Rights” and “ethics”] are pale, rational- their semantic and practical aspects, can be serenely refined to the legalistic concepts. In the case of the hunt, such socially defined purity of nonkilling. A recent example of this view was Albert concerns are wholly inadequate. In killing, some people try to Schweitzer, who, combining St. Augustine[2] with Hindu Jainism[3], work down the scale of life as they imagine it – from big, smart was devoted to the protection from death or injury of all life, animals to the mindless fish – hoping at last to eradicate the however minute or inconspicuous. Schweitzer's “reverence for life” butchering of bodies like their own. This frantic perpetuation of life was an endless chain of excruciating decisions in all things medical is deeply inorganic, a denial of our own bodies. and horticultural. His unshakable conviction of the rights of life over death and of the priority of human value did not mitigate It is, in truth, a denial of every aspect of our nature. We are each his sombre sense of judgement and responsibility. For him, too, porous, actively exchanging with the world at large [ed. – see the care of life was associated with giving shelter. He kept captive a Symbiogenetic Desire]. What we take in – and not only as physical small menagerie of wild animals so that he could admire them. As food – becomes some aspect of the self. Perceptually, animals among all wild captives made into pets, these animals were constitute elements of the potential self as it grows. In their amputated from their gene pool and from fellow creatures and taxonomy, animals provide us with the concrete reality of habitat; no amount of loving care could prevent them from categories of existence. In our dreams, they model for us – as becoming neurotic and flabby monsters. reflected in our childhood mimicry in dance and play – our vast range of feelings. Schweitzer's impulse to “extend to all all that respect which we have to our own,” however much influenced by Eastern thought, is The great miscalculation is to say, “Welcome all births, save all clearly related to Western humanitarian social justice. It was part lives.” Compassionate on the surface, its effect is to destroy life, in of the colonial mind, a kind of obligation to those “less the long perspective causing more havoc than does ordinary fortunate” on a scale where rank is confirmed as much by malevolence. The alternative is not an ascetic otherworldliness that responsibility as privilege. Charity has always had something of will “deny birth and welcome death.” Instead, it is as if one were to the readiness to be resigned to a status quo [ed. – and indeed say, “Celebrate new life as provisional, affirm that death will this was borne out in Schweitzer's paternalistic conduct towards balance the scale, and accept that human beings are part of the the recipients of his 'aid' in the colonies, despite his critical whole.” filibuster]. That the relationship between nonhuman species should require human intervention, though as old as the old “dominion” Regardless of food habits, everything from protozoa to tigers precepts in Genesis [ed. – see Return Fire vol.4 pg40], could only incorporates other life to live – other life that must be searched out be acted upon by those who knew themselves to be the instruments and must die. All are hunted in turn. The great predatory carnivores of God's will. Even so, Schweitzer is no exception to the general demonstrate it most plainly, but even they, in the end, are pursued sense of alienation that preoccupied European philosophy and by microbes, fungi, and plant roots. […] Like all human activity, literature at the time [1920's-30's], for it was a strategy in which hunting can run amok – in both killing and estrangement. We all humanism and technology combined to prove human know of the modern abuse of hunting protocol, the secular transcendence. trivialization of killing. […] We are easily seduced by our own empathy because of our fear and outrage at the indifferent […] Apprehension of connectedness to nature is precisely the destructiveness around us. However, kindness towards animals weakness of Western ethics. Marriage and diet are the universal demands a true sense of kinship. To be kindred does not mean that means and symbols of relationship. […] In the cynegetic [hunting- we should treat animals as our babies. It means instead a sense of gathering] view the world is an exquisitely elaborated comity laced many connections and transformations – us into them, them into us, through with eating habits, the most conspicuous and important and them into each other from the beginning of time. To be kindred threads of connection and significance. When one senses, however means to share consciously in the stream of life. momentarily, that experience of a world of beings which it produces, the loneliness of modern humankind can be seen as an 1. ed. – Western fascination with, projection onto, but ultimately patronising ecological as much as a social phenomenon. No one could be of aspects in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian cultures; lonely in a world so richly populated. famously a thrust of 19th century European art and literature. 2. ed. – St. Augustine (354-430), Roman African, early Christian theologian […] Diversity and kinship of life not only from Numidia, influential on Western philosophy, and helped formulate the include the fact of death but require it. doctrine of original sin (to be remedied by the restraint of law on humans). 3. ed. – From the same author: “The Buddhists’ contemporaries and fellow Causing death – requiring it in order to live – pricks our travelers, the Jains, famous for ahimsa (harmlessness), are familiarly conscience. In the city, it is possible to hire professionals who hide portrayed moving insects from the footpath. But this is not because they the death in the slaughterhouse. But in the world at large, the hunt love life or nature. The Jains are revolted by participation in the living must be faced. […] Among traditional hunters, intelligent quarry stream and want as little as possible to do with the organic bodies, which are like tar pits, trapping and suffocating the soul. Historically, it would are the most prized and respected. Animals are not classified into are like tar pits, trapping and suffocating the soul. Historically, it would appear that both Buddhists and Jains got something from the Aryans, who levels of significance that excuse the killing of “lower” forms brought their high-flying, earth-escaping gods from Middle East and preserve the “higher.” Instead, it is just those great sensitive pastoralism. In the face of these invasions, the Hindus and their unzippered beasts – aurochs, horses, elephants, and bears – that are most polytheism [ed. – see Return Fire vol.4 pg41] survived best in the far south appropriately killed and most deeply revered. Where we seem the of India, where the Western monotheists penetrated least. At a more consumption of animals as participation in the transfer of energy, as practical level, everywhere the “world” religions have gone the sacred do traditional hunters, they also see it as the movement of an forests, springs, and other “places” and their wild inhabitants have endless spiritual flow. To live and to die is to be surrounded by vanished. The disappearance of respect for local earth-shrines is virtually a measure of the impact of the otherworldly beliefs.” beings whose coming and going are intrinsic to life itself. measure of the impact of the otherworldly beliefs.”

73. under the anti­terrorist law and I ended up imprisoned in the hospital ward of 'AT THE ROOT OF MY SURVIVAL' Concesionada Prison, Santiago 1, because [ed. – The comrade Tortuga interviewed here was badly injured going into action. His right hand and of the multiple injuries my body had three fingers of the left were amputated as a result, dozens of skingrafts were done, and (at least to sustained. begin with) his sight seriously damaged. While he was in intensive care on the verge of death, and the From this regimen, which was a pretty mother of his daughter raided and put in the media, Tortuga's own family denounced his ideas and way difficult place to be since it wasn’t designed of life, freely telling police of his social circles. In letters that he composed while imprisoned, for somebody to be there permanently, but Tortuga brought up the consequences of struggle in the era of a global politics of 'anti­terrorism' rather was a ward designed to receive – as well as more timelessly – in a way that bears reflecting on. “I will not deny that things were prisoners or new arrestees as a kind of difficult, because there were days dark as the depths of the sea, when everything was crumbling around clinic, like for after somebody gets into a me, my life as I had constructed it went to shit. But this helped me, with the pain caused, to learn that all this I had built I had not made sufficiently solidly as to endure the praxis of my discourse. [If family, fight with another prisoner or after getting friends, comrades and lovers took off flying,] many thought that it would be better for me to just sink beat by the guards, after getting stabbed, alone before I would take more people down with me, since they believe that I would never get back up or for people with illnesses that are easily from this, if all these people underestimated me because in their smallness they thought that they treatable… so living there was, pretty... themselves wouldn’t be able to stand such a fall as mine, today they are not at my side, it is only for their well, it wasn’t very normal. So it was there mediocrity, because know this: I do not lack the affection to forgive them, after everything, not one of us that I had to get used to the idea of living in was prepared for this. [...] And it is that on this occasion I can contribute with some examples, through that situation. which I encourage other comrades to share their experiences, since the possibilities of struggle are infinite, madness, rape, exile, mutilation, victory, torture, clandestinity, laughter, imprisonment, pain, The first few months of my incarceration betrayal, amnesia, dependency, beatings, humiliation, death, all of these, none, others, and so many passed, and after the visit of a loving more, and how many of the warriors in the street today who fight against power and its designs know this? That is, how prepared are we to assume the costs of the social war if we do not know these kinds comrade I got ready to write my first letter, of things? Can we speak of not repenting without having all this in consideration? [T]o be recognized as and at the root of this was that my friend an enemy of authority is not easy, less so when you are labeled as a terrorist in the media, your social adviseme that the silence surrounding my environment is affected almost unanimously[...] few are the brave who dare to remain with you. Public situation was not a good sign for the rest of opinion does its work and through all the possible methods the system tries to isolate you. They our comrades. Basically from there I wrote don’t have to get their hands dirty with the death penalty anymore, these days the methods are more the first letter, about 7 months after the sophisticated and democratic [ed. – see Who Is It?]; they make your life cease to have meaning failed attack, which is entitled 'Letter to the because they distance you from everything that you are a part of. And they don’t just do this physically Indomitable Hearts', which was published by getting you in a cage, but also psychologically to reduce your convictions. They demonize you collectively, they erase the memory of what you once were and they transform you into a television case, the 5th of January, 2012 if I recall correctly. in a failed explosive attack, in a bank robbery with a policeman killed, or into a member of a phantasmic After this would come a second letter, terrorist organization. You are that, you are your letter of presentation, to such an extent that if you don’t become aware that you are much more than what the press says. You end up believing it[...] your which would be a gesture of support and days no longer have the sense they did before, you are worth nothing and you have ruining the lives of solidarity with Freddy Fuentevilla, Marcelo everyone around you – why keep existing? Why cause more pain? They no longer need to stain their Villarroel [ed. – see Rebels Behind Bars; hands with your blood; please, we are civilized people, instead they incite you to finish yourself off[...] Concerning the Juridical Situation of This is the hidden discourse that reproduces our shiny Chilean democracy; there are no longer any Our Comrade Marcelo Villaroel revolutionaries, now they minimize us as mere terrorists, because clearly a revolutionary is someone Sepulveda], and Juan Aliste Vega, who at with feelings, with ideas, love of freedom and a companion of the oppressed: that is, someone worth imitating. Instead the terrorist is a shadow with impunity who has no heart and is obsessed with the use that time were in the middle of an of violence due to past childhood traumas – so how to face this situation? [...] I took my time, I went international week of agitation and support as slow as a turtle, I exercised every day without a break, whether it was cold or hot, I was disciplined for their case. And we should remember with myself, and it was a question of practice, patience and perseverance (the 3 “P”s like I told you) [and that just recently these three were well,] here I am, look at me one year after the bombing that almost killed me. Who said that I would bite convicted [ed. – see Return Fire vol.3 the mud of humiliation forever? Who said that I would be defeated for the rest of my life? Who said that pg52] in the Caso Security and the death the struggle does not make us great? If my ideas can bring me to lose my life, they can also bring me to of the police corporal Luis Moyano and the recover it, that was always my gamble...” Tortuga is serving six years of 'supervised freedom'. On preparing for and surviving prison more generally, for those in the U.K. (especially those at risk of being injuries of another police officer. But before gendered 'female' by State classification) we recommend 'Bang­Up & Smash' by ASBO, free online.] then they spent many many years in prison [ed. – see Return Fire vol.1 pg72], and The Ex­Worker Podcast: Who are we Ex­Worker: For those who haven’t read ever since I came to realize that prison is a speaking with today, and where are the book, can you give us a brief summary kind of passage for any combatant or we? of your case, and if you have an idea of comrade who takes “the idea” [of what the book covers, what’s in the book anarchism] seriously, they’ve been in my Tortuga: With Luciano Pitronello, el and in your letters? everyday thoughts. Tortuga, and we’re in the self­managed social center and autonomous library Tortuga: Well, I transported a low­power So the way that I made myself present in Sante Geronimo Caserio. bomb by hand to a branch of the trying to express solidarity with them, Santander Bank in the early morning of through the impossibility of being Ex­Worker: And how long has the space June 1st, 2011 [in Santiago, Chile], around locked up in prison, and above all in been around? Is it new? 2:30 in the morning, more or less. Due to the hospital ward, especially in the the premature detonation of the Tortuga: Yes, it’s new. it’s been 3 or 4 condition I was in, I told device, I was injured in my months since we got here and started myself I would do hands, my eyes, and my setting things up, and it’s been just a something to skin, because a certain month and a half that we’ve been able to show solidarity, percent ended up burnt. open the doors to the public. which Afterward I spent about basically Ex­Worker: Have you heard that there’s a three months in a consisted of book of your prison letters translated into hospital, and then refusing to English in the United States? two more months in eat for 20 intensive care, but at that point I hours a day and Tortuga: Yeah, I mean… I heard because was no longer imprisoned, I had consuming two small you told me like a second ago, but it’s still been moved to my mother’s meals. One of my letters a surprise. house. From there I was charged resulted from this time, 74. which I suppose is in the book… but in reality I haven’t seen the book so I don’t “Able-embodiment is temporary, conditional, and under direct know if all the letters actually do appear, assault by the pollutions and economic obstructions leaving your health to but I hope they do! chance and a function of your zip code. [...] I think the impulse to burn it all Well, this was the February of 2012. down or to retreat to the wilderness and find some long ago purged part of ourselves Afterward there was a week of agitation in there or to die trying are feelings we all move through. [I]t is critical that we think as solidarity with me, which started on the disabled people, even if we momentarily experience able-embodiment. As climate 20th of March, which I believe is the day health worsens, our own health worsens too. How will we replace industrialized that my trial began, or the preparations for medicine, or rob the healthcare industry of the power to profiteer off our disabilities? trial – I don’t quite remember anymore[1]. How will we grow and manufacture our own pharmacies? How will we reclaim our What I do remember is that the day I bodies, our narratives, our medicines, and our assistance tech from capitalism? In our entered the prison was the 22nd of utopian futures, healthcare is a community function, and the health of the commons is November, of 2011. where that value plants its roots. Beyond the medical model, how too will we create So the months went by, and I wrote a third sustainable communities structured in such a way to weather not only climate change letter, a third communiqué, which as I but the physical changes of human experience? How will we modify our understand it is the most valuable in terms communities to account for multiple modes of accessibility, and to treat soil health, air of wanting to pass on a little of the quality, water potability, tree health, animal health, and human health as one holistic experience of being in prison, that in reality equation? [...] Other disabled people have other types of needs. Others have different wasn’t much time, and might not be the forms of mobility, sensory experience, and physicality. Disability is wide-ranging experience that all comrades have in and diverse in scale. Our experience of life is marked both by hyper-visibility and prison. So in this third effort I wrote a invisibility, social stigma, and the embodiment of difference. Whereas one may argue communiqué at one year on from the failed that other forms of prejudice can be resolved by changing social attitudes about their bombing that affected me, which is entitled focus, changing attitudes towards disability will not resolve difference. Prejudice 'The Abyss Does Not Stop Us'. isn’t the cause of lost limbs, deafness, malfunctioning organs, etc. And while In there I basically offer three capitalism is undoubtedly exploiting the health and life out of disabled people reflections. The first is about prison. everywhere and informing ableism particularly in relation to employability and The second is about what it means worker efficiency, neither is capitalism the cause of disability. Disability is rather an morally, socially, even emotionally, to experience of being human. As we age, our bodies break down on the way to death. be charged as a terrorist, or as an As we experience the wildness of life, disability becomes us. As we are born, our enemy of the state, which is what bodies map an orgy of natural physicalities innate to human biology, mind and flesh, happened to me. And the third is more inside and out. The eugenicist and capitalist fallacy of the perfect worker is a dark specifically about my case, and deals magic spell freak witches and wizards everywhere have been disabling.” with the subject of mutilation, to have – Our Disabled and Climate-Changed Futures one’s body reduced physically; this is the theme. I try to cover each of these three themes from two perspectives: three themes from two perspectives: Villaroel Sepulveda], who received the And it’s a heavy story, because for political the first being a general manner, how to impact of a bullet on her spine during one prisoners in Chile to be able to achieve understand the problem in general of the Lautaro’s operations. On the 14th of privileges like leaving the prison for certain terms, and the second being from my November, 1990 they were trying to rescue amounts of time, visiting other parts of the own subjectivity, how I see things, how a political prisoner, Marco Ariel Antonioletti, prison, and other benefits, they have to I felt in certain moments… how I from a hospital. In this operation the undergo a lot of mobilization: hunger confronted things, basically. Lautaro killed 4 prison guards by a small strikes, rebellions… Here in Chile between 2000 and 2004 there was strong agitation In this third letter I also responded to the bomb, and a cop went down too. The cop wasn’t really in the plans, let’s say, and it by and for political prisoners. So Marcela proposal [ed. – see Return Fire vol.2 was he who fired the shot that left our Rodriguez, who was like the symbol of pg44] from the comrades in Greece of the compañera [ed. – see Return Fire vol.2 what nobody in society should ever be like International Revolutionary Front and the pg34] paraplegic. After she received the – because she was a woman, an armed Informal Anarchist Federation. I conclude impact of the bullet, the group rescued woman who robbed banks, who would that at the root of my survival was the Antonioletti and carried the two of them off carry a machine gun where she went solidarity that the comrades showed to a truck. Just a few minutes later, the (that’s what they called her actually, the me. Because in every one of these three radio announces that there was a woman “Machine Gun Woman”) – she was processes – being locked up in prison, with Marcela’s features involved in the photographed in MAPU Lautaro being charged as a terrorist or enemy of escape, but with the damage to her spine operations, basically they wanted her the state, and becoming disabled – in they had to take her back to the very same head, they wanted her as a trophy. So the every one of these processes I was hospital they had rescued Antonioletti pressure on the government to allow this gripped by this weapon that we have as from. She went to prison, of course, after terrorist to leave prison, to be on the street, anarchists, which is solidarity. being operated on and put in a wheelchair, put them in an uncomfortable position. Ex­Worker: Were there any other and continued fighting. Eventually, what they offer her is prisoners who inspired you to carry on extradition. Now, what is extradition? Her story is really comforting because she Basically, it’s forced exile. Marcela during your time in prison, either through spent 12 years in the San Miguel Prison, in their words or writings or deeds? Rodriguez is free in any part of the world the hospital section. When I found out this except Chile. The powerful part of the story Tortuga: Yes, definitely. When I was story, which I found out through a book is Marcela ends up accepting asylum locked up I discovered the story of Marcela called 'Rebellion, Subversion, & Political (which isn’t truly asylum) in Italy, with her Rodriguez, who was a militant for the Imprisonment', written by Pedro Rosas, wheelchair and all. A woman who can’t MAPU Lautaro [ed. – see Rebels Behind who also ended up prisoner in the High even move around just by herself winds up Bars; Concerning the Juridical Security Prison (CAS) for MIR [ed. – see being more dangerous than all these other Situation of Our Comrade Marcelo Return Fire vol.1 pg73] guerrilla activity. folks. It’s crazy, this story! 75. And when she leaves prison the our comrades that they’re not alone. I’ve deny that these people, these spaces are reporters go crazy because she also seen on the internet some fighting back. This is something you can’t communiqués from an anti­prison lie about.. was always this press magnet. collective “Vuelo de Justicia” (“Flight of Coming back to your question – support They try to record her in the airport, Justice”, named after an incredible prison for prisoners, the way I see it, has and the last image of her in Chile is break in 1996, look it up!) And as I deteriorated. It has deteriorated because of Marcela in her wheelchair, understand it, although I don’t know a ton, the anarchists here in Chile, or the anti this collective has been pretty active crossing the border immigration authoritarians, the nihilists, the looking after lots of the comrades in prison. guards to board the plane, raising revolutionaries, however you want to call There’s also a website for a periodical that her fist and shouting “la lucha them, are encountering prison as also gets printed, which is called something pretty new in our lives. In continua” – the struggle continues. 'Publicacion Refractario'. It’s well known, general the anarchist “movement” in Chile and also has a pretty internationalist When I found out this story, I said “I can’t is very new[2]. I mean, Caso Bombas [ed. – character; it’s very good. They’re always give up, man. If she could do it like that, I see Return Fire vol.1 pg73] demonstrated publishing updates about the comrades in can’t give up here." That’s also how the this. When police raided a few squats, prison, developments in their case, legal story of Savvas Xiros is, from the 17th of everybody ran for cover, everyone hid their work that the comrades have to face, and November organization in Greece. In 2002, face. This shows you how unstable the material for supporting a comrade if they he was injured by a failed bomb and ended movement was, evidenced by how should get imprisoned. up in circumstances similar to my own. But unprepared we were to live through prison, lamentably, he is going to spend many Ex­Worker: In the anarchist movement, and even less prepared to confront it. years in prison, here in Chile and Through this you can see that in a lot of because he is part more broadly, cases that you might say “good, they’re of a terrorist what role does getting support” or “they’re getting organization… well prisoner support attention” but obviously something is in reality it’s not play? missing. Something is missing like… terrorist but Why are we appealing to show that revolutionary, and Tortuga: cases were frame ups? Why do our they’ve been According to my comrades stay silent? Or like, why don’t operating for 29 way of thinking we ever stand up to the judges? And I years. So the luck about this topic, include myself, I criticize the way I’ve that Savvas Xiros here in Chile gone about things too. Why do we had, the luck of there is no appeal to innocence? Why do we accept Marcela Rodriguez movement. the way we’re treated? is truly cruel There are because at the heart of it they both have basically individuals that struggle, each There’s a ton of things that we might not disability and prison as their destiny, yet in their own rhythm and pulse, in their always capable of confronting. So for even with this heavy baggage they are own particular and unique ways, but example I see, well I don’t want to idealize capable of continuing to struggle. there isn’t a… I don’t know how to say anything, but I think it’s worth understanding that Greece is a little more So I look at myself and I see that I can still it… there isn’t a movement, so to speak. advanced, at least in terms of history, and go on, and so I can’t give up, man! So for There’s convergence, gathering points, in Greece it’s a different conversation. The me, these compañeros are a compass, but beyond this… it’s difficult to say. comrades there confront these issues in a they’re my north; they’ve shown the way Because unfortunately, and I don’t like to different manner. So if you’re over there because they’ve raised the bar to where I say it, there’s a lot of people just here for and looking at the situation here… well have to meet it. It might be a strange way fashion. They’re around because politics is here, if in Greece they’re walking upright, to look at it, but that’s really how I see it. a means to other things: to find friends, to we’re crawling on all fours. Of course Like that. [Tortuga went on to describe a find romantic partners, to feel a sense of throughout the world there are other places prisoner support project that he’s involved belonging, to feel like you’re part of where there aren’t even comrades, where in, and his perspectives of the significance something. So sometimes you can find there isn’t anything going on. But it’s of prisoners and solidarity among comrades who are super excited, very important to keep in mind how recent all of anarchists and antagonists in Chile.] involved, but at the end of the day it only lasts for a year, a year and a half. this is here, to understand how much Tortuga: Projects of support for comrades Repression comes down and they run. I further we have to go. But I’m not satisfied in prison... there’s the project I was telling believe that to call something a movement with crawling, I want to gallop, I want to you about – the solidarity raffle, which is it has to be something that moves you; it’s run, I want to fly. And for this, you have to organized by a group of folks and what we something that can maintain itself against work. do is give away prizes in the form of a repression, and when there’s not Ex­Worker: Three questions in one: after raffle in order to collect some funds, even repression, onward! your time in prison how has your though it may not be a ton, for our So I don’t believe there is a movement orientation to anarchist strategy changed? comrades in prison. This is an event that here. What no one can deny is that there And I don’t mean which acts or tactics are happens every month. Every month we are communities in struggle, which is more important, but I’m speaking about the look for an event where we can hold the different to me. This social center for me is anarchist project in general. How has your raffle, and we assemble a schedule of a community of struggle. The Sacco and orientation changed and what tasks do you events on our webpage, can I give it to Vanzetti [ed. – see ] think are most important? OK, that’s one; you? Return Fire vol.1 pg86 library is, for me, a community of struggle. secondly, what would you say to someone Ex­Worker: Yes, please! For me, the squat Isla Tortuga is a considering risking their freedom to do community of struggle. Regardless of the something, like taking direct action? And Tortuga: It’s rifasolidaria.wordpress.com. forms of how each community or group what would you say to someone who Basically the idea is generate a steady involves themselves – their form, their would never consider that, who just want to stream of funds which, like I said, isn’t a rhythm, their pulse – we have different live a life of safety and comfort, but who ton but it’s at least a small effort to show ways of going about things, but you can’t are still anarchists? 76. Tortuga: Well, this reply may disappoint can defend what you’re doing with enough To the comrades who would never think of you a little, but my outlook hasn’t actually passion, then it’s alright with me. focusing their struggle on direct action, I drastically changed. I still hold the same would respond with basically the first And what would I say to the comrades who beliefs that I did on the first of June in points I made about fighting in an illegal want to carry out direct action, or who are 2011, you know? For me, there isn’t some manner – because I’m using the carrying out direct action? Well… I know big difference between a comrade who vocabulary of power, which is a that if somebody is listening to this they’re carries a bomb in their backpack or one contradiction, but, well, what can we do? just listening, they can’t make a case out of who carries a book. For me, both tools, Life is a contradiction itself! Well, OK, it my words alone, but whatever. I would say when aimed directly at the bowels of doesn’t matter if somebody doesn’t want to to be careful, take care. For me its like they power, can achieve the same task. It’s all confront power with a gun or a bomb. say, you’ve got to face reality, but you’ve the same for me if a comrade carries a Getting involved in a newspaper or got to take care. You have to give yourself submachine gun or carries a something, that’s fine, but I think the time to plan well. microphone. To me what is central is important thing to understand is that where the attack is directed towards. For the anarchists, or the nihilists or prison, death, clandestinity, having to The tool you utilize is a question of the revolutionaries, what we have plenty go to battle are things that don’t only comfort and familiarity, it’s a question of is heart. But war isn’t won with heart face the comrades who pick up a of whether you feel satisfied with what alone. We need to use a little more weapon. In the dictatorship here, you’re doing: to feel pleasure basically, prudence – so the action won’t be unfortunately it was a struggle of fire and to feel good and that what you’re doing today, it will be tomorrow but it will also blood. To have had a newspaper, a printing is the right thing. If you feel like the thing be better. It will be better planned, more press, just copying a flyer would mean to do is publish a newspaper – great! Then focused on the safety of those involved, torture, possibly even death. So in this I’m happy for you. If what you think is and other small details that I don’t know if I sense, if you’re not going to use a gun, needed nowadays is to attack capital in can pass on here. But like I’ve written, one that’s fine by me. What’s most important to some direct manner – all right then, do it! mistake, one small neglect can change me is that you can defend your project and But for me, what upsets me is knowing that everything. And we are far too valuable to your idea. something needs to be done and not doing be needlessly putting ourselves at risk. I Ex­Worker: Anything more for our it. In there I see a contradiction in my way think my most focused advice today listeners, the gringos of the north, or the of understanding the struggle. would be, more than anything, that this rest of the English­speaking world? comrade value herself [sic], that she So my way of responding to your question not feel like her life is just a material Tortuga: Keep it up, Seattle May Day!!! wouldn’t be to say that we’ll have a better contribution to the struggle. I would tell revolution by having more of one thing, or this comrade to value herself a little that one thing is better than another… I don’t know, the library, doing workshops, more, that she give herself time and direct attacks, expropriations: to me these room to breathe. That’s all, that the all have the same worth, there isn’t one struggle is for your whole life, it won’t that’s more valuable than another. If you change by waiting one more night.

Mayday 2012, Seattle, U.S.A the midnight routes, exhilarating determined skin the anarchist plots hatched EL TORTUGA the sudden flame in the dark 1. ed. – Court began July 20th, with rallies in – poem for Luciano amongst Concepción, Valparaíso and Santiago and a bomb­ the looking-glass swamps el tortuga, we too know the threat clearing part of the complex. From the [ed. – From 325 magazine #9, and embroidered trees feel beginning of the case, plate­glass of Santander near the time of his wounding.] the joy of a bulls-eye on a of those guerilla nights Bank fell to explosives or blows in Tultitlan and paper wall when only the present moment (twice in the same night) in Bristol, while incendiary we stand, el tortuga, exists, messages of solidarity arrived from Russia, we send you our vision with exists, steady and strong, when only war walks masked Indonesia and beyond on the back of similar deeds. held like all the people which we also held like all the people through the sullen, daring 2. ed. – “Perhaps one of the most disastrous walk into a future we cannot through the sullen, daring before us and beside us, streets, consequences [of the dictatorship] was the clearly see streets, on the turtles back provoking sunrise production of a generation lacking in almost all senses: emotionally lacking, lacking a sense of your shell catches our tears you walked strong and blind, and the awakening of life into injured but unbowed the promise of a better day belonging, lacking existential paradigms, and thus of joy, of sorrow, lacking passion, lacking will… castrated in the by the flames you set against than today fresh hollow-ways down broadest sense of the word. Our parents were the the enemy which we slide those nights are ours too children beaten, raped, tortured, and murdered by and we lend you our own those nights are ours too into new worlds, and in our sleeplessness, the imposition of first world shock necessary for the hands and in our sleeplessness, delighted as children, we send you our dreams violent mutation from the “Chilean way to socialism” carving deeper into freedom setting their own flames [ed. – the plan to put Chile on a 'non­capitalist' road with every thought of you against the same enemy remember, el tortuga, to 'development'; a contradiction in terms...] to the if you are held now in the kingdom of commodities[…] And our inheritance, we share with you if you are held now in the we do not know you, hands of our our American dream that we lived – and we did live the stealth of the night air it – we carry it in our bodies: the insecurity, the yet we feel you, brother, jailers, you are held more which only the saboteur terror, the impossibility of recognizing ourselves as and we felt each moment tightly knows, tightly a community or continuity from the past, not to in the hearts of your comrades, we send you the deep valleys, guided by owls through the in the hearts of your comrades, mention as a community in antagonistic struggle[...] known and unknown, the falcons calling across blue underworld, known and unknown, Along with our guts, they cut us off from our history and here we are, improvising, relearning, sky the scent of dark grass, the and for those of us who accept the sunsets which pour light cooling concrete, reinventing ourselves [ed. – see 'The Matter of that we will all, in the end, Knowing Who We Are']. […] This construction of into the hills the quiet dust, be burnt by our own fire, like evening wine into an ideology, worldview, spirituality, or whatever it the moonlit stench we take strength from the fact may be called, within the anti­authoritarian vermilion cups of abandoned alleyways, that spectrum is recent and, like everything new, is we send you the strike of a the startled thwack of wings in even in flames you did not complex and is constructed basically from match, the trees, kneel. experience, ergo beginning from trial and error” that spectacular, lonely wind (Anarchic Practices in the Territory Dominated by L.L. the Chilean State). 77. WILD PLANTS – Hawthorne (berries) & Sweet Chestnuts

Hawthorne (berries) As well as eating or stewing, you can mash This medium­sized deciduous tree them through your hands to remove the prefers moist, alkaline soil and full sun (but seeds (although very time­consuming) and is tolerant of most soils), and lives to a then dry out the paste into a sweet fruit great age. They are often planted as dense leather that will keep for years. hedgerows to enclose land, as their thorny boughs make a sturdy barrier; an old Due to their association with fairies, it has Cornish expression is “thick as haglets” been considered very bad fortune to cut (the Cornish name for hawthorne), and the hawthorne. Especially in Celtic mythology, branches have a history in Mayday rituals. myth abounds of humans being laylaid by These trees will also be found in such creatures to places where time and protects the bones from degeneration woodlands (especially at the edges) and passes differently. Into this century in and decay. The B vitamins also strengthen on waysides. Ireland, public works have been diverted the nerves. Once dried, with both the due to reluctance to tamper with this tree. casing and the inner skin removed, the There are many dangerous red berries, so nuts can be beaten into a powder reputed Sweet Chestnuts make sure you identify hawthorne correctly to cure coughs when combined with honey (use a guide or someone whose Another deciduous tree, in an electuary. experience you trust). The fruit (which the nuts fall from sweet ripens through September) is a bright red chestnut in their The skin enclosing the to dark purple, and also enjoyed by many densely­spiked shell from chestnuts inside the casing birds. The texture when ripe is akin to the mid­October onwards. is slightly astringent, but texture of avocado. The seeds must not be After the last ice­age comparatively easy to remove eaten because they produce cyanide in the forced the trees south and after brief intestines; a couple aren't deadly to an stranded them in an Eastern blanching adult but could be to a child. You can cook European valley (the nuts being too big after you the berries then discard the seeds, or just for birds or the have eat around them raw. The taste is like wind to made a cross starchy over­ripe apple, and while some disseminate), the opening at the are tasty enough to use in their own right, Roman Empire spread end which is their high pectin content makes them them again throughout tufted to peel popular to add to other fruit that you want temperate Europe as they used the away the casing. to jelly; just­ripe berries have the most nut to make bread and feed their They may be roasted pectin, over­ripe berries the least. horses. Until relatively recently or boiled or they were a primary food source pounded into flour Here in Britain hawthorne is one of our real for rural poor in much of the (used for congealing medicinal treasure­trove plants. southern continent (as well as soups or baking breads and Traditionally, this plant was used to treat Turkey and parts of Asia); rich in cakes, or polenta), and store hypertension and cardiac failure. Both of starch, natural oils and a number of well into the cold months. The these are prevalent killers in western vitamins, including vitamin B1, vitamin flour doesn't rise as wheat flour societies, especially Britain. In diverse B2 and vitamin C. They thrive in areas does but the bread stays fresh places such as Devon, the Isle of Man, and where the rocky, thin soil prohibits growing for up to two weeks. When roasting, the Highlands of Scotland, hawthorne has grains, and (especially as they combine ensure that you perforate the traditionally been used in folk medicine as carbohydrates and proteins) they are external shell to stop the nuts a primary heart tonic, as well as being nutritionally superior to the above and can exploding. The meal of the chestnut used for centuries to correctly balance high replace them in the diet. has also been used for whitening linen and low blood pressure (it's actually a beta cloth and for making starch. The Marones blocker, improving nutrition, energy There is records of chestnuts being used in variety contains 15%, and by expression reserves, and energy release of the heart western medicine as far back as the yield a thick syrup, from which in turn a muscle). The berries are astringent and ancient Greeks. Eating them not only will very usable sugar can be derived. useful to cure sore throats once they've improve the blood (in atrophy, fatigue, been cooked in water for a while. It may starvation) but also will increase the also break calcium and cholesterol energy and it will supply the body with The nuts have a history of eating to deposits in the arteries, making it helpful natural sugars that will squeeze out the encourage fertility and sexual desire and for arteriosclerosis (hardening of the desire for sweets (though they're not may be carried as a charm by women who arteries). It's also rich in Vitamin C and recommended more than 4­5 times a week) wish to conceive. Staves made from anti­oxidants, promoting the scavenging of and the high dietary fibre can prevent chestnut wood are said to encourage harmful 'free radical' molecules. diabetes and improve digestion. It will also longevity, increase energy, enhance balance cholesterol, decrease intuition and help with grounding and At this time of year, there tend not to be as inflammation all through the body, and centering of energy. In Japan (where they many thorns as earlier in the season and lower the risk of blood clots building up in are eaten on New Year's day for success any still present grow at a 45 degree angle the body. This will eventually lower your and strength the coming year) they away from the trunk. The advantage of this risk of stroke, heart attack and coronary symbolise both difficulties and is that you can run your hand along a heart disease to a large degree. The overcoming them. branch from base to tip and collect a good magnesium present in sweet chestnut handful of berries with very few prickles. forms the hard enamel around your teeth 78. sources if not already cited: (anonymous if unlisted) English-language anarchist news & information exchange Act For Freedom Now! (Greece inside front – Emile Armand & global) actforfree.nostate.net Who Is It? Anarchist Library (multi-lingual, open- source catalogue of print-ready texts) – by Adonide thea narchistlibr ary.org Anarchy, Secession, Subsistence Veganism: Why Not ““ – by Peter Gelderloos LongLong livelive (rejoining rebellion with the land) anarchysecessionsubsistence.blogspot.ca Anarchy Radio (streaming and downloadable hour of global news and anti-civilisation analysis, every Tuesday) johnzerzan.net/radio thethe weedsweeds Avalanche (web presence of international correspondence publication about and from sites of social tension; each edition available multi-lingual) avalanche.noblogs.org andand thethe Attaque (France, multi-lingual) attaque.noblogs.org Bordered by Silence (France) borderedbysilence.noblogs.org wildernesswilderness Chronik (Germany, multi-lingual) chronik.blackblogs.org Contra Info (global, multi-lingual) contrainfo.espiv.net ” Articles referenced by title throughout this ” Montreal Counter-Information yet.yet. (Canada, bi-lingual) chapter in [square brackets] which do mtlcounter-info.org/en not appear in the previous pages appear in the other chapters of this volume. Non-Fides (France & global, multi- lingual) non-fides.fr Oplopanax Publishing (a cache of handsome and engaging printable zines) oplopanaxpublishing.wordpress.com Resonance Audio Distro (various readings as MP3s plus source files) resonanceaudiodistro.wordpress.com The Brilliant Podcast (deeply thoughtful questioning on key topics for radicals) thebrilliant.org Uncivilized Animals (writings on ecology, technology and society from an anti-industrial perspective) –– Inversnaid uncivilizedanimals.wordpress.com Inversnaid Untorelli Press (an archive and publisher of radical pamphlets against PDFs of this chapter, other capitalism, patriarchy, the state and chapters of the same volume or civilisation) untorellipress.noblogs.org previous volumes of Return Warrior Up (sabotage techniques) Fire and related publications: warriorup.noblogs.org actforfree.nostate.net / ?tag=return-fire beyondbeyond controlcontrol && amnesia,amnesia, impossibleimpossible brilliancebrilliance isis thethe heartheart ofof imaginationimagination andand joyjoy whenwhen wewe stakestake ourour earthlyearthly relationsrelations betweenbetween thethe embraceembrace ofof fluxesfluxes wewe areare andand thethe experienceexperience ofof selfself atat ourour corecore .. nowherenowhere lessless otherother storiesstories havehave failedfailed usus ANTI-AUTHORITYANTI-AUTHORITY DAILYDAILY REVOLTREVOLT RETURNRETURN FIREFIRE

INDIVIDUALINDIVIDUAL WILLWILL DE-CIVILISATIONDE-CIVILISATION

We Can Be Worse Still 'At the Root of My (for one who died in the Survival' battle for life) (reflections on mutilation, facing Who Is It? terrorism charges, & democracy's and not abandoning our discontents own)

Veganism: Why Not Wild Plants: (an alienated solution to Hawthorne (berries) a problem of & Sweet Chestnuts alienation?) …and more!

VOLUME VOLUME 5, 5, CHAPTER I CHAPTER I II II [email protected]@riseup.net AUTUMN AUTUMN 20120177