The story of a small, underground insurrectionary group in the 1960’s in New York City.
Burning The Bridges They Are Building: Anarchist Strategies Against the Police
Text from back cover:
“Everything that happened in Seattle happened slowly and with patience. Words were carefully chosen, anarchist presses worked all night, and people came to the streets with clear intentions. When they did not, they wandered aimlessly or groped through their pockets, finding nothing. Intention, as always, is everything. Nothing is lacking in any other city besides the clear intention of where to go and what to do. Improvisation is central when a musician composes a fantasia. Music is the intention, but the composer is not bound by conventions or standards. Thus, a fantasia emerges that can sometimes produce sounds that no one has ever heard before. It is time to gather our instruments and compose something new. While there is much wind in anarchists, there is so often little music.”
Civilisation & Collapse
Text from back cover:
“This is not a suggestion to flee to civilisation and cower in isolation, tending vegetable patches and practising primitive skills in “peace” – it is a proposal to take the initiative to better position ourselves tactically, to continue and intensify the war against civilisation in what will most likely be challenging times. We would like to reiterate our opinion that things are only going to get worse, and to adopt this tactic of wild resistance would mean putting this into practise immediately, not waiting for any more “signs” of what is to come. From these wild places we will have the chance to better arm, rewild and train ourselves for the preservation of our own freedom, the defence of regions untouched or abandonded by
industrial civilisation and to effectively attack its hardware and mechanisms where they are weak, driving the final nails deeper into the casket of this dying society.”
Collectives: Anarchy Against the Mass
Text from back cover:
“Collectives are small efficient means of organizing that provide practical examples of counter – institutions that are egalitarian, voluntary, and anti – authoritarian. Collectives work and they prove that anarchy works, and that’s one of the best weapons we have against both Marxist-capitalism and the Marxist- Leninoid version of “Revolution.” Collectives demonstrate that people can organize their lives together in ways that do not oppress or exploit anyone and that encourage the full and free participation of people in things that affect their everyday lives.”
Colonization and Decolonization: 500+ Years of Indigenous Resistance
A detailed manual for Indigenous liberation in the 21st Century.
Colonization and Decolonization 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance pdf
Contra la logica de la sumision (Wolfi Landstreicher)
“”El deseo de cambiar el mundo sigue siendo simplemente un ideal abstracto o un programa político a menos que se convierta en la voluntad de transformar la propia vida. Si lo que queremos es gozo y asombro, y una existencia hermosa e indomable, debemos intentar lograr esto aquí y ahora en un desafío rebelde contra toda dominación, erradicando la lógica de la sumisión de nuestras vidas, nuestras relaciones y nuestra lucha revolucionaria – para la destrucción de la política y la creación de la vida sin medida”.
Colonization: A War for Territory
A thorough look at colonization and the quest for resources and establishing colonial occupations from a military perspective.
Colonization A War for Territory pdf
Complices No Aliades
“Esta provocación está planteada para intervenir en parte de las tensiones actuales alrededor de la solidaridad/trabajo de apoyo al ser las trayectorias actuales, desde mi perspectiva, contra-liberadoras. Agradecimientos especiales a DS En Phoenix por las conversaciones que han conducido a este zine, y a todes aquelles que aportaron comentarios/preguntas/discrepancias. No interpretéis esto como para “aliades blanques jóvenes de clase media”, sólo para activistas pagades, activistas sin ánimo de lucro, o como une amigue dijo, “anarquistas o estudiantes que han empobrecido”. Hay muches supuestes “aliades” en la lucha por los derechos de les migrantes que apoyan una “amplia reforma de la inmigración” la cual impulsa la militarización de las tierras indígenas.”
Communes & Land Projects: A Nomadic Critique of Communization
From back cover:
“…what is unappetizing about the call for attack by the communisateurs and Tiqqunists is exactly that they are communisateurs — they are Marxists — they want the communes so they can have spaces to build their Party, or build whatever of their organizations, to opportunistically centralize and “increase power” (anonymous 2009, 17). This is in preparation of them launching their inevitable revolutionary war against the bourgeoisie, and following their victory, the communizers would of course seek to institute the dictatorship of the proletariat (also referred to in some circles of the Marxist far-left as the proletarian semi-State).”
Communes and Land Projects A Nomadic Critique of Communization pdf
Communization: The Senile Decay of Anarchy by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire Imprisoned Members
Text from back cover:
“Anarchy, however, demands the organization of the new anarchist urban guerrilla, if we don’t want it to degenerate into a meaningless poetic chatter, doomed to be followed by the alternative integration in the system. Concepts that are not armed, like anarchist individualism, nihilism end up being harmless words in the mouths of even more harmless individuals who confuse anarcho-nihilism with the subculture of “antisocial lifestyle”. Anarcho-nihilism combines the propaganda of words with the propaganda of shootings, fire, dynamite. Its dynamic is forged on the anvil of actions where consciousness and experience meet in a never ending dance and not in the keyboards of the digital world of nothing.”
Creative Destruction #1
Text from the zine:
“The condos, specialty boutiques, and silver spoon bohemians invading our neighborhoods aren’t some neutral, benign process of inevitable “growth.” Gentrification is driven by wealthy developers, investors, and professional politicians, in the interest of power and profit. For poor and working class people, this process means skyrocketing rents, abusive landlords, more cops, overpriced yuppie shops, cuts to services, and the displacement of long established working class residents and shops. These are the local manifestations of advanced capitalism. And these greedy fuckers don’t speak the language of polite lobbying or moral persuasion.
Time to make the streets unsafe again! Not just for the sake of being an asshole, but because we refuse to be pushed out of our neighborhoods – forced to live in some distant periphery where the rents are affordable, but community and services are scarce. Gentrification is fucking violence,and some self defense is in order. Whether it’s repeatedly smashing the windows of yuppie businesses we hate; class-hatred motivated muggings; burning down the construction site down the block; or smashing up luxury cars with their drivers still in them – we need to make our neighborhoods a liability for capital while maintaining a sense of community and solidarity amongst ourselves. Who are “we” ?! – The fucked over, the poor, the racialized, the welfare recipients, the single mothers, the consumer survivors, the drug users, the undocumented, the disabled, the queer, and the angry. Let’s find each other and take back what’s rightfully ours!”
Dangerous Foundations: An Argument Against the “Identity” in Identity Politics
A well-written, thorough critique of identity and a proposal for its total abandonment.
Decomposing the Masses: Towards Armed Individuality
From back cover:
““The strategy of creating a mass society or system of order is a strategy of discouraging individuality, chaos, and uniqueness. This strategy includes presenting a one-dimensional view of individualism that is defined by capitalism. But for individualism to be unique and
chaotic, it can not be limited by the confines of formal organizations or socialized constructs.”
“I want to weaponize chaos as an individualized attack on all governance and social order. I envision anarchy as a wildfire that blackens the civilized, domesticated kingdom of institutional and social domination. Getting free is more than just attacking capital and the state. At least for me, it also means creating your self every single day beyond society’s attempts to define you as a static being.”
Descending into Madness: An Anarchist-Nihilist Diary of Anti-Psychiatry
From back cover:
“Like all governments, presidents, and authority, psychiatry never gave me freedom. Assigned psychiatric labels didn’t help me – they only filled me with an internalized sense of victimhood and inferiority. Medication didn’t ‘cure’ or ‘fix’ me – only damaged me, numbing me to my own senses in order to create an emotional void between me and the fuckery of civilized life. So instead, with nihilist celebration I descend into madness, taking aim at social order and civilization. With armed animalism I realize now that there was nothing to fix my natural contempt for domestication and social control reminds me that I was never ‘broken’ to begin with.”
Descending into Madness_An Anarchist-Nihilist Diary of Anti-Psychiatry pdf
Deserting the Digital Utopia: Computers Against Computing
Text from back cover:
“The Internet has often been compared to the Wild West: a largely unregulated space rich in opportunities, in which people may experiment with new relations. Most commentators miss the full implications of this metaphor. The Wild West was the final frontier of colonization, where the last zones of ungoverned territory were mapped, stripped of resources, and integrated into state control. Many who fled to the Wild West in search of freedom only accelerated this process of colonization. Similarly, those who champion the Internet as the new frontier of freedom may inadvertently hasten the enclosure of the last aspects of human life that remain outside the economy.”
Desire Armed: Anarchy and the Creative Impulse
Text from back cover:
“My freedom is not a promise for the future, but a way to continuously confront the world where I exist now, taking possession of my life with all my might, in conflict with everything that stands in my way. This ongoing conflict (which will not end simply because we somehow manage to eradicate the entire institutional framework of authority) is what makes the essential destructive, negating aspects of anarchist practice one with the creative aspects. Consciously creating our lives as our own means destroying every chain that holds as back, smashing through every barrier that gets in our way. Thus, there is no use in waiting for some condition to hand us our freedom. We need to act now for our own sakes and on our own terms, not for any cause nor on terms set by those who want to maintain the ruling order.”
Drawing First Blood
From back cover:
“Every attempt to free humanity en masse is bound to fail because collective self-determination is a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing as the common good, for there is no good that is common to all. Society, collective, and public are only convenient terms to designate individuals in the aggregate; they are not entities — they have no bodies, minds, interests, or real existence: A collective has no self, and is but a collection of selves who have waived their individual powers and will to self-determination, for what is claimed to be the interests of the majority. The price paid for collective unity is always the subordination of the member units, which is the antithesis of anarchy…”
“Anarchy is freedom, and this most assuredly includes the freedom not to be a socialist or to live like one, and the freedom not to limit one’s identity to any social role — especially that of worker. It’s the freedom not to participate in communal activities or to share communal goals, or to pray before the idol of Solidarity. It’s freedom not only from the rule of the State but also from that of the tribe, village, commune, or production syndicate. It’s the freedom to choose one’s own path to one’s own goals, to map out one’s own campaign against Authority, and, if desired, to go it alone.”
Edible, Medicinal and Utilitarian Plants: Weeds and Common Plants
Text from the zine:
“For hundreds of thousands of years, we crafty human beings have been using plants with great efficacy to feed and heal ourselves, and to fashion tools in various forms. Despite this, as urban (civilized) humans have become further and further removed from their landbases, the knowledge of edible and utilitarian wild plants has become nearly extinct, and the belief that plants are useless as medicine has become commonplace. Such ignorance- disturbingly universal and constantly perpetuated by Western industry and
science- is unforgivable and easily remedied. With that in mind, this zine is the first in a series of publications written to inspire anarchists and non-radical folks alike to reconnect
with the amazing world of plants. Hopefully, upon reading this and subsequent works, the reader will never again look down upon that dandelion breaking through the concrete as a mere weed, or the clover and mallow overtaking grass lawns as nuisances.”
Escalation: Some Texts Concerning the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) and the Insurrectionist Project
A zine focused on the new era of militancy with insurrectionary anarchist ideas and attacks.
Escape Leviathan Rewilding Writings of Ria Del Montana
A collection of writings on green anarchy and vegan primitivism by Ria Del Montana
Essentialism and The Problem of Identity Politics
Text from the zine:
“Essentialism is the idea that there exists some detectible and objective core quality of particular groups of people that is inherent, eternal, and unalterable; groupings can be categorized according to these qualities of essence, which are based on such problematic criteria as gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, and class. These external qualities are almost always marked by visual cues, making the categories more obvious and/or easier to notice. These qualities contain social and — more importantly from an antiauthoritarian perspective — hierarchical signi cance to those marking the cues and those marked by the cues: sexism, in the case of gender; racism in the case of skin tone; the unwanted attention of authorities in the case of any and all different looking/acting people. Racism, sexism, classism, and most other forms of historical oppression are ideologies and policies maintained and justified by essentialism.”
Fragment: Violence
From back cover:
“Outside of the UK many of the comrades have a much closer relationship to “violence” and “criminality” through bank robberies, organising attacks, fierce demos, stealing, fraud, counterfeiting etc. and added to that possibility the experience of clandestinity or living underground. Illegalism is the bread of the insurrection. Many have gone to prison already and we can learn about their cases in many places. In the UK there is a widespread lack of experience concerning the organisation of the attack, the recognition of the ideas and relationships of the affinity groups to the “criminal acts”. Going beyond the law is part of developing the anarchist-insurrectional project and this is part of the reason why the civil anarchists despise and neglect the cases of the imprisoned and fugitive comrades- because they reject their actions, the tendencies of attack and the global discourse of anarchists of praxis. Individual acts of violence/negation which are not approved by their group-think are regarded as part of the “criminal” or “terrorist” sphere and smeared as provocations. In this way, the civil anarchists become part of the discourse of power and compose themselves as a sector of repression.”
In Defense of Smoke and Fire
Originally published in Wild Fire no. 4, an anarchist prison solidarity newsletter. This essay is part of an ongoing conversation between anarchist prisoners on tactics.
wildfire.noblogs.org
Sean Swain is an anarchist held captive in the Ohio prison system. For more information, check out his support site. seanswain.org
From Politics to Life: Ridding Anarchy of the Leftist Millstone
Text from the zine:
“From the time anarchism was first defined as a distinct radical movement it has been associated with the left, but the association has always been uneasy. Leftists who were in a position of authority (including those who called themselves anarchists, like the leaders of the CNT and the FAI in Spain in 1936–37) found the anarchist aim of the total transformation of life and the consequent principle that the ends should already exist in the means of struggle to be a hindrance to their political programs. Real insurgence always burst far beyond any political program, and the most coherent anarchists saw the realization of their dreams precisely in this unknown place beyond. Yet, time after time, when the fi res of insurrection cooled (and even occasionally, as in Spain in 1936–37, while they still burnt brightly), leading anarchists would take their place again as “the conscience of the left”. But if the expansiveness of anarchist dreams and the principles that it implies have been a hindrance to the political schemes of the left, these schemes have been a far greater millstone around the neck of the anarchist movement, weighing it down with the “realism” that cannot dream.”
From Identity to Individuality: A Nihilist’s History in Leftism
From back cover:
“Rather than adhering to these strict rules, we felt free to communicate our individual desires…
…My friends of all different socially constructed identities – by race, gender, sex, etc – could behave as they wished, without being concerned that they were fulfilling stereotypes or betraying their identities.
It’s far from utopian, but as leftism continues to demonstrate, utopia is impossible without authoritarianism.”
From Identity to Individuality_ A Nihilist’s History in Leftism pdf
Fuck Your Red Revolution: Against Ecocide, Towards Anarchy
From back cover:
“Collectivism, whether it be communist, fascist or capitalist ideologically isn’t something that serves my interests as an indigenous subsistence farmer and forager living in these remote mountains. Whatever industrial dogma I’m ordered to live my life by only serves to fill my heart with sorrow. I will loudly reject the idea of a collective society at every opportunity, regardless of its ideological alliance. All industry kills all life.
I’m an anarchist. Even the idea of a “society” governing my way of life makes me vomit a little. Your needs aren’t my needs, I don’t want to go where the collective wants to take me…
…I want to be liberated from the system, not become the system. The collective isn’t my master. The collective is really just another state, however nicely you package it.”
Fuck Your Red Revolution_Against Ecocide Towards Anarchy pdf
Guide To Closed Circuit Television Destruction
Text from the zine:
“The gaze of the cameras does not fall equally on all users of the street but on those who are stereotypical predefined as potentially deviant, or through appearance and demeanour, are singled out by operators as unrespectable. In this way youth, particularly those already socially and economically marginal, may be subject to even greater levels of authoritative intervention and official stigmatization, and rather than contributing to social justice through the reduction of victimisation, CCTV will merely become a tool of injustice through the amplification of differential and discriminatory policing.” “an instrument of social control and the production of discipline; the production of ‘anticipatory conformity’; the certainty of rapid deployment to observed deviance and; the compilation of individualised dossiers of the monitored population.”
How it is to be Fun
Text from back cover:
“So you caught wind of some of the media hype about the black bloc or maybe you saw us at a protest doing what we do and now you want in. Sweet, welcome! We’re not an organization so you don’t have to sign up anywhere, we are people all over the world who employ a certain tactic against domination when we see fit to do so and we’re excited to meet you. Together we’ll create and destroy history. However, before crossing that line into illegality with us there are some things you could benefit from knowing and considering.”
How Non-Violence Protects the State
In lucid and accessible prose, Gelderloos invites activists to consider diverse tactics, systematically debunking the notion that non-violent activism is the only acceptable or effective method of struggle.
How To Form an Affinity Group
Another excellent zine on affinity groups, what they are and how to form one.
How To Organize an Insurrection
Text from the zine:
“We humbly present one of the first inside reports from participants in the upheavals that shook Greece after the police murder of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in the anarchist neighborhood of Exarchia on December 6. This is only the first set of answers to come in from our Greek comrades. We hope shortly to receive further perspectives from other elements of the Greek uprising, so we can provide a comprehensive background on the context and dynamics of the revolt.”
I Am Also A Nihilist
Text from back cover:
“I don’t care whether it is Nordic or Oriental, nor whether or not is has a historical, political, practical tradition, or a theoretical, philosophical, spiritual, intellectual one. I call myself a nihilist because I know that nihilism means negation.
Negation of every society, of every cult, of every rule and of every religion. But I don’t yearn for Nirvana, any more than I long for Schopenhauer’s desperate and powerless pessimism, which is a worse thing than the violent renunciation of life itself. Mine is an
enthusiastic and dionysian pessimism, like a flame that sets my vital exuberance ablaze, that mocks at any theoretical, scientific or moral prison.
And if I call myself an individualist anarchist, an iconoclast and a nihilist, it is precisely because I believe that in these adjectives there is the highest and most complete expression of my willful and reckless individuality that, like an overflowing river,
wants to expand, impetuously sweeping away dikes and hedges, until it crashes into a granite boulder, shattering and breaking up in its turn. I do not renounce life. I exalt and sing it.”
Identity, Politics, Anti-Politics: A Critical Perspective
A critique of identity politics from a queer, anarchist perspective, arguing that identity politics runs the risk of forming cross-class affinities between queers, women, and people of colour, and assimilating radical struggles into establishment politics. Originally published in Pink and Black Attack #4, 2010, and reproduced in Queer Ultraviolence – A Bash Back! Anthology available from Ardent Press.
In Praise of Chaos
From back cover:
Anarchists are opposed to authority both from below and from above. They do not demand power for the masses, but seek to destroy all power and to decompose these masses into individuals who are masters of their own lives. Therefore anarchists are the most decisive enemies of all types of communism and those who profess to be communists or socialist cannot possibly be anarchists.
It is not by organizing into parties and syndicates that one struggles for anarchy, nor by mass action which, as has been shown, overthrows one barracks only to create another. It is by the revolt of individuals alone or in small groups, who oppose society, impede its functioning and cause its disintegration.
Insurrectionary Anarchism
Text from back cover:
“It is the accumulation of “petty” acts of defiance and refusal that make critical upsurges possible. They are not a substitute for revolution but a necessary condition for it. That is why the insurrectionary moment invariably escalates so rapidly – “as if from nowhere” – and
is why revolutionary elites ( the clownish ring masters of the vanguard) always find themselves hopelessly overtaken.”
Insurrection Anarchist Magazine Issue #4
An insurrectionary anarchist periodical which provides essays and clandestine actions, critical of leftism and formal organizing.
INSURGENCY: An Anarchist Journal of Total Destruction
This (long awaited) zine contains a few action reports and a collection of essays written from a post-left anarchist perspective. Topics include insurrectionary anarchy, queer nihilism, veganism, individualism, nihilist anarchy and anti-civilization.
Insurgent Ferocity: The Playful Violence of Rebellion
From back cover:
“Rebellion is the aggressive, dangerous, playful attack by freespirited individuals against society. Refusing a system of violence, refusing an organized, militarized form of armed struggle, allows the violence of insurgents to retain a high level of invisibility. It cannot be readily understood by the authorities and brought under their control. Its insurgent nature may even go undetected by the authorities as it eats away at the foundations of social control. From the rationalized perspective of authority, this playful violence will often appear utterly random, but actually is in harmony with the desires of the insurgent.”
Leftism 101
This zine collects two excellent essays by Lawrence Jarach: “Leftism 101” from Back to Basics: The Problem of the Left put out by the Green Anarchy collective and “Anarchists, Don’t let the Left(overs) Ruin your Appetite” from Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #48.
The first essay looks at the origins of Leftist thought and anarchism’s relationship to it. The second essay provides a brief overview of anarchists’ historical relationship with “the Left,” concluding that there is no point in engaging with it.
Let’s Become Dangerous: For the Diffusion of the Black International by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
Text from the zine:
“No, our burned banks are not a way of protest or a token of friendship and solidarity with the “poor person” who does nothing and sits on his couch. It is a way to express our “I”. An “I”, that wants to stand out from the herd of slaves, an “I” that does not bow the head down, an “I” not waiting for the crowd to revolt, an “I”, which claims his own name, his own “acronym” and does not hide behind anonymity. The meeting time of the revolted ‘Egos’ takes up the name that we give to it. Its name is FAI and it is our “we”. A collective “we”, armed with razors against our enemies.”
