CrimethInc.'s Blog, page 7

April Is Anarchist Book Fair Month

On April 17, a CrimethInc. agent will present at the Base in New York City about To Change Everything, exploring its most provocative themes and tying it into struggles taking place around the world. The next day, on April 18, we will table at the New York City Anarchist Book Fair. The following weekend, on April 25, we will be tabling for our fifteenth consecutive year at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair in Oakland. Come to any of these events for a heaping helping of free anarchist literature.

#34: Staying Safe To Be Dangerous Together

#34: Staying Safe So We Can Be Dangerous Together – In our 34th episode, we follow themes of repression, security, and resistance through several different short features. In celebration of former Green Scare prisoner Eric McDavid‘s release after nine years inside, we reflect on the lessons of his case for our efforts to resist today. We share part of a recent CrimethInc. essay that assesses the possibilities and limits of whistleblowing, as well as an inspiring statement by Jason Hammond (sibling of incarcerated hacktivist Jeremy Hammond) as he heads to prison for his role in an anti-fascist action. Ramona Africa speaks to us about the MOVE 9 case and the life and death of Phil Africa, and an anarchist from Barcelona gives a report about the recent wave of repression by the Spanish state in Operation Pandora. Listeners weigh in on cable access TV, iTunes, and an insider view on security and entrapment strategies. We conclude with reflections on the lessons to be learned from these various cases and recent events on staying safe in order to be truly dangerous to authority. Plus as usual there are a lot of global news reports, event announcements, prisoner birthdays, and plenty more.

You can download this and all of our previous episodes online. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or send us an email to podcast@crimethinc.com. You can also call us 24 hours a day at 202–59-NOWRK, that is, 202–596–6975.

Turkish Anarchists on the Fight for Kobanê

In summer 2013, we published an interview with the Turkish group Revolutionary Anarchist Action (Devrimci Anarşist Faaliyet, or DAF) about the uprising that began in Gezi Park. At the end of summer 2014, we learned that DAF was supporting the fierce resistance that residents of the town of Kobanê in northern Syria were putting up to the incursion of the fundamentalist Islamic State.

In hopes of gaining more insight into the situation, we contacted our comrades of DAF once more. After months of waiting, we are finally able to present these two interviews—one offering general background on the struggle in Kobanê, the other delving into analytical detail about the geopolitical context and implications.

Read the feature.

Why Syriza Can’t Save Greece

Since 2008, Greece has been a bellwether of crisis and resistance around the world: whatever happens in the social movements there is a pretty good indication of what lies ahead for the rest of us. Syriza, a new political party, took power in Greece last Sunday with the promise to rescue Greece from austerity programs in defiance of the international bankers and finance ministers at the helm of global capitalism. While conservative economists wring their hands, similar parties all over Europe are hailing this as a new model offering hope and change.

But in the long run, Syriza cannot solve the problems created by capitalism and the state, and their electoral victory may only hinder the revolutionary movements that could solve them. Here’s why.

Read the feature.

#33: The Ex-Worker’s 2014 Year in Review

#33: The Ex-Worker’s 2014 Year in Review – From the Ukrainian revolution and war with Russia to the Bosnian uprisings, ISIS/Rojava/Kobane conflicts, the Brazilian World Cup protests, anti-police riots in Ferguson and beyond… 2014 was one hell of a depressing, inspiring, roller coaster of a year! In Episode 33 of the Ex-Worker, our year in review, we wrote to anarchists around the world to ask them what they thought were the most significant events of the last year and what they anticipate in 2015. Responses came in from correspondents as far off as Brazil, Russia, Colombia, Slovenia, Finland, and Germany, as well as across North America, with reports about 2014 and analysis of the possibilities for resistance in the upcoming year. We also stop to take stock of the last year of the Ex-Worker, and reveal some schemes and dreams for our next year of anarchist podcasting. And as if that wasn’t enough, we share an exclusive report on squatting, eviction, and resistance in Prague, an analysis of recent anti-police rioting in Oakland, and discussions on listener feedback about Agency’s Ebola article and the police in relation to the state, along with plenty of news, prisoner birthdays, and more. Merry Crisis and Happy New Fear!

You can download this and all of our previous episodes online. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or send us an email to podcast@crimethinc.com. You can also call us 24 hours a day at 202–59-NOWRK, that is, 202–596–6975.

Announcing To Change Everything!

After months of labor and coordination, we are proud to present our most ambitious effort yet. To Change Everything is a new multimedia overview of the anarchist project, updated for the 21st century. It is a primer for the curious, a polemic for the entrenched, a point of departure for everyone who longs for another world.

To Change Everything includes a free full-color 48-page print publication, a video by Submedia.tv, a responsive website featuring the text in 6 languages (with 14 more to come), and a sticker and poster campaign. Collectives in 19 countries across five continents have prepared two dozen different versions of the project, each tailored to match the local context.

Order copies to give out at events—distribute them around your neighborhood, college campus, community center, or workplace—leave one as your calling card when you interrupt business as usual. Put the sticker up on public transportation and anywhere else people might notice it. Circulate the website and video online, too!

Visit the website

Order print copies : English – Español

Another page, The Secret Is to Begin, offers an array of further resources as a next step for readers.

It’s high time for a project like this. All around the world, conflict is intensifying between human beings and authoritarian systems. We’re seeing uprisings from Bosnia to Brazil, autonomous zones in Greece and Rojava, fascist parties entering European parliaments. In the United States, successive waves of dispossession and injustice have swept new sectors of society into revolt one after another. The student movements of 2009, the Occupy movement of 2011, the unrest that spread from Ferguson in 2014—all of these have produced a population hungry for new visions. With faith in government, capitalism, policing, and all the other authoritarian institutions of our day at an all-time low, the time is ripe to open the way to liberation—and if we don’t seize the opportunity, others will exploit the situation for their own nefarious ends. To Change Everything steps into the breach.

When we first pitched this project, we promised to make 100,000 copies. We swiftly recognized that wouldn’t be enough. Supporters donated over $22,000 via Kickstarter, and a few generous comrades contributed over $10,000 more. Thanks to them, we’ve been able to deliver more than we originally envisioned. We’ve helped collectives in Brazil, Argentina, Romania, and Slovenia fund their print versions; we’ve earmarked 3000 copies for prisoner support groups to send to prisoners in the US; and we made almost twice as many print copies ourselves as we proposed to.

Altogether, we printed 175,000 copies for North America: 150,000 in English and 25,000 in Spanish. Active Distribution printed 10,000 more in English to distribute in the UK. The TCE group in Germany made 10,000 copies for their first print run; the group in Brazil has already gone through 4000 copies. Release events have taken place in Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Croatia, and Slovenia, as well as the US.

All this is thanks to 100% volunteer labor. We extend our deepest appreciation to Submedia, Active Distribution, the dozens of translators and designers and publishers who crafted their own versions of this project, the hundreds of donors who sponsored them, and you for distributing them.

We still have some loose ends to tie up. We have at least 14 more languages to add to the website. The Ex-Worker is about to release an audio version. Please send us photos of To Change Everything in action to illustrate our updates!

We’re still seeking translators and publishers to prepare additional versions of this project. We would love to hear from comrades in Indonesia, Japan, Australia, and elsewhere. The idea is for you to craft a version of To Change Everything adapted to your context and your ideas. Also, prisoner support groups may request copies postage-free while supplies last. To invite a delegation to present To Change Everything where you are, or to speak on anarchist ideas and strategy in general, contact us.

Beyond Whistleblowing

Citizenfour is just the latest expression of public fascination with the figure of the whistleblower. Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden—the whistleblower defects from within the halls of power to inform us about how power is being misused, delivering forbidden information to the people like the holy fire of Prometheus.

But can the whistleblower save us? Is whistleblowing enough? What limitations are coded into a strategy of social change based around whistleblowing, and what would it take to go beyond them?

Certainly, whistleblowers look good compared to the institutions they expose. Faith in authorities of all stripes is at an all-time low, and for good reason. In a news clip in Citizenfour, we see Obama claim to have ordered an inquiry into the NSA before Snowden’s revelations surfaced, petulantly implying that he was Snowden before Snowden. The President calls cynically for a “fact-based” discussion—when the only useful source of facts has been the illegal leaks of the man he is decrying. It is difficult to imagine a starker contrast between courage and cynicism.

Yet it’s one thing to unmask tyrants—it’s another thing to depose them.

“The greatest fear that I have… is that nothing will change. People will see in the media all of these disclosures. They’ll know the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society. But they won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight.” –Edward Snowden

The theory of social change implicit in whistleblowing is that if the crimes of a government are revealed, popular outrage will force the government to fix itself. “I believed that if the NSA’s unconstitutional mass surveillance of Americans was known,” Snowden said, “it would not survive the scrutiny of the courts, the Congress, and the people.” Yet Snowden’s greatest fear has been realized: reforms to restrict NSA surveillance programs have been defeated by the elected representatives Snowden pinned his hopes on.

Snowden and other whistleblowers have succeeded in discrediting governments, but not in halting the expansion of the surveillance state. They have revealed how invasive and unaccountable our rulers are, but they have not equipped us to defend ourselves. Is it possible that the same factors that position whistleblowers to achieve such an impact also hinder their revelations from bearing fruit?

Why does the whistleblower make such a compelling protagonist? Above all, because he is positioned to speak from within the system: he is invested with all the legitimacy of the institutions he exposes. He did not begin as a rebel or an outsider; he believed in the system, and felt betrayed when he learned it did not adhere to its own regulations. Whistleblowing is premised on a democratic discourse: if people know enough, they can “speak truth to power,” and this speech itself will somehow catalyze change.[1] Of course, this presumes a political system based in dialogue.

Snowden’s own revelations show how naïve this conception is. The departments that built this surveillance infrastructure—that now seek to imprison Snowden alongside Chelsea Manning—hold power by virtue of coercive force, not persuasive arguments. Merely speaking truth is insufficient; we are not in a dialogue, but a power struggle.

Likewise, it is a mistake to treat the backroom machinations of politicians and bureaucrats as temporary malfunctions in an otherwise transparent and egalitarian order. These are not excesses, but business as usual; they are not exceptions to the rule, but essential to rule itself. Since the heyday of whistleblowing in the 1970s—Daniel Ellsberg, Deep Throat, the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI—investigative journalists have exposed scandal after scandal. Treating all of these as anomalous implies that the state itself is inherently legitimate, and simply needs reforming. But it’s backwards to think that citizens can police the state. The stronger the state, the more power it will bring to bear against its citizens—not to mention everyone else.

There are other drawbacks to framing the whistleblower as the primary protagonist of social change. Not only can this imply that the system is fundamentally legitimate, it also presents those who hold privileged positions within the system as the agents of change. Yet for the most part, these people are the least likely to step out of line; a thousand mechanisms of selection, insulation, and incentive ensure that they are not susceptible to crises of conscience. It should be no wonder that Mannings and Snowdens are so rare, relative to the faceless thousands who collude in the functioning of the state apparatus. The problem is not that human beings are naturally selfish or insensitive, but that the infrastructure of power promotes selfishness and insensitivity.

It is a mistake to stake the future of humanity on those within the halls of power. Instead, we should be asking how people from all walks of life might work together to disable the infrastructure of oppression.

System administrators like Edward Snowden do indeed wield disproportionate influence over the fate of our species, but sysadmins cannot create a solution by themselves. Centralizing a few computer experts as the subject of social struggle only obscures all the other demographics whose participation is essential in any movement for liberation. This oversight explains the despair Julian Assange and Jacob Appelbaum hinted at in their 2013 talk at the Chaos Communication Congress, when they described sysadmins as a class that should organize to defend its own interests, warning that it would soon be too late to halt the descent into digital tyranny. In fact, people outside the institutions of power will go on fighting against injustice regardless of the consolidation of power on the internet—many frankly have no choice. The rapidly increasing numbers of the marginalized, unemployed, and oppressed must figure at the center of any strategy for change alongside defectors from the programming caste. If programmers conceptualize their interests as distinct from the rest of humanity, and organize to defend those interests rather than to participate in a struggle much greater than themselves, they will be doomed, along with the rest of the species. Programmers should not organize themselves as a class—they should switch sides in the class war.

As Snowden feared, in the absence of proposals for how to fight it, the revelation of state surveillance only exacerbates the chilling effect it is intended to achieve. The average newspaper reader, upon learning that the NSA is tracking his whole life via his smartphone and credit card, is not likely to take to the street in outrage, but to become more guarded and submissive. Yet silence and obedience will not protect us: they only embolden those in power to target ever broader circles of potential enemies. Nor can encryption and other security measures suffice to keep us safe: the government will always have superior technology at its disposal. If we conceptualize resistance as a merely technical issue, we will be defeated from the start. Encryption is important, but the only real security we could achieve would be a movement powerful enough to stand up for anyone targeted by the state. However much intelligence government agencies gather, they can only utilize it to the extent that they are able to bear the political consequences. The sooner we join in an open struggle against them, the safer we all will be.

Let’s return to the figure of the whistleblower. The ideal hero is like us: an Everyman, only endowed with supernatural courage and destiny. Heroes represent a step we could take, but do not—a step we often do not take for fear that we are not gifted the way they are, not chosen by destiny. And this is precisely what is dangerous about heroes: they tend to sideline those who believe in them.

This is not to denigrate whistleblowers. Snowden and Manning have given everything to be true to their consciences, out of the most selfless intentions. But the best way to honor their courage and sacrifice is to step onto the same path. The message they have for us is not just the information they delivered, but above all their conduct itself, their decision to defect from the side of oppressive power to the side of the people. Rather than simply revering Snowden’s exceptional bravery, let us ask ourselves what the equivalent to his deed would be in each of our own lives. It might not be whistleblowing, but something else.

What would it mean for the rest of us to defect from the power structures that we participate in? To identify what is intolerable in our own mundane complicities, and break them off once and for all? This is a step each of us can take, wherever we are situated in the architecture of power.

Whistleblowing alone will not bring about social change. That takes direct action. Remember, there was no whistleblower in Ferguson—it was not a revelation of police misconduct that triggered the most important wave of protest against police brutality in two decades, but the fact that people acted on their outrage. The killing of Michael Brown was understood nationwide as a tragedy because people protested, not because a video recorded it, nor because an insider revealed that his killer violated some statute. Objecting to government activity on the grounds that it is illegal or corrupt leaves us powerless against all the forms of brutality and abuse that are already legal. We need to develop the capacity to stand up to the authorities, regardless of the laws. Otherwise, all the whistleblowing in the world will be futile.

Today, we don’t lack awareness of the surveillance state so much as we lack concrete examples of how to take action against it. In the spirit of Jeremy Hammond, we might hypothesize that what we need is not just to reveal the misdeeds of the state, but to identify its strategic vulnerabilities. From protecting Tunisian activists against surveillance to revealing the names of members of the Ku Klux Klan, Anonymous has demonstrated the tactical advantages of hacking in concert with social movements. Richard Stallman himself has pointed out that denial-of-service actions are simply a new form of blockading—just as protesters from New York to the Bay Area blocked interstate highways, online activists blockade the information superhighway. Protests that combine online and offline direct action offer opportunities for new alliances cutting across class, race, and geography.

Meanwhile, the functionaries who keep the surveillance apparatus running operate out of offices in placid suburbs from Fort Mead to Hawaii. Following the lead of the protesters who targeted Google in San Francisco, we can imagine offline demonstrators opening a new front in the struggle. Perhaps this could turn the tables on those who consider themselves the masters of the digital universe from the comfort of their desks.

So whistleblowers, sysadmins, and hackers of all hats must make common cause with other movements and populations, understanding whistleblowing as one of many tactics in a much larger struggle. Alone, whistleblowers and other digital dissidents will be tracked down and imprisoned like Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond, or trapped like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Together, with all our diverse abilities and perspectives—from programming skills to the clarity that comes of having nothing to lose—we will be more powerful than any of us could be alone.

“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA,” Snowden insisted in his more innocent days. Today, any real pragmatist must acknowledge that it would be easier to dismantle the NSA and all the unaccountable institutions it defends than to reform them. The simple desire to be granted privacy and left in peace brings us into direct conflict with globally networked state power. This is a daunting prospect, but it’s also a good time for it, as millions of other people around the world are being propelled into the same conflict by the ecological, economic, and racialized crises produced by this top-heavy power structure.

And here we arrive at the heart of the matter. The chief target of the NSA has never been so-called “terrorists,” but grassroots movements that challenge the distribution of power. In this light, the decision to broaden the scope of NSA surveillance to include the entire population of the United States is not surprising after all. The goal never really was to find the proverbial terrorist needle in the haystack. The real targets of the surveillance apparatus have always been the activists in Tunisia, the revolutionaries in Egypt, the anarchists in Greece, #M15, #occupy, #blacklivesmatter, the revolution in Rojava—and all the social movements yet to come, as crisis begets crisis.

It is no longer realistic to imagine social change as a matter of policy discussion, if it ever was. We need to be thinking in terms of revolution. Whether you act from behind a keyboard or a barricade, let’s find each other and learn to be powerful together.

Footnote

[1] The idea that the mere revelation of some hidden truth could somehow awaken people into freedom is most evident in the 9/11 Truth movement and similar purveyors of conspiracy theory. But those are simply extreme manifestations of a narrative that is pervasive in our society, in which millenarian powers are ascribed to information itself.↩

Episode #32: White Supremacy & Capitalism

#32: White Supremacy and Capitalism, from 1492 to Ferguson – Rebellion has erupted around the country in the aftermath of grand jury decisions to allow the murderers of Mike Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York to go free without legal charges. Why did this happen, when authorities knew that this would spark furious protests and international condemnation? In Episode 32 of the Ex-Worker, Clara and Alanis try to understand the persistence of racist police violence by delving into the historical roots of capitalism and white supremacy in European conquest and colonization of the Americas and the transatlantic slave trade. Along with a survey of resistance and backlash since the grand jury announcements, we share excerpts from the recent feature “The Thin Blue Line is a Burning Fuse,” tracing the role of anti-police anger in catalyzing nearly all recent major social upheavals around the globe. [Agency] http://www.anarchistagency.com), a new anarchist media project, shares an excerpt from an article analyzing the Ebola outbreak and anarchist perspectives on public health. We run through a wide range of news, discuss listener comments on transcripts and international coverage, and even offer a radical holiday song!

You can download this and all of our previous episodes online. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or send us an email to podcast@crimethinc.com. You can also call us 24 hours a day at 202–59-NOWRK, that is, 202–596–6975.

From Ferguson to Oakland

The movement that began in Ferguson in response to the murder of Michael Brown has spread around the United States, setting off nightly clashes in the Bay Area. Scrambling to keep up with events, our contacts in Oakland have composed this overview of the past 17 days of anti-police revolt. They describe the trajectory of die-ins, marches, riots, blockades, barricading, and looting, and explore the implications for the future of protest movements around the country.

Read the feature.

Why Break Windows?

From the initial revolt in Ferguson last August to the demonstrations in Oakland and Berkeley last week, property destruction has been central to a new wave of struggle against police violence. But what does vandalizing businesses have to do with protesting police brutality? Why break windows?

First, as countless others have argued, because property destruction is an effective tactic. From the Boston Tea Party to the demonstrations against the 1999 World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, property destruction has been an essential part of many struggles. It can pressure or punish opponents by inflicting an economic cost. It can mobilize potential comrades by demonstrating that the ruling forces are not invincible. It can force issues that otherwise would be suppressed—we would certainly not be having a nationwide conversation about race, class, and policing were it not for the courageous actions of a few vandals in Ferguson. Finally, it conveys an uncompromising rejection of the prevailing order, opening space in which people may begin to imagine another.

Property destruction charges don’t look good on a résumé or in a campaign for city council, but perhaps this is a good thing. It means that political vandalism is usually a selfless act—and even when it isn’t, it has to be its own reward. There is more reason to suspect paid nonprofit activists and aspiring politicians of ulterior motives than to question the motivations of vandals. This may explain why activists and politicians cast such aspersions on them.

Shop windows represent segregation. They are invisible barriers. Like so much in this society, they simultaneously offer a view of “the good life” and block access to it. In a polarizing economy, shop windows taunt the poor with commodities they cannot afford, status and security they will never attain. For millions upon millions, the healthy food, medicines, and other goods they need are the breadth of an entire social class away from them, a gulf they will not cross in a lifetime of hard work—a gulf represented by half an inch of plate glass.

To smash a shop window is to contest all the boundaries that cut through this society: black and white, rich and poor, included and excluded. Most of us have become inured to all this segregation, taking such inequalities for granted as a fact of life. Breaking windows is a way to break this silence, to challenge the absurd notion that the social construct of property rights is more important than the needs of the people around us.

One reactionary argument goes that vandals are wrecking “their own neighborhoods,” but this is a disingenuous way to speak about those whose names do not appear on any deeds. Indeed, when developers speak of “improving” these neighborhoods, they mean the de facto expulsion of the current population. The problem in Ferguson and everywhere like it is not that the economy has been interrupted; the problem is the routine functioning of the economy itself. In a profit-driven society, the more that poor people work and pay rent, the poorer they will end up relative to those who are profiting on their labor—that’s where profit comes from. It is dishonest to blame the victim here, as if more submissiveness could produce a different result. In a pyramid scheme, somebody has to form the bottom tier, and ever since the colonization of the so-called Americas that has always meant black and brown people.

As others have pointed out, colonization, gentrification, mass incarceration, and police killings are all forms of displacement, of erasure. We have become accustomed to ceaseless, dramatic disruptions of the environments we live in—so long as it is capitalists and police driving them, not poor people. This normalizes an alienated relation to the urban landscape, so whole neighborhoods can be leveled and replaced without anyone batting an eyelid. It normalizes a social system that itself has only been imposed on the earth over the past couple centuries, making the most unsustainable way of life ever practiced seem timeless and eternal. Vandalism demonstrates that both the current disposition of urban space and the social system that determines it are contingent and temporary—that it is possible, even with limited resources, to transform space according to a different logic. Gentrification and vandalism are both forms of intervention in the urban landscape—the difference is that gentrification is top-down, while vandalism is bottom-up.

It is not a coincidence that shop windows have been targeted in protests against police violence. Businesses, be they multinational or local, are the tax base that pays for police, and without police they would not be able to accumulate so much wealth at everyone else’s expense. In this situation, addressing protests directly to the police is oblique at best, for the police answer to business owners and politicians, not to public opinion. It is much more direct to target their bosses, the capitalists themselves. Cost them enough money in smashed windows, and maybe they’ll think twice about what kind of policing they call for.

“But some poor worker is going to have to clean that up,” sanctimonious liberals charge whenever they see a protester making free with the avenues of the wealthy. Anyone who has worked a blue-collar job knows that this is pure bunk. A few days of vacation time while the boss cleans up is a nice treat, not a misfortune—and it might be the only way to get enough free time to participate in the movement. Likewise, scrubbing graffiti off a façade can be a welcome break from the usual employee routine, and may even be a source of overtime. If anything, vandalism creates jobs, offering additional work opportunities to service industry employees and construction workers whose labor would not otherwise be required. This means you can’t smash capitalism one storefront at a time—such disruptions only create new investment opportunities—but trying to might at least redistribute a little wealth downward. It is typically liberal for critics to present the poor as the victims of confrontational tactics, when in fact it is their own status and comfort they fear for.

In the final analysis, sabotage and arson are the strategy of a retreating army—of those who know they will not hold a given terrain for long. A movement strong enough to retain the territory it seizes from the police wouldn’t necessarily need to break or burn anything, only to transform it. On the other hand, as long as inequalities persist, people are bound to lash out against them via property destruction as well as other tactics. Anyone who truly desires to see an end to property destruction should hasten to bring about the end of property itself. Then, at last, the only reason to break windows would be thrill seeking.

Further Reading

A Beginner’s Guide to Targeted Property Destruction

In Defense of Rioting

In Defense of Looting

In Defense of the Ferguson Riots

The Illegitimacy of Violence, the Violence of Legitimacy