Massive anarchist violence in recent years.

Miscellaneous Current Events
1

The European Union’s Terror Trend and Situation Report 2010 just said that the number of anarchist attacks has nearly doubled from the year before.

France had 11 attempted anarchist attacks in 2008, done mostly by an international arm of a Turkish anarchist group called Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front, involving IEDs manufactured in disused factories. They ceased in 2010.

But in both the years, Spain’s, Italy’s and Greece’s anarchist violence has been stepping up. In Greece, Revolutionary Struggle attacked an oil company headquarters, a police bus with 19 officers, and a police station in 2008. Revolutionary Struggle is well armed with grenades and military-grade equipment, and in 2009, it opened fire on the police officers attempting to investigate the organization whilst at a house of a witness, and on police officers acting as security at a government department. Cells of Fire Conspiracy of Thessalonica and Athens did seven attacks in 2008, on the Italian embassy, on an office building with several multinational companies, military barracks, and police stations. There are six anarchist organizations in operation in Greece that have acquired a violent streak.

In Spain, the First of October Antifascist Resistance Group and its various breakoff factions were responsible for six successful attacks and four attempted attacks on business houses in Barcelona in 2008 and in 2009, these attacks started stepping up in Catalonia, with sixteen successful attacks and seven failed attacks. Spain had the largest number of anarchist terror attacks in 2009.

In Italy, five successful attacks took place against banks and automobile companies in 2008, attributed mostly to the Political-Military Communist Party of Italy, and the Informal Anarchist Federation, who are working to start anarchist insurrection in Italy. In 2009, the Cell of Proletarian Resistance burnt down offices of various political parties. It is also rumoured that the Red Brigades have resurfaced as Armed Proletarian Nuclei of Annamaria Martini, and are planning an attack.

Belgium has seen Greek and Italian anarchists throwing Molotov cocktails in areas near offices in Brussels and Ghent, and they are affiliated with Belgian groups Cell of Communist Combatants and Red Aid International.

So…would Proudhon be proud?

2

I was friend with some anarchists while at the university. They all came from the La Spezia-Massa Carrara area. The area has long be an hotbed of Anarchism, mostly of the Socialist kind, and learned a lot from them. I’ll take a Socialist-Anarchist over an hardcore, elegant Leftist any day.

Having said that, this is just the inheritance of Europe’s long and bloody terrorist season: RAF, Brigate Rosse, NAR, the Baader-Meinhof gang… most of them were really nothing more than glorified armed robbers (now… where did I hear that before?) and there’s always the question about who supported them. It must be said Anarchism was usually nothing more than a cover name: most of the groups bearing this name were nothing more than Communist offshots.

In recent years Anarchism has been taken up as a flag of choice by prefessional troublemakers. Do you think they read Proudhon or Bakunin? No, Anarchism is just an excuse for runsacking shops, setting fire to buildings and clashing with the police. Apart from the usually confused Leftist mumbo-jumbo they have no other ideology than causing as much damage as they can. A recent development is “proletarian shopping”: a large group of them will enter a supermarket, grab as much as they can and head out. If somebody tries to stop them they’ll simply threaten the use of violence: supermarkets in the most affected areas have started hiring armed guards to prevent this. Do these sound like the actions of somebody who wants to change society for the better?

3

I’m sure we’ll end up having a War on Anarchy and bomb some country for it. I’m so sick of anarchists making explosions and stuff. I began to follow a few anarcho-communists on Tumblr, and they all (except for one) just post pictures of graffiti, police cars being set on fire, bricks being thrown into business buildings, etc. I thought a few might have interesting things to say (at least regarding the goverment in general), but nope.

4

To be sure, I feel the same way about Indian Maoists. On a day to day basis, they are armed thugs. When foreigners ask me why mere armed thugs would be considered a threat to national security, I explain that there are varying levels of violence. Sometimes it gets very serious, including entire buses blown up with people inside them. Most times, it would seem a low-intensity conflict compared to violence seen in the Lebanon Civil War or in Pakistan today. They are a “threat” to a country is only when you see it on aggregate. When you take a specific one-by-one look, they look like unorganized militants who act spontaneously. They won’t overturn the order, but they will cause a lot of bloodshed if they continue for a long time.

In the end, anarchism seems confusing. Sometimes, it seems to be a specific commitment to ideology. Sometimes, it just seems to be meaningless undirected anger. The student protests in Britain, for example. British anarchists wanted to use the occasion to protest against what they saw as an oppressive “neoliberal” order. The student protests were just about a modest fee increase to a level still a fraction of what students in other industrial nations pay. Is that really The Man about to get everybody? Were the anarchist proposals to start besieging LibDem headquarters even remotely in proportion? And if the authorities did submit, would they benefit from those students going to universities and being “brainwashed” with “neoliberalism”? And after going to those universities, would it benefit the anarchists that those students will take jobs in evil capitalist institutions?

Yes, they probably are just folks finding excuses for violence, just like many “civil rights protesters” in 1960s America. I am reminded of the Bolsheviks. The Bolshevik leaders abhorred violence and said that violence was crude and inefficient, and contradicted Marxian views about efficiency and natural downfall of capitalism. But under their name, the angry masses and youths were willing to start killing in the streets. The Bolsheviks then threw up their hands and decided that the masses will learn for themselves that violence was a bad idea. THEN, they will listen to their proposals. Perhaps the Proudhonian anarchists who recruit chavs and petty thugs feel the same way about their followers.

Either way, what are the odds of unemployed, angry Spaniards and Greeks being useful recruits for anarchists?

5

bump

Actually Brian, we might never see a War on Anarchy, even though we have a War on Drugs and a War on Terror.

For some reason, even though anarchists have done more violence in the industrial western world than Muslims and even though the violent wing of anarchists is much greater in proportion and actual numbers than the violent wing of Islam, anarchists are totally ignored.

I guess the statesmen hope those young punk kids will grow up and move on.

6

I’d rather side with a neocon or a liberal than with one of these “anarchists”.

7

Amen to that!

8

Most people that I’ve known that are anarcho-commies turn out to be pyromaniacal bums who just don’t want to work, who feel justified in destroying property because they heard it in a punk song. They are pretty much the most useless people I’ve ever encountered.

On the same topic, I just finished reading G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, in which a policeman infiltrated a society of anarchists that are plotting bombings and assassinations. It’s all allegorical but apparently in Chesterton’s day (turn of the century Britain), anarchists were considered by some to be a huge threat to stability.

9

The 1900s? Of course, they were a threat.

In Spain, they were about to capsize the country like a car they wanted to burn. They killed so many Catholics and Catholic priests for absolutely no reason. That’s why religious people sided with Franco; they had to save their lives, for heaven’s sake.

While Pierre-Joseph Proudhon himself probably would have disliked the anarchists inspired by him, he exemplifies them in a more moderate manner. Proudhon seemed to be against everything. His principle was “Deny! Always deny!” and he vowed to pursue truth across “a path of ruin and destruction”. He disliked intellectualism, although he was an intellectual. He dislike the church (which he saw as an assault on the spirit), marriage (which he saw as an assault on women’s freedom), the state, the owners of capital, the institution of property, everything. And when socialists like Marx thought they found a kindred spirit in him, he turned against them too.

I guess if a nihilist today who hates everything in life found Proudhon, he’d find a soul just like his own, for he wants to wage a war as one man, just as Proudhon, against enemies and friends and all those in between. The rich are guilty for oppressing the common masses, the middle classes are guilty for being a tool of oppression for the rich, the working classes are guilty for not looking out for their own interests. Everyone is guilty and needs either re-education or a short lesson taught by being dragged on a car across streets.