An anarchist comrade from Athens: Enough is enough

greece / turkey / cyprus | anarchist movement | opinion / analysis Tuesday May 18, 2010 21:25 by An anarchist comrade from Athens

Let us shout it out loud and if they do not hear it let us show it with our actions: Enough is enough.

On the 5th of May, we lived the chronicle of three pre-destined deaths. Unfortunately, the belief that we had for the longest time that it is only a matter of time before we mourn the first victims of indiscriminate violence, came true. Unfortunately, lives had to be lost in order to hear or read from some of the collectives of the movement, albeit timidly, albeit vaguely, the first allusions of criticism for the nihilistic culture of violence. Unfortunately, some still continue to hide behind their finger, focusing on those that bear the moral instead of the actual responsibility, on the results of the murderous act and not the reasons behind it.

Let's show the courage and the sincerity that (must) characterize a revolutionary/liberating movement and let's talk about the gist of the matter. If the death of the three people was proven to be the result of a targeted action by the far right, would they focus on the - anyway criminal and inhuman - stance of the management of the bank? But even if this was the case, the below are fully in effect.

The tolerance that has been shown for the longest time by a part of the anarchist movement to the proponents of indiscriminate violence is the beginning of any (self-) criticism. All those that, for many years, acted virtually undisturbed, in the same monotonous, dangerous, destructive and provocative ways, next and inside our blocks, should have been isolated, instead of being described on hindsight, generally and vaguely as "agents provocateur" or "gang-members", without any analysis whatsoever on how we ended up in this situation accompanying those characterizations. This can still take place though and work as a kind of catharsis. All these years when anyone tried to distance themselves from phenomena of indiscriminate violence, or from mass - armed or not - violence, was thought as setting themselves apart, was jeered or attacked. So is it not positive that even now, even vaguely, voices against the practice of violence for the sake of violence are being heard? Maybe it is and maybe it isnʼt. Only time will tell.

The more our critique of the phenomenon remains hazy and without supporting evidence, the less persuasive it becomes. The effortless characterization of "agents provocateur" is insufficient mainly because it is too general. With this general condemnation you do not expose the crux of the matter. You only avoid to answer questions such as those that follow, ones that we need to answer with clarity and also look into the results of a sterile "insurrectional" oratory and the even more sterile and dangerous practices that originate from this oratory. As agents provocateur can act not only a sad gang of ego-centric malcontents, but a state-sponsored gang on designated duty as well, if we judge the acts only in relation to their results. But is such a judgment suitable for us to adopt? No, because the revolutionary expression is rational, clear, acute and examines the causes of each phenomena. No, because at this point we need to be direct and act accordingly. No, because such a critique characterizes Authority and the crutches that prop it up. They are the ones who are used to give a fuzzy explanation and leave it at that. But if you are indeed seeking to prick the boil of violence, your discourse against blind violence needs to be concise and consistent at all times. Your actions, even more so. Otherwise, any abstract verbal distance one may try to keep from those gangs and their actions will not be believable. And moreover, they do not help in the spreading of the anti-authoritarian word. Even if one is not diachronically consistent, the change of attitude and course - if it is sincere - has to be followed with arguments and self-criticism, to avoid becoming opportunism. The questions we talked about earlier are many. If they were a state-sponsored gang, why did we not break them up during the rally? Were we caught with our pants around our ankles? Obviously not, since they act the same way for years on end. But then the question becomes why we have not done so all those years. Our reflexes against state gangs and secret policemen have not been blunted that much, so our inactivity is not justified. Perhaps the reflexes of some of us have been blunted towards gangs that hijack anarchist and anti-authoritarian ideology to play their little games to our detriment.

Let's dispense with the jokes, the convenient excuses and reasoning. We watch the same play for years on end. A part of the movement was accepting for many years the brainless partisans of violence for violence's sake, the proponents of window-smashing, providing them with an ideological basis for their actions. The rest either reacted spasmodically, or put up with them, or awaited a fateful event in order to react. Let it be understood that their murderous stupidity has cost human lives. We are not talking anymore about immaturity and ideological fixations; we are talking about a crime. They are the perpetrators. The anarchist and the social movement in general has paid dearly the fad and the autism of a few cowards and those that supported their actions with their so-called 'insurrectionist' oratory, believing that the social struggle against the State and Power is undertaken by a few insurrectionary types in society's absence and is limited to broken glass or whatever mobilizes the police for a stone-throwing war. With them and their practices, anarchy has nothing in common. Enough discredit, enough backward steps. The conflict will be multi-level and massed. Targeted and conscious.

The very moment that an entire square demanded furiously "Burn this brothel, the parliament", the very moment that hundreds of thousands were on the streets to clash with totalitarianism, the very moment that life is taken away from us, this moment the anti-violence to the violence of Power must at all costs shed this weight. This though, from now on, even belatedly we need to prove that it is a fact. For starters, we can do what people are talking among themselves: organize immediately a rally and protest march against indiscriminate violence. This will act as a rallying beacon for the movement, will make known our position towards society and maybe become the starting point of setting the score straight with the aforementioned autism.

Let us shout it out loud and if they do not hear it let us show it with our actions: Enough is enough.