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February 2008, #5 Issue #5 PDF
Welcome to the 5th issue of 325, an irregular anarchist magazine dedicated to the free society and open minds. Featured in these pages are reports, news and images from the struggle against hierarchy and capitalism, and the words and ideas of prisoners, who are locked down resisting the system.
Industrial capitalism has made mass surveillance and imprisonment a reality, advancing technologies have far surpassed anything historical tyrants could have dreamed of implementing, and our societies are becoming more and more prison like, with the wall between 'outside' and 'inside' jail blurring significantly. Neo-Liberalism is passive to genocide and ecological collapse, simply dismissed as the brutal outcome to the crisis at hand - The survival of capitalist rule during a time of social and environmental turbulence. It is time this system was dismantled - Immediately.
Prison is the feature which unites all aspects of modern society; from airports, supermarkets and department stores, to factories, schools and beyond. In the prison we find the clearest aspects of capitalist exploitation, as the prison is the logical conclusion of government and the free-market - a place where everyone and everything is controlled, catalogued and coerced as a cold statistic. The cells neither reform nor rehabilitate, they hide behind closed doors the tragic contradictions of the promises of consumer society.
325 was created because the type of magazine that we wanted to read did not exist. We had a feeling from more than 15 years of being involved in anarchist activity, that most of the time, the only people who are radicalized after doing some 'revolutionary' activities, are you, yourselves...
We don't see producing this publication as a political or financial project. Clearly our activity doesn't place itself into the realm of making money or creating new ideologies to blind people with. We want to leave all that behind with the rest of the political left-wing, which has sparse treasures left to loot, and is best laid to rest. Anarchism has always been antagonistic to organised exploitation and will remain so inclined. It is not for nothing that Copenhagen's Chief of Police despaired of the 'autonomous chaos-strategy' used by black bloc militants defending not only the notorious 'Ungdomshuset' squat in Denmark but their existence as an anti-political reality, at war with all governments everywhere.
When this magazine began in 2003, it was initially imagined as a project to communicate more information about insurgent european anarchist/anti-capitalist struggle into the UK, through publishing previously untranslated and marginal news and reports which were barely covered by the alternative media here. Internet standards of newscasting appear to be challenging the circulation of DIY printed publications as more and more people receive information and news electronically.
Radical magazines and books, already marginal, seem to be getting pushed deeper into obscurity, as people are conditioned into receiving very heavily filtered and packaged information. Why are we making a publication that we think very few people, even radicals, will read? Well, for us, the Internet is a demanding media that seems to have a flimsy permanence. It often carries ideas which have very little relation to what is happening at the ground level, despite the 'mirror world' rhetoric, although not only in the confused shadows of 'online communities' is misdirection to be found. We can see that a large amount of information is circulating and proliferating, but very little returns off-line to the streets.
It was hoped we could add to the drive to communicate and ignite more resistance in the UK, but 325 has grown much further than that, through the energy of comrades overseas, across Europe, Asia and the Americas, who appreciate and find common cause in the militant direction we are travelling in. The secondary aim was this, to create more links and consciousness between people fighting back, at the grass-roots level, and help create and reinforce informal networks capable of taking direct action and/or producing/distributing propaganda, based around an insurrectionary anti-state, anti-market perspective.
So 325 has been more successful than we expected and the last 4 issues would not have happened without the solidarity and comradeship of many people who wanted this publication to continue. Many thanks for your rage and friendship.
325 is about finding out who our enemies and our allies are. Solidarity and affinity are not just abstract ideals but the essence of meaningful lived human experience. Face-to-face relationships strengthen and maintain our insurrection and this is what needs to be insisted upon - the end of the political racket. Between us we aim to write what is on everyones lips but fears to say, - that this system is coming down, and it would rather bring everyone in it down as well, into annihilation, rather than relinquish its authority.
The problem for the system is that the more it attempts to produce hierarchic order, the more situations spread, develop and breakout into the uncontrollable. The system wants a finely tuned mechanism, turning on the compliance of the base population but compliance is difficult to achieve, despite the methods of neo-liberal political control, all-encompassing data surveillance and paramilitary policing. Rogue elements the system can not turn into commodity markets it attempts to repress and destroy. For something unprecedented to begin, it's time for all of this to come down without reservation.
Industrial capitalism is causing the ecology to collapse dramatically and along with it will go most of our entire social and industrial systems. It is no longer in the mouths of the 'extremists' that civilisation and technology is out of control, how many people now know that interesting times for all of us are ahead? It might not be a time for idealistic theories, but a starting place to think practically about how we are going to respond to increasing turmoil and what it is going to take to fulfill our aims of free exchange and co-operation.
April 2007, #4 Issue #4 PDF
Since the last issue the world has seen major ongoing insurrectionary incidents in China, Mexico and Denmark, and these are developing and splintering, reinforcing the broad-based global anti-capitalist networks that have reflected their expansion. More and more people are resisting capitalism and the global neo-liberal free market, organising themselves horizontally without fixed organisation and hierarchy.
Social insurgence is growing internationally, the situation exacerbated by resource wars, environmental meltdown and political repression. Decentralised direct action against government and finance is open to all, and people are getting organised to fight for a better world, against all the odds.
This battle cannot be fought by reforming the system, it must be totally destroyed, as the rich and powerful will not allow themselves to be brought down peacefully. Everywhere that there is finance and hierarchy, there is an anti-political response against exploitation! We have to overthrow the governments and business men who want to wipe out our rebel hearts forever, we want to directly manage our own lives with the simplest method available - direct communication between equals.
The secret network of prisons around the world ran by the CIA which enabled to them to 'disappear' anyone into a hidden world of torture and murder has been exposed. Every major European nation has been revealed to have assisted, or turned a blind eye to routine kidnapping and secret rendition of people suspected of terrorism. These people were held in terrible places which are blanked out of maps, where agents of the United States abuse, torture and murder people. Poland is home to a secret CIA base where prisoners were interrogated in such a way, despite the official denials and watered down reports. British Prime Minister Tony Blair personally attempted to obstruct the official EC investigation into possible 'human rights' abuses, as did Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy. Evidently, the EU is a project of military and industrial power, an advancing prison state of technological control, but it seems all State power is founded on violence and imprisonment.
The collapse of 'Communism' has meant Capitalism has almost enclosed the globe, but still holes in the network of control exist, as do areas of self-organisation. The current growing ascendancy of China as a world superpower, (as the USA outstretches itself on dangerous terms against multiple players,) is a sign of the bankrupt ideological outcome of Leftism and State Socialism in general. The global autonomous anti-state anti-capitalist movements are the only significant opposition to State, financial and religious terror. In China the base population is furiously struggling against capitalist reform with blockades, riots and barricades, in Oaxaca, Mexico, the battle for autonomy has been brought to its current intense situation of State repression. In the police patrolled yuppie-infested coffee bar city of Brighton, UK, squatters survive prolonged periods of repeat evictions and police harass local people who blockade and agitate against EDO-MBM, an arms company building weapons for the Israeli Defence Forces and the US Army.
In Lecce, Italy, anarchists struggle against terrorism charges intended to stop their agitation with those people 'without papers', and across the entire Italian peninsula the anarchists fight to keep their meeting places open. Not just in Italy, but from the eviction and demolition of the 'Ungdomshuset' occupied centre in Copenhagen, (which has been a base for anti-market, anti-state activity for decades), to the daily raids and crackdowns against the okupa/squatter movement in Barcelona - Power and Capital is fighting hard to suppress of every flashpoint of autonomy and resistance.
Free space is a point of departure for meeting friends interested in a common project of conflict against the system and its logic.
Affinity, free exchange and voluntary co-operation are a threat to capitalist exploitation. They are the basis of the world that remains in our aspirations, transmits itself in our actions and explodes in the fulfilment of our desires.
Anarchy is Inevitable.
June 2006, #3 Issue #3 PDF
In a world of dwindling energy resources, ecological collapse and growing total entrenchment of poverty and exploitation, global resistance to capitalism is a reality.
Economic, political and environmental changes are sparking uncontrollable moments of popular revolt. The loss of social cohesion and advanced state of climate chaos means it looks like the best option is to examine with determination what actions we can take, and how to act our dreams in a world where all factors are in transformation.
As people fight for a better life amongst the adjustments of global power, points of breakdown are occurring. The infrastructures of finance and war are unstable, and the bloody role of State and Capital is most acutely revealed in these times of crisis, ruthlessly protecting private interest and hierarchy. We need to be conscious of these moments of collaboration and participation, which are day-to-day occurrences in the 21st century.
As the governments bring forces to bear against the growing international movements of participation and solidarity, our attempts to build a successful anti-market and anti-system critique and practice, alongside the suppression of traditional forms of dissent, assembly and expression, means that many previous leftist methods of struggle and organisation are redundant, along with the world that is rapidly aging with them.
The reformist forces of Capital, as well as the leftist variants, seek to prevent the radical transformation of society. These counter-points of power and recuperation are failing to prevent, in all areas of society, a general disdain and hatred for hierarchy of all kinds.
The desperate situation of ongoing environmental collapse means there is a direct necessity for attacks on the institutions and conduits of finance and industry, this necessity has never been so vital and urgent. In the relentless operations of the State against the social movements and the Earth, we can see the exposure of its essentially militaristic anti-life qualities; people, animals and all material are the economic components of a social-machine which coerces profit for the already rich.
As State terror increases across the world, as anarchists & anti-capitalists, we need to intensify our activities and our critique immediately. We need to accelerate the spread of information amongst anti-state, anti-capitalist groups and the base population, by letting our visible direct action act as a vehicle of communication and method open to all. At the same time, we must broaden the information gap between the State and ourselves, and that means, of the forms of struggle we prefer; Informal, face-to-face communication, auto-organised structure and direction appears to us, to be the most effective.
We begin with specific situations of existing tension and struggle, within the conditions of our own rebellion, and act with commitment. This revolt which is more difficult to control, and is beyond the reach of the familiar bodies of suppression and mediation, uses the tools of decentralisation and autonomy, acting within the scope of the larger struggle.
Despite the growing technological control of the State, in these precious few years before automated surveillance by machines is a widespread reality, people are fighting back; taking themselves into conflict with the increasingly unstable dominant powers, acting immediately for the world they want right now. Capitalism and its murderous policy of self-preservation will never tolerate any threat to its power, but we have to overcome seizure with determination and act against the prisons, courthouses, and bodies of finance and privilege.
"Every act of police brutality, every death in detention, every raid and blow only increases our compulsion to arm ourselves for revenge."
For a Militant Response to the G8 Summit, Spring 2005, #2 (PDF is unavailable)
With an absolute rejection of the State socialist left, of hierarchical organisation and reformism, we call for a pro-active militant response to the July G8 meeting in Scotland, UK 2005. We refuse to conform to the agenda of the G8, aiming for a resurgence of committed radical activity against the State and Capital, everyday, all the time. Stressing decentralisation, and flexibility, we reiterate the fragile nature of the capitalist system, of the great precariousness of an economic system which is attacking workers, the unemployed, women, and the environment. Exploiting dwindling natural resources, the system is burning up the world in poverty, war, and ecological collapse.
In the midst of increased repression, we must carry through our ideas into action, moving from defence to active resistance. It is imperative we create practical networks based on informality and auto-organisation, acting on our desire to punctuate the silence of the EU, to ruin the neo-liberal fantasy of a united free-market. As the forces of State/Capital recognise the influence of the social movements, they turn entire areas into zones of total surveillance and set up police-units to frame and torture people. Technological means of control are in greater use more then ever, and proliferate beyond the dreams of any 20th century dictatorship.
The State commits people to intolerable prison sentences and tries to twist people's minds against anything that questions the dominant paradigm.
Across Europe police forces collude with each other on the best way to manipulate, abuse and survey. The rising amount of arrests against the social movements is only equalled by the rising amount of globalist lies; as they attempt to recuperate our resistance into dialogue, we clearly understand that until capitalism is destroyed, our communities and ecology face catastrophe.
We do not believe more surveillance, prisons and war will make our communities safer, this will only be possible with secure housing, food, health and equality for all. Regardless of the media charade, these are things that the G8 will never provide.
We refuse the demands of consumer society and its global mentality of compliance. A culture of greed and despair, it protects the interests of finance, and maintains the disastrous trajectory our communities are set upon. Stores of identical items, every street and city centre the same pointless monoculture. Shopping complexes are more like prisons with their endless surveillance, private security and attendant perceptual processing. The apparent abundance of modern society is in stark relief to the environmental and economic realities of luxury; the exploitation that is the factory, the shop floor, the prison, the immigration centre, the animal research facility, the biotech lab, the refugee camp, the majority world.
The fact remains: the G8 themselves hold the real horror and violence.
The institutions of capitalism and hierarchy must be attacked, not just at international meetings of finance and heads of State, but constantly. When the boundaries that separate anarchists/anti-capitalists from other rebels dissolve, the spectacle breaks down and a situation is reached that the State is afraid of. Through community organisation, interventions, property destruction and direct action we aim to reach this point! Our aim is the complete destruction of the capitalist system, all banks, corporations, prisons, judges, landlords, politicians and police forces.
Solidarity with all autonomous/anarchist fighters and political prisoners everywhere!
For free exchange, and voluntary association.
Summer 2004, #1 (PDF is unavailable)
This irregular collection of texts is dedicated to open minds and the free society, Let one thousand flowers bloom. 325 are concerned with transforming social reality, creating areas of horizontal control outside the gaze of the capitalist system. 325 distribute and incite perception, providing doorways into the net of hidden utopias that resist attempts to censor and destroy autonomous areas/individuals +groups. We advocate direct action to reject the violence of the capitalist system.
Short-circuiting the social processing of everyday life into fresh spaces and hidden alleyways we re-affirm our intention to gather, communicate, organize, and resist. Space is something we are not encouraged to fully inhabit. Private space, public space, mental space: all are domains the ruling classes would like to section off and exploit. Rates of mental illness and stress-related sickness are accelerating, civilisation's advance is marked by an increase in manic-depression, neurosis, schizophrenia and suicide. The notion that we live in any kind of democracy is absurd, police & state exist to protect and promote industrial interests. Civil rights are a myth, society is maintained with coercion and murder. States have no interest in social justice, only in profit. Our equality is spoken in fascist dialogue, everyone is equal to consume, everyone is equal in that they have a price.
Politicians and other soft cops in the mass media try to steer human activity in directions that can be used to their advantage, we are dispensable to them, they need us to make a living, government bodies go about their business with the sole intent of furthering their own class position and bank balance.
Global Capitalism is the real force of international terror, the tyranny of privilege and exploitation at the expense of the global poor. Waging undeclared war on the entire planet, the consumer spectacle has gone hyperdelic, splintering into thousands of copies of itself, mass produced commodity death, annihilation of the organic into quantitative abstract mechanics. It is crystallising into ever more intricate versions of the same thing, a psychotic blueprint writing its infection on the landscape, killing everything through mathematics.
"The spectacular character of modern industrial society has nothing fortuitous or superficial about it; on the contrary, this society is based on the spectacle in the most fundamental way. For the spectacle, as the perfect image of the ruling economic order, ends are nothing and development is all- although the only thing into which the spectacle plans to develop is itself" - Debord.
In Fortress Europe disappearance is a good survival skill, life in a superstate means mass-profiling, and constant electronic surveillance; In an increasingly digital future there are few places to hide, population displacement, 'migrant management', growing incarceration rates, all this feeds corporate prisons, for the protection of Capital and Empire.
As European anti-capitalists we must strengthen our networks, legal and underground, within the EU, and within future EU members, of the aim to weaken capitals advance and provoke splits in the EU, the breakdown of the the EU politically and militarally, without resorting to nationalism, or statism of any kind. To build for community organisation and resistance, without resorting to moralistic or reactionary methods or ideology, based on principles of mutual aid and co-operation.
The overwhelming force of the State continues to mean that the tactics of evasion, attack and disappearance are the most useful. Defending ourselves, whilst engaging the industrial complex, we avoid the forces of the state and seek empty areas, occupy, organise, sabotage, rewrite, attack and scatter to begin the process again. Fight disinformation with information and action on all levels, preventing media smears, with our honesty, dignity and throughness. Likewise, use the splits in our critics to play them off against each other then finish them off. Despite the police brutality and clampdown across Europe, the resurgent anti-state/anti-capitalist social movements are looking like the only opponents of a system of class-slavery, sickness and ecocide.
The circle of bosses must come undone, the farce of the European Parliament underlines the essentially economic-militarist nature of the EU. As the EU consolidates its borders and internal security laws, to create a single State, the most repressive legislation is utilized from each country, regardless of the actual situation from country to country. The incoming legislation is in fact not really a new set of laws, but rather an amplification of existing laws. The main areas of amplification relate to terrorism & immigration - specifically deportation and extradition procedures. At the same time, enough decentralization is maintained to allow internal security services to retain enough autonomy to operate according to specific local situations, through individual State legislation created in relation to specific local conditions. e.g.: the criminalisation of the Basque social movements, or the fit-ups in Italy against anti-globalists and anarchists.
As the rich consolidate their power and violence it is clear that anti-terror repression is for monitoring and controlling the broader population.
This zine is the collaboration of a range of people across Europe coming together in the hope of opposing the Bosses, and radically living our dreams of a better future, and not waiting for it, and never giving up.