Nel corso della traduzione di questo opuscolo, mi sono soffermatx per la prima volta a pensare davvero alla dimensione della coppia come a una gabbia. Sebbene si tratti di una metafora abbastanza diffusa, non l’avevo mai trasformata prima in un’immagine mentale con una sua concretezza. Ho immaginato una gabbia in cui si trova rinchiusa una coppia di uccellini, che vi si erano introdotti inizialmente perché cercavano un posto caldo e confortevole in cui consumare il loro amore. Dopo qualche tempo, con l’acquietarsi della loro passione iniziale e la continuazione del loro amore, quella gabbia è diventata la loro tana, un rifugio confortevole e sicuro da cui è diventato sempre più difficile uscire. Se la loro relazione ha assunto una forma esclusiva ed escludente, la porta della gabbia è stata chiusa a chiave. Il mondo fuori continuava a esistere, vi era ancora interazione con gli individui che si trovano all’esterno, ma quest’interazione avveniva spesso in coppia e veniva sempre mediata dalle sbarre di ferro che costituivano le pareti della struttura che li conteneva. Con il passare del tempo, a quella sensazione di comfort rassicurante poteva accompagnarsi una sensazione di soffocamento e reclusione, che i due uccellini tendevano però a ricacciare in un angolo della mente… almeno fino al giorno in cui uno dei due, rimasto troppo a lungo rinchiuso, decide all’improvviso di sfondare la porta della gabbia e di uscirne per sempre, spesso con modalità drammatiche di rottura e incolpando l’altro di una reclusione che era prima di tutto autoimposta.

What follows are the notes of a talk given in Berlin, Athens, and Marseille in 2020.

Ciao.

Hello.

Anarqxista Goldman — self-named after Emma Goldman — was (allegedly) an anarcha-feminist sex worker, writer, and activist who used the handle @Anarqxista on twitter.

A couple of days after the From Embers podcast aired the episode, “Quebec Nationalism and Settler Futurity – Refusing Innocence,” someone posted a thoughtful and engaging reflection about this discussion. As one of the guests on this episode, I’ve taken some time to sit with the concerns shared in the post and decided to converse further with the reflections offered on the topics of uncertainty and settler futurity.

When we talk about security culture, people tend to have one of two kinds of experiences. The first is of building walls and keeping people out, the second is of being excluded or mistrusted. Both of these come with negative feelings – fear and suspicion for the former and alienation and resentment for the latter. I would say that they are two sides of the same coin, two experiences of a security culture that isn’t working well.

It’s been a very intense and revealing week since Hamilton Pride. We helped our friends heal, debriefed our strategies, and circulated as much information about the people who attacked us as we could. The videos and statements have gone viral, the outrage is visceral. Homophobic white nationalists attacked Pride, they were confronted by a huge group of queers, the police did nothing and then took credit for stopping the attack, the mayor backed the police despite hundreds of witnesses, and the homophobes walk free. While the helmet-wielding maniac who smashed our faces continued his crusade in Toronto, posing for celebrity pictures with a new helmet and brutally attacking at least one more person (you can watch the video here: http://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2019/06/violence-after-pegida-march-northern.html), the police were busy banging on the doors of known queer anarchists in Hamilton, lurking in backyards, and shaking down our entire community.

Anmerkung der Übersetzer:innen: Dieser Text wurde im Jahr 2013 in englischer Sprache verfasst. Wir haben versucht, ihn originalgetreu ins Deutsche zu übersetzen, wobei wir besonders auf einige Begriffe geachtet haben, die die Originalautor:innen bewusst gewählt haben. Wenn sich Begriffe komische oder veraltet anfühlen oder wenn es „modernere“ „politisch korrektere“ Begriffe gibt, die stattdessen hätten verwendet werden können, bitten beachten, dass wir sie absichtlich verwendet haben, um möglichst nah am Originaltext zu bleiben.

We’re fucking sick of disclaimers. We resent having to provide apologies and justifications for our words before we even speak them. We’re bitter about how specialized discussions of rape, sexual assault, and abuse have become. We feel insulted and embarrassed that we have to constantly point out that we aren’t speaking on behalf of all survivors, as though that were even possible. Sure, we appreciate a well placed trigger warning. It’s just good etiquette. But when fanatical attempts to avoid triggering each other serve as tools to relegate discussions of interpersonal violence to the margins, to wrap the issue in a neat little box which is only brought out on special occasions, when an illusion of “safety” can be guaranteed, well…then we start to get pissed. If we only speak of our oppression from the position of safety, we’ll be forever silent. If we can’t learn to work through being triggered amongst friends and comrades, we’ll be ill equipped to work through it in their absence. An atmosphere of nervousness permeates the discussion, and we confer to the advice of specialists partly out of fear of saying the wrong thing. But all we’re talking about are our own experiences, a topic on which we are all experts. So we long for the day when we won’t need to place ourselves under disclaimers, or any other banner for that matter.

For far too long have radical communities and their discourses treated domestic violence and abuse as external from the considerations of revolutionary struggle. Abuse is seen as simply an interpersonal issue, springing from individual pathology which we must address by correcting certain behaviors and teaching better communication skills. The intervention tools of choice are frequently limited to restorative or transformative justice practices, with the ultimate aim of protecting and maintaining the abuser’s place in the community, often at the cost of survivor safety, participation, and empowerment. There is a fear that ousting abusers and challenging them as adversaries to revolutionary struggle rather than as wayward members of it will ultimately weaken us collectively, because, after all, they are still our comrades.

In quest’analisi, Tom Nomad presenta un resoconto dell’ascesa dell’estrema destra contemporanea, tracciando l’emergere di una visione del mondo basata sulle teorie del complotto e sulla politica del rancore bianco ed esaminando la funzione che serve a proteggere lo Stato. Nel corso dell’articolo, descrive come le strategie di controinsurrezione liberale funzionino insieme alle pesanti strategie di “legge e ordine,” concludendo con un approfondimento su ciò che l’estrema destra intende per guerra civile.

In this analysis, Tom Nomad presents an account of the rise of the contemporary far right, tracing the emergence of a worldview based in conspiracy theories and white grievance politics and scrutinizing the function that it serves protecting the state. Along the way, he describes how liberal counterinsurgency strategies function alongside the heavy-handed “law and order” strategies, concluding with a discussion of what the far right mean by civil war.

Acéptalo, tu política es más aburrida que la mierda.

Postav se k tomu čelem, tvoje politika je kurva nudná.

Ihr wisst, dass das wahr ist. Wenn nicht, warum stöhnt jede*r auf, wenn ihr das Wort erwähnt? Warum sind bei euren anarcho-kommunistischen Theoriegruppen-Treffen immer so wenig Leute anwesend? Warum ist das unterdrückte Proletariat nicht zu Bewusstsein gekommen und hat sich euch angeschlossen in eurem Kampf um Befreiung?

Por que você acha que ninguém aguenta quando você começa a falar? Por que o seu grupo de teoria anarco-comunista nunca recebe atenção? Por que os proletários oprimidos não se conscientiza logo e ingressam na sua luta por libertação mundial?

Ammettilo, la tua politica è fottutamente noiosa.

You know it’s true. Otherwise, why does everyone cringe when you say the word? Why has attendance at your anarcho-communist theory discussion group meetings fallen to an all-time low? Why has the oppressed proletariat not come to its senses and joined you in your fight for world liberation?

On Wednesday, December 7th at Texas A & M University, as FBI agents monitored hundreds of protesters from the tops of roofs, heavily armed riot police clashed with demonstrators bent on disrupting and shutting down an event organized by Preston Wiginton, a 51 year old former student of the campus and long time white supremacist. The event featured a talk by Richard Spencer, a leading ideologue within the growing “Alt-Right,” which attempts to re-brand fascist, Neo-Nazi, and white nationalist ideas for the millennial generation in order to create an all-white fascist “ethno-state.”

nous pensons qu’il peut avoir une résonnace ici, en France, dans cette période électorale. Pour anticiper sur une polémique :  ce que les auteurs (anonymes) appellent ici anarchistes correspondrait davantage en France aux anarcho-autonomes et aux antifas, soit une partie du milieu anarchiste. Il n’est pas fait ici mention du travail révolutionnaire mené par les anarcho-syndicalistes ou les communistes libertaires, ni des positions des anarchistes non-violents. Mais tous les anarchistes pourront partager, nous le croyons, le jugement sur les élections, ainsi que l’urgence d’une révolution. Quels que soient les moyens que nous employons pour en hâter l’inéluctable arrivée. (Ou pas).

Every life that lives today is lived as governed. And yet, the lived experience of being governed, from our first to final breaths, suggests that while all lives may be governable to some degree, life itself cannot ultimately be governed once and for all. The reality that a life must be subjected to relentless governing in order to remain governed evinces that all life shares an inexhaustible resistance to governance, an ineradicable ungovernability, in common. Ungovernable life is the name we can give to this lived resistance, to life’s enduring fugitivity and immanent insurgency.

Noam Chomsky, a self-described anarchist, presents anarchism as:

Talking about “Christianity” is difficult; Christianity is the largest religion in the world, comprising a multitude of denominations, regional variants, and political projects – each with their own complicated histories and specific contexts to unpack. This means that any statement or conclusion with the words “all” or “most” will necessarily miss something, even in the most nuanced discussions on the subject. I want to admit this limitation from the outset not only to mitigate accusations of misrepresentation, but to contrast this text against its primary target: White Christian Nationalism. Easy as it may seem to debunk the ideology of celebrity QAnon cultists and right-wing terrorists, we have a lot to discuss before we can meaningfully counter this clear and present danger. To start, let’s talk about God.