Coming, trendy or not

1

I suspect the reason why Marxists ‘babble’ about history is because they have been implicated in the horrors of Stalinism and wish to distinguish themselves from that monstrosity. Anarchists [have] never had to defend their politics in the same way because they have rarely troubled the ruling class and certainly don’t today. Few anarchists today… bother themselves concretely with ‘class struggle politics’ in any meaningful way… most anarchism today is lost to the dead-end of trendy identity [politics].

2

Official history is the bourgeoisie’s history, and its mission today is to wreath nationalism, liberal democracy and the market economy in myth, so as to have us believe that these are eternal, immutable and immovable.

3

So tonight I want to talk about the anarchist resistance to Franco, from 1939 onwards. Before I do that I want to say two or three things, because some of the things I say may sound rather harsh and critical of the CNT (and I’m not really going to talk about anything else apart from anarchism). So if it sounds harsh, it’s simply to try and be realistic. I am not particularly cruel or thoughtless or heartless or smug. It’s very easy for all of us, 70 years onward, to say clever statements about it or think smugly about it or try and use it as a debating point. The truth of the matter is that probably if you look at the 20th century, the anarchists, both in the CNT-FAI and the FIJL (the libertarian youth), and the anarchists who were not involved in those organizations, came nearer to creating a revolutionary change in everyday life than anyone else ever did.

4

Two anarchist students from the city of Penza in Russia were arrested on June 19 for handing out leaflets. The leaflets stated “Government is the prison of the people. Become an anarchist and free yourself!” Police are bringing criminal charges against the two, Oslav Kirosheyev and Vitaly Bakhmasterov, who face expulsion from their university and imprisonment if found guilty.

5

Who is Anna?

She’s there – on page 266! With a look of sly disdain on her face and a smile just ready to curl up the sides of her face. But not quite. How did she get there? It’s baffling, really, since in September 2007, great pains were taken to conceal her identity in a stuffy, federal courtroom in Sacramento, CA. White noise was played over the speakers as she was sworn in, so none present would hear her real name. Courtroom artists were not allowed to draw her face. A spectator was nearly booted from the room when it was suspected that they might have been attempting to take her picture with their cell phone. And Eric’s lawyer – Mark Reichel – was only able to learn her true name one week before trial, making any meaningful investigation of her ultimately impossible. It was claimed that Anna’s identity had to be kept hidden because her life was being threatened by radical “eco-terrorists” who were angry with her for entrapping their friends and comrades. But the half-page, full body picture of Anna on page 266 – in an internationally distributed magazine – would certainly seem to belie that line of argumentation. (As well as other events in recent history – such as the known identity of the person responsible for the arrests of almost a dozen of his former friends in the northwest, Jake Ferguson. Jake has been walking the streets of the dreaded Eugene – seen by many as a “hot-bed” of “shadowy anarchist” groups since the WTO protests in Seattle, 1999 – for years now, and no harm has ever come to him.)

6

Mapuche anarchist Jhonny Cariqueo Yañez died March 31st, 2008 after suffering a heart attack while being beaten by the Carabineros (Chilean police) during protests commemorating the Día del Joven Combatiente (Day of the Young Combatant) in Pudahuel, Santiago.

7

‘Anarchist Superstar: The Revolutionary Who Filmed His Own Murder’ is an article by Jeff Sharlet (Rolling Stone, January, 2008) on the subject of Brad Roland Will (1970–2006), “a U.S. anarchist, documentary filmmaker and a journalist with Indymedia New York City. He was shot and killed on October 27, 2006 during the teachers’ strike in the Mexican city of Oaxaca.”

8

Also in January 2008, an 18-year-old anarchist skinhead, Jan Kučera, was stabbed to death by a 20 year-old neo-Nazi in the Czech Republic.

9

In early November, 2007, a 16-year-old antifa, Carlos Javier Palomino, was stabbed to death in Madrid by an off-duty soldier and neo-Nazi.

10

A surprisingly large number of media outlets have simply refused to be persuaded that Iti and his eco-anarchist allies constitute any kind of serious threat to either the state or the public.

11

Anarchist journalist Josh Wolf was released from a US prison in April 2007, after having spent 226 days behind bars for refusing to testify to US authorities regarding an anti-G8 demonstration (organised by anarchists) in San Francisco in July, 2005.

12

Mr Costello said: “There are some socialists, there are some anarchists, there are some people that want to disrupt world trade. What do you want the international footage to be of? People trying to disrupt world leaders or a warm, friendly, welcoming city?”