The tale of Palestine from beginning until today is a simple story of colonialism and dispossession, yet the world treats it as a multifaceted and complex story—hard to understand and even harder to solve.
Pappe and Chomsky, “On Palestine”, 2015.
It has now been one year since Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians; one year of watching the most well-documented genocide in history broadcasted in real time on TikTok, one year of reading the last verse of poets and seeing the last thyme sprout of gardeners on Twitter accounts that go silent, one year of hearing Israeli politicians blast openly genocidal rhetoric on Instagram, one year of Germans setting up posh workshops to righteously denounce the supposed “antisemitism on the Left”—a tradition still ongoing as I speak, one year of German autonomists denouncing the “authoritarianism” of war refugees who wear a Palestinian flag before the police drags them away for using the word “genocide”, one year of German “antifascists” whitewashing fascism as long as it’s targeting brown people, one year of German anarchists too afraid of cancellation to speak up. I have no intention to talk here about the grotesque absurdity of the German gentile Zionists who kick Jews out of their safer spaces for “anti-semitism”—for more discussion on that, please check on the recommended reading.[1] Today I want to address rather a longstanding trend on anarchist circles: “both sides are bad because they’re nationalists and I’m against nationalism, dang I am the most ethical”. I want to address a certain softening of the white antifa movement, parts of which are starting to find it hard to keep covering the cracks in the German pro-Zionist narrative with the duct tape of “but Hamas tho”, when they have to do that under the silent stare of 14000+ dead children—more dead children per day and per metre than any other modern conflict. These parts of the movement that have for better or worse commited to “anti-militarism” and now have to cope with their beloved Israel initiating attacks on Lebanon, Iran, Syria and who knows where next.
The current development, the latest in Germanic power-whitewashing, is as follows: That the State of Israel has a “right to exist” and a “right to self-defense”, but, (said nervously, as all these ghosts stare at us), “we cannot condone the actions of the right-wing Netahanyu government”.
No. Fuck that. That isn’t nearly enough. The problem isn’t the “actions” of the settler-colonial ethnostate of Israel. The problem isn’t the “right-wingness” of the current government of the settler-colonial ethnostate of Israel. The problem is the existence of settler-colonial ethnostates.
My father said that war was evil, but if it came he would revel in it like sand in a storm.
—Nnedi Okorafor, «Binti».
war is here, in your house, war walks with you on the way to work, when you stop to smoke war too stops, and stays by, war is interested in you, you see, and walks with you to work, war sits on your sofa to observe which series will you select, & when, sorrowful and insomniac, you wrestle with your worries, war stands and stares with motherly intimacy, by your bed, bidding time til dawn starts the day & you wake up, & war walks with you, war walks together in red, red leather.
If you are privileged enough to live with a source of income in a first world country, it’s possible to maintain this illusion that violence is something that happens far away—in time, space, class: it happens to other type of people, to poor people who live in distant countries, in wars we read about in our history books. Everyone knows that this peace is an illusion; but it’s still a shock when it’s your turn for the illusion to shatter.
Hello friends! Have y’all heard of the Zapatistas? So ok, the Zapatistas are an indigenous-led, anticapitalist, autonomist movement in México. They seized land back from the Méxican government, as in by force, as in with guerillas, guns, everything, back in ’94, and then implemented stateless, ecological, bottom-up democracy. They’re still there in Chiapas, resisting.
The Zapatistas have announced themselves to México and to the world with the Declarations of the Lacandona Jungle, originally by pirate radio. And look, I don’t have anything against spectres haunting Europe, but if you think the Communist Manifesto is poetic you ain’t seem nothing on Mayan political communiqués. So today, I want to share with you some of my favourite passages of the Fourth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle, in a translation that tends to the music and the dance of the words.
We could not find a group we wanted to be in, so we’re starting our own. This list is a collective chorus of the lacks we felt in our scenes, and how we’re fulfilling them. They do not describe what are our politics; they describe how we want to politics.
Who built Thebes of the Seven Gates? All articles name the names of kings; I gather the kings brought those boulders on their royal backs? And great Babylon, who fell and fell again, Who put'er back together, every time? In which flats of gold-paved Lima lived the road-pavers? The night the Great Wall of China was finished, where did the construction crew hang out? Awesome Rome is full of triumphal archs. Who arched them up? Also— who did the Caesars triumph over? We sing the palaces of Byzantium— the whole thing was just palaces? Even Atlantis of tall tales shouted, choking, as the seas swallowed it whole—
for its slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India.
All by himself then?
Caesar defeated the Gauls.
Did he bring along a cook at least?
Felipe de España, el Prudente, cried when his Armada
sunk into the sea. And nobody else cried that day?
In the Seven Years' War, Federico Secondo grasped
victory. Who else grasped it with him?
All these pages, all these conquests. All those feasts—who did the dishes? Every ten years a new Great Man. Who covered the budget?
For some two-and-a-half years, activists occupied the old German village of Lützerath to prevent the expansion of a brown coal mine, Garzweiller II, owned by the RWE megacorp. Nature defenders made of Lützerath a prefigurative space, a living example of what a better world could be, until the brutal eviction of 2023. I’m writing as their machines still finish their job of destruction, because I want to talk of Lützerath: his life, his people, his politics.
The Plush Vigil, standing watch over the mine.(more…)
(Warmly): Lovely siblings, dear allies, thank you! I’m not actually involved in any of the orgas doing this protest, but we’re all anarchists so I’ll speak for them anyway: thank you so much for being here on such a short notice, when you all are still coping, as am I. And ag-do, thanks for the space for my little speech.
But it gets a little bit heavy, so here’s the content warnings. (Softly:) Content warning: Feminist theory. (Increasingly loudly:) Content warning: Academia. Content warning: Terfs. Content warning: Europeans. (Screaming towards the university hall): Content warning: The definition of woman. Content Warning: ANTI-TRANSGENDER HATE. Content warning: ANTI-TRANSGENDER VIOLENCE. CONTENT WARNING: ANTI-TRANSGENDER GENOCIDE.
(Happily warmly again): I have three things to tell you: one about the terfs, one about the fascists, and one about you.
(Originally presented with Pride Rebellion, in a car park under cold rain, in standard-issue antifa windbreaker, latex black pants, pink balaclava covering face, black hoodie:)
My lovely siblings, I’m so sorry my voice is hard to hear. The police took our microphones. Today, you see, is not only TDoR but also Totensonntag, which is a mandatory silent observance. The cops make our dead speak softly, so as not to bother the Christian dead.
Since 2012, an area in northeastern Syria is self-managed without a State or centralised government, with a novel form of bottom-up coordination called ‘democratic confederalism’.
People there reorganised society into communes of 100~250 families each (the medium-term goal is even smaller communes). Most decisions that directly affect a commune are done locally by assemblies and committees, via discussion and voting and consensus.
