It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, November 17, 2024
The English Beast Awakens: A Warning from The Second Coming
A lot of people on the planet are praying for the Second Coming – Messianic Christians awaiting Jesus and Muslims for the Mahdi to return. Tariq Mehmood is not among that crowd. Instead he spends a lot of time imagining and discussing possible futures. Some of these fictional futures may be realised – Mehmood teaches a creating writing course, ‘After Zionism – Imagining the Rebirth of Palestine’ at the American University of Beirut – and others – like the setting for his book The Second Coming – hopefully will not be prophetic.
Mehmood’s young adult novel is set in a near future in a fragmenting Britain, with England descending into civil war as far-right militias come to power. It is a dystopian desi mash-up of The Handmaid’s Tale, Clockwork Orange, and V for Vendetta. It warns of the dangers of right-wing nationalism and white supremacy, and imagines where such racism could take England if it is not, somehow, nipped in the bud.
The idea took shape during a “thinking and drinking session” with fellow novelists Peter Kalu and Melvin Burgess, said Mehmood over the phone.
During one session they were trying to imagine a world where the dollar has collapsed and the US empire is falling to bits, and what could rise out of the ashes. “We came up with a terrifying idea and then wrote different novels whose narratives kiss each others story, but are not the same, novels in their own right, although we have the same kind of monsters – the Bloods, a Christian militia that has taken over and are re-writing minds,” said Mehmood. The trio’s output is Kalu’s One Drop, Mehmood’s The Second Coming, and Burgess’ Three Bullets. “One, Two, Three was a conscious act,” he said.
The idea was also sparked by Mehmood’s milieu in Lebanon, being on the pulse of what was happening in Western Asia and its surroundings, with conflict in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Palestine. “I was thinking, what happens if war comes to Britain? Where would we go? Look at the rise of the so-called Islamic State, and the equivalent, the Jewish state; and the rise of the BJP, the ruling Hindutva party in India – what if all the Messianic forces came to England amid the rise of Islamophobia? How would all the simmering contradictions of Britain play out? Nothing comes out of a vacuum, all the contradictions are there in West Asia, in Europe, and the monsters come out, out of existing processes,” he said. “Racism has been around since the Crusaders, and has changed and metamorphised. Islamophobia has deep roots in these islands, and how it was used during the British empire – the ‘blood thirsty’ Afghans, the orientalised Arabs, the ‘savage’ African. That is what they said of the colonised, but who really is the monster?”
In his dystopian England ethnic minorities are being attacked, houses are daubed with paint to be targeted, upside down crosses dot the landscape, and mosques are burned to the ground.
Amid these rising tensions 19-year-old Marah Sultana is struggling to deal with the everyday life of a teenager in suburban London – family, love life, friends, studies. The opening chapter starts with racist comments directed at Marah and her friends on a public bus. Mehmood said a reader had questioned how realistic that scene was. “But that is our experience, a white man suddenly getting aggressive. In my youth [in Bradford, England], if a group of us went out in the wrong area for a drink, the chances of leaving a pub without getting into a punch up were pretty much nil. Some random man would say ‘get out of this country you black bastards’,” said Mehmood.
It is indeed a scene that has occurred innumerable times in recent history and is very much still in occurrence today. For instance in late July, far-right, anti-immigration violence flared across Britain, fuelled by disinformation. Videos of random attacks against ethnic minorities went viral. Communities united to protect themselves and their property. This story is of course playing out in many places worldwide, as people struggle for self-determination and equal rights, and against oppression and structural violence.
For Mehmood, the summer 2024 riots were like a chapter from his own history. In the 1970s, the far-right and reactionary forces were in their ascendency in the UK, while the police were unresponsive to increased calls from ethnic minorities to be protected from racist thugs. At this time, Mehmood had become increasingly active in Asian Youth Movements and anti-racist groups, calling on people to defend themselves. The situation came to a head in 1981 when Mehmood was dragged from his bed one morning and arrested for conspiracy to make explosives. Mehmood and his 11 co-defendants became known as the Bradford 12. During the trial, Mehmood represented himself and argued that they had a right to defend themselves against racists coming into their community. The Bradford 12 were looking at life behind bars if convicted. Following a mass campaign, involving thousands of people in the country and internationally, they were acquitted. The case made legal history, enshrining self-defence into English law, including the right of organised and armed community self defence.
Mehmood wrote about his experiences leading up to his arrest in his first novel, written in prison, and in an upcoming book about the whole legal case. He is currently making a feature length documentary film on the Bradford 12. All his experiences also fed into The Second Coming.
“It draws on my own social background and history of resistance, of the Bradford 12, and facing state injustice, going to prison, and being attacked on the streets, and still dreaming of a fairer world. In the North of England, where I grew up, we saw a very nice side of England, but also a nasty side as well – it is out of this English nationalism is rising,” he said.
The novel starts to heat up once ethnic cleansing begins. Marah’s father, like many others, thinks such a thing could not happen in the UK – echoing Sinclair Lewis’ great American novel It Can’t Happen Here (1935) – but it does, and Marah’s family become refugees – or to use NGO speak, internally displaced persons (IDPs) – as they flee north. Marah becomes increasingly rambunctious, starting to drink booze and smoke weed, but also quickly matures, as she has to financially support her family as her parents’ mental health deteriorates. With law and order in the hands of the militias, and women not safe on the streets, Marah and her friends form a girl gang to protect themselves, the Ginnz. They also organise a rave as a form of protest against the reactionaries. As Mehmood put it, “it is a bit of a Bombay film as well. We like melodrama.”
As in all Mehmood’s novels and children’s stories, whites are not the main characters. This is on purpose, to de-colonise the imperial narrative, but also for ethnic minorities to have characters, role-models, heroes that better reflect their background and ethnicity.
There is a long way to go, as Mehmood has noted teaching creative writing in Beirut. “It is difficult to get my students outside of the white world. It may seem ridiculous, but when they’re trying to write stories the characters would all be white, often American or French, British as well, representing the empire of today, and of the past that has impacted their lives,” he said.
Spoiler alert! As the novel progresses sci-fi comes increasingly into play. The Bloods have morphed the Church of England’s theology into an even nastier brew of religious zealotry and nationalism, and are seeking a second coming for England through the birth of a child, with the mother chosen based on unspecified blood tests. Unexpectedly, Marah is the chosen one, the Mary figure, artificially impregnated by the fruit of the King’s loins, and she becomes a propaganda celebrity.
In the hands of the Bloods, Marah is subjected to mind-altering therapy carried out by a shadowy American that is part-Evangelical, part-mad professor, part-Big Brother and part-Brave New World. And then the counter-offensive against the right-wing militias builds momentum, offering a glimmer of hope for Marah, her friends, the future and the reader.
“The Second Coming is about holding on to your mind, your loves, your dreams. And to endure the brutality knowing you must live. You have to have faith in the coming generation; my generation, we’ve done what we had to contribute. The idea is to give a warning to the youth that the beast isn’t what you think it is, and is far from dead,” warned Mehmood.
Paul Cochrane is an independent journalist covering the Middle East and Africa. He lived in Bilad Al Sham (Cyprus, Palestine and Lebanon) for 24 years, mainly in Beirut. He is also the co-director of a documentary on the political-economy of water in Lebanon, “We Made Every Living Thing from Water”.
At the end of September 2024, western North Carolina and the surrounding states experienced 30 inches of rainfall over two days when an unnamed storm collided with Hurricane Helene over the mountains of Southern Appalachia. The resulting catastrophe laid waste to the entire region. At a time when misinformation, rising authoritarianism, and disasters exacerbated by industrially-produced climate change are creating a feedback loop of escalating crisis, it’s crucial to understand disaster response as an integral part of community defense and strategize about how this can play a part in movements for liberation. In the following reflection, a local anarchist involved in longstanding disaster response efforts in Appalachia recounts the lessons that they have learned over the past six weeks and offers advice about how to prepare for the disasters to come.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated that Hurricane Helene poured 40 trillion gallons of water on the region. This caused an estimated 1800 landslides; it damaged over 160 municipal water and sewer systems, at least 6000 miles of roads, more than 1000 bridges and culverts, and an estimated 126,000 homes. There have been over 230 confirmed deaths across six states with many still missing.
The entire region was completely cut off from the outside world for a day or more, with all major roads shut down by landslides, collapsed bridges, and downed trees. Water, power, internet and cell service all went down within hours of the hurricane arriving, and remained down for days or, in some areas, weeks. There are still communities that will likely not have electricity for another three months because the roads that the power company would use no longer exist. Six weeks into this disaster, there are still tens of thousands of people who lack access to drinkable water. Not only have thousands of homes been wiped off the map—in many cases, the land they rested on no longer exists. Massive landslides have scoured canyons 30 feet deep, exposing bedrock that has not seen the light of day for tens of thousands of years. The torrential floods moved so much earth and caused so many rivers to change course that scientists have designated the hurricane a “geological event.”
In response, a beautiful web of mutual aid networks has emerged, saving countless lives by bringing in essential supplies, providing medical care, setting up neighborhood water distribution centers, solar charging stations, satellite internet hubs, free kitchens, free childcare, and more. Name a need and there are folks out here who have self-organized to meet it. We share these lessons we have learned in hopes of helping others to prepare for similar situations, aiming to increase our capacity to build autonomous infrastructure for the long haul.
Start Preparing Now
There is no time like the present to get organized.
Our mutual aid group has been around for almost eight years. Within 72 hours of the floodwaters receding, we had a functioning mutual aid hub and were mobilizing folks to check on missing people and chainsaw crews to cut people out of their homes and open up roads. We were only able to do these things because we had already put in the work in our community to build the trust and relationships that are so vital in times of crisis.
While we are a small group, we have an extensive network of friends and allies that has grown throughout years of smaller-scale mutual aid and organizing efforts. The best way to prepare for a disaster is not to stockpile supplies, but to build trust in your community and nurture a healthy web of relationships. The best way to accomplish this is to start doing mutual aid projects in your community before an acute crisis arises. This will give you practice operating as a group and organizing logistics, and it will also connect you with others you wouldn’t otherwise meet and show them that they can count on you. Because of the work we had already put in, when the crisis hit, people turned to us and spread the word that we are a good group to funnel supplies and money through. You can only build that kind of reputation by putting in the work now.
Communications
One of the biggest initial challenges we faced was that most means of communication went offline for between 24 hours and several weeks, depending on where you lived. That includes landlines, cell phones, and internet. We can’t stress enough the importance of having multiple back-up options in place to be ready for a situation like this. First of all, make sure you have a place and time established in advance where folks know they can find each other in the event of a disaster. This is probably a good idea even if communications don’t go offline—nothing beats face-to-face communication.
Satellite internet was invaluable during the first couple of weeks. For some particularly hard-hit communities, it remains the only means of communication six weeks into this disaster. Unfortunately, Starlink, which is owned by the white supremacist Elon Musk, has proven to be the most useful and the easiest to set up in a disaster scenario. We know from past experience that he is eager to suppress social movements that use his companies’ services. There are other companies that provide satellite internet, but it tends to be slower, with significant data limits. These are generally not mobile systems and would be challenging to set up in the middle of a disaster.
Don’t forget that you will need a source of electricity such as a generator or solar power to make satellite internet work.
Radios, especially ham radios, are another important means of communication that should be arranged in advance with people who already know how to use them. Our mountainous terrain limits the distance that radios can broadcast, but it would still have been helpful if we had possessed ham radios.
Supply Chain Logistics
Supply chain logistics are a huge piece of the puzzle. They will be one of your biggest headaches. In the first couple days of a disaster, you will probably only have access to the supplies you already have on hand in your immediate community. Stores will be closed and gas will not be available.
Soon, supplies will start pouring in from outside the disaster zone. The problem is that there will be a significant lag time between the announcement of a request for supplies and the time when those supplies arrive. In some cases, too many people will eventually answer the call, or by the time the supplies arrive, the needs on the ground will have changed. Social media can be useful in getting the word out about what supplies are needed, but it greatly exacerbates the lag time, especially as old posts are screenshotted and shared long beyond their relevance. When you make requests on social media, put a date in both the text and the visuals so people will know when the request was made.
Learn to anticipate what your needs will be a week from now, not tomorrow, because that is when the supplies will arrive. If and when regional support hubs are established, it is generally more efficient to communicate your needs directly to one of these hubs rather than blasting them on social media.
That being said, not every disaster is going to receive the kind of national spotlight that Hurricane Helene did. You may well find yourself in a situation where there are not enough donors or supplies.
Heavy Machinery
We need more people in our sphere that own or at least know how to operate heavy equipment. The floods destroyed hundreds of miles of roads and countless bridges. Massive piles of debris and tens of thousands of downed trees also blocked the roads, rendering many areas inaccessible. This is not the kind of problem you can solve with shovels and wheel barrows.
In many cases, communities that were totally cut off literally bulldozed their way to town; some used excavators to build new bridges out of pieces of the old bridges. It was not the state doing this work, but hillbillies who own heavy equipment who took matters into their own hands long before the state or federal government showed up. The rural activist scene is pretty well prepared to tackle anything involving a chainsaw, given that our network includes more than a few professional arborists and many of us already cut our own firewood. But we were not prepared for scenarios involving debris piles and earthmoving. Even beyond the immediate need of opening access to cut-off communities, heavy equipment such as dump trucks and track hoes remains crucial to the long-term demolition and clean-up work in the months following the storm.
To be clear, we don’t think that mutual aid groups should approach their work with the question “How do we radicalize people?” as the primary objective. Our primary goal should always be to save lives and make sure that people’s basic needs are met. But it is true that in the course of this crisis, thousands of people have gotten a taste of how we could organize society better. Many of them have a real hunger to keep that spirit alive but don’t know where to begin or where to plug in.
We should not show up in disasters the way that authoritarian or Christian groups do, looking to prey upon the vulnerable. Rather, we should make sure that there are ways that those who are radicalized by disasters and the experience of responding to them have opportunities to become involved in something lasting.
Rumors and Misinformation
Reliable information is hard to come by in a disaster. Even when phone and internet access return, rumors run rampant as everyone scrambles to figure out what happened and what kind of help is available or on its way. Many people will be deeply traumatized: when you have suddenly lost everything or your sense of stability has been pulled out from under you, fear and anxiety reign. On top of this, many of those joining in relief efforts will be running on pure adrenaline. None of these states of mind are conducive to clear thinking. It is important to get grounded and spread calm.
Do not repeat unverified information, especially on social media. If a statement starts with “my best friend’s uncle said…” or “I heard from a reliable source that…”, there is a pretty good chance that it is a rumor and not verified information. The more sensational the rumor, the more tempting it will be to spread it.
We can’t count the number of rumors that circulated here. Most of them only served to spread fear. “The military is coming in and shutting down mutual aid hubs and seizing supplies.” “Militias are out hunting FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] workers.” It is best to take note of such rumors and be prepared in the event that they turn out to be true, but in the meantime, to keep on doing what you are doing until you see otherwise with your own to two eyes. The best way to get reliable information is in face-to-face interactions with primary sources.
Ask questions of people as you are distributing aid. Whenever we did a supply run or a wellness check, we made sure to ask extensive questions, such as:
“What are the needs here that aren’t being met?”
“Has there been any help from the government yet?
“Are there still missing people?”
“What roads are open or closed?”
“Do you know of people who are still cut off from supplies?”
Vultures
Count on it: the far right will hurry to capitalize on any disaster, no matter what the scenario, in order to advance their fascist agenda. Within hours of communications returning, there were racist fake news stories alleging that Black and brown people were looting. Soon, these morphed into absurd claims that FEMA couldn’t help people because they had spent all their money on immigrants, and then into even wilder conspiracy theories suggesting that the government had manufactured the storm to disenfranchise Republican voters and that FEMA was going to seize people’s land for lithium mining. Never mind that there is no lithium to be found in the mountains of western North Carolina.
On top of this, many far-right and white nationalist groups made appearances in western North Carolina to provide aid. In most cases, they just showed up with a few supplies and left as soon as they had taken pictures to post on social media. It is worth distinguishing between groups that are part of the organized far right, like Patriot Front and the Proud Boys, who are only showing up to score political points, not to help people, and groups that really are there to provide direct aid but also happen to lean to the right. There should be no tolerance for the former. We feel that people should approach groups in the latter category with caution and evaluate whether it makes sense to work with them on a case-by-case basis. Crises make for strange bedfellows; there were a lot of Trump supporters working alongside anarchists to save lives, clear roads, and deliver supplies.
The best solution to countering the influence that the far right can build in disaster scenarios is to be better prepared and better organized. The groups that get the most done, deliver the most supplies, and do the most good are the ones that garner the most respect. It’s as simple as that. A good social media game doesn’t hurt, either. It is vital that we crank out reliable information and inspiring memes and narratives to counter the racist fearmongering that the far-right disinformation machine churns out.
Engaging with the State
We need more nuanced ways of thinking about government aid. Anarchists find themselves in a awkward situation in regards to FEMA and other forms of official government assistance. We rightfully criticize the government for its painfully slow and inadequate response to the disaster, but when the government finally shows up with significant resources, we aren’t sure how to engage.
We’d suggest that people should approach FEMA and similar organizations with the same cautious curiosity as aid groups that lean to the right but are not actively organizing for fascism. While grassroots mutual aid efforts are a thousand times more flexible and efficient in responding to disasters than the lumbering bureaucracy of the United States government, our access to resources pales in comparison to theirs when it comes to money, machinery, and labor. There is simply no way that we can crowdfund the estimated $17 billion in damages that Helene did. We need to strategically tap into those resources without compromising our principles or weakening our own efforts. Strategies such as helping people to navigate FEMA’s cumbersome aid applications and insurance claims can take pressure off our own fundraising efforts.
Another example of how we need a more nuanced approach to engaging with the government concerns the military. The presence of the military drastically changes the atmosphere in a community as soon as they show up. The communal feeling of mutual aid and cooperation can start to dissipate as their chain of command takes over. It is crucial to keep our mutual aid hubs completely separate from the military; do not let them staff or set up shop at our locations under any circumstances. But that does not mean we cannot strategically engage with them to use their free labor (and machinery) to muck out buildings, split firewood, and swing hammers.
The majority of military personnel are working-class folks in their late teens or early twenties who were sold a lie by military recruiters, a decision many of them come to regret. It will not hurt if they catch a glimpse of a better way of helping people.
Finances
Direct financial assistance is a huge need that most disaster relief groups are unable or unwilling to provide. If your group has the ability to raise large amounts of cash, you can be an absolutely invaluable resource in the days and weeks after the disaster. Donated supplies can only do so much.
In our case, tens of thousands of people have not only lost their homes, they’ve also lost weeks or months of employment. Bills are coming due and the overwhelming majority of folks are not getting anything close to the kind of assistance they need from FEMA or insurance companies. If you have a mutual aid group, set up a checking account in the group’s name and a few different digital wallets like Paypal and Venmo. Set up a website and social media accounts with clear links on how to donate. Do not wait for a disaster to do these things.
If you know that a disaster is on its way, take out a large amount of cash to have on hand. Remember, Venmo and credit cards are not going to work when the power grid and communications are down. We have found that most people are able to set up some sort of digital wallet if they need to, but it is important to have cash on hand for those who can’t.
It is also likely that if you are suddenly receiving and sending out large amounts of money in a short time, your account will get frozen or the people you send the money to won’t be able to access it immediately. This is infuriating, but there seems to be nothing that we can do about it—these companies have automated systems that flag accounts and they claim that they can’t override the system when your account is flagged.
Getting Organized
Grassroots disaster relief is no longer the exclusive province of church groups and small bands of autonomous mutual aid groups. The notion has gone mainstream since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many people discovered that their neighbors were all they had to count on. At this point, well-organized and well-resourced groups of every stripe are prepared to mobilize quickly—from reactionary right-leaning groups like the Cajun Navy and to networks of volunteer helicopter pilots, not to mention radical groups like Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. Beyond these specific groups, more people understand how to self-organize now. Within three to five days of the flood waters receding, you couldn’t drive more than ten minutes without running into a do-it-yourself relief hub or water station in someone’s front yard, church, or gas station parking lot. It would not be an overstatement to say that within a week, western North Carolina had the highest concentration of four-wheelers, all-terrain vehicles, and dirt bikes in the world, as people poured in from all over the South and beyond to help with search and rescue and to get supplies out to cut-off communities.
Most of these hubs were truly grassroots, with no formal organization behind them. This is an overwhelmingly positive development, but it does not come without challenges. The chief problems were redundancy of effort and lack of coordination between relief hubs, road clearing crews, and people doing supply runs, search and rescue, and wellness checks. The sooner you can develop relationships and good communication systems with other hubs, the better, so you won’t have to be constantly reinventing the wheel.
Creating an intake system for incoming volunteers and arranging for people to coordinate them is a huge piece of the puzzle. We had to turn away many offers of help in the first few weeks because we didn’t have a good system in place for fielding newcomers, especially those from out of town, nor could we guarantee that we could plug them into a project on any given day if they just showed up, despite the fact that there was always a mountain of work to do. Connecting volunteers to communities and individual homes that need medical care, mucking, gutting, and repairs requires an enormous amount of legwork on your part, not to mention building trust between you and the residents. You would do well to have someone in your group that has a deep love of spreadsheets.
To the International Anarchist Movement: Three Security Proposals
This text is addressed to the international anarchist movement, which we'll define as the sum of individuals fighting for anarchist ideas around the world. This movement is in conflict with its natural enemies — the State, fascist groups, and so on — and must protect itself if it is to survive in this conflict. In this text, we make three proposals for the international anarchist movement to consider in the coming years in order to allow anarchists to continue attacking while limiting their chances of getting caught.
1. Share knowledge internationally
Our enemies organize internationally through cooperation between police and intelligence agencies and new developments in science and technology — the increasing precision of DNA forensics and the proliferation of drones being just two examples. This means that a repressive technique used in one country may soon appear in another where it is not yet being used. It also means that an effective countermeasure used by anarchists in one country may be effective in another. We should therefore share knowledge of repressive techniques and countermeasures on an international level.
Ideally, any experience of repression or experimentation with countermeasures that might be of interest to other anarchists should be written up, translated into several languages, and made public. When anarchists are arrested and brought to trial, we can often obtain court documents that reveal how they were caught: we should exploit this and publish analyses of such documents, bearing in mind that information obtained in this way may be partial or distorted. We should experiment with new countermeasures and write and publish reports on these experiments (except in cases where the State might adapt and weaken the countermeasure by reading the report). We should try to collect information at the source: read police training manuals, steal police files, analyze data leaks from police servers.
A specific feature of the international anarchist movement is its decentralization. We see this not as a weakness but as a strength: in addition to preventing the hierarchies inherent in centralized organizations, it makes it harder for our enemies to target us because they cannot topple the whole movement by disrupting one part of it. However, this decentralization also makes it harder for us to share knowledge across borders. To overcome this, we see two options: developing informal bonds with other anarchists by meeting at international book fairs and other events, and using the Internet. We propose using the No Trace Project as an international platform to share the knowledge that is suited for sharing on the Internet, not as a replacement for informal bonds but as a useful supplement to spread information beyond existing informal networks.
2. Establish a security baseline
Anarchists who carry out direct actions should analyze the risks associated with their actions and take appropriate precautions: dress anonymously, be mindful of video surveillance and DNA traces, and so on. However, this is not enough. If only those who carry out actions take precautions, it is easier for our enemies to target these individuals. This is, firstly, because they stand out: if only a handful of comrades always leave their phones at home, for example, this could be an obvious starting point for an investigation with no other specific leads. And secondly, because our enemies can get information about them through their friends who do not carry out actions: if someone doesn't use social media but is mentioned on their friends' social media, for example, an investigation could query their friends' social media to get information about them. We should therefore establish a security baseline that everyone in anarchist networks agrees to follow, including those who have never carried out direct actions and have no intention of doing so.
We can't say what this baseline should be, as it will depend on each local context, but we can give some ideas. As a bare minimum, everyone should help hide information from our enemies by not speculating about who is involved in an action, not bragging about one's own participation in an action, not talking to the police, and encrypting any computer or phone used for conversations with other anarchists using a strong password. Discuss sensitive matters exclusively outdoors and without electronic devices, and don't make it obvious to your social environment who you are having sensitive conversations with (e.g. don't ask someone to “go for a walk” in front of people who aren't involved in the project being discussed). In addition, we think everyone should stop using social media (and definitely stop posting photos of other anarchists, even with their consent, because this helps the State map anarchist networks) and leave their phones at home at all times (not just during actions). Carrying your phone with you has security implications for everyone you interact with.
It can be difficult to convince people to follow such a security baseline, especially if they think they have no personal interest in following it. If someone is reluctant, we should remind them that it's not just their security that's at stake, but also the security of other anarchists around them who may be carrying out or planning to carry out direct actions. Everyone who wants actions to happen has an interest in making anarchist networks as difficult as possible for the authorities to repress.
3. Explore new horizons
Our enemies evolve over time as they refine their strategies and techniques. We should prepare not for the battles that already took place, but for those yet to come. We should therefore go beyond our current security practices, anticipate the evolution of our enemies, and develop new countermeasures.
Here are three issues we think the international anarchist movement should explore in the coming years.
Drones
Aerial surveillance is rapidly becoming cheaper and more efficient. How should we react to the presence of police drones at riots, anarchist events, and so on? How can we detect or take down drones? Should we prepare for the risk of drones being used for routine aerial patrols, and if so, how?
Facial recognition technologies
In 2023, a journalist tracked down German left-wing militant Daniela Klette, who had been in clandestinity for decades, by using facial recognition technology to match a decades-old photo of her with a recent photo from Facebook taken during a dance class. What can we do against this threat? How can we prepare for the increasing integration of facial recognition technology into public video surveillance systems?
Lack of insight into police activity
Until a few years ago, radio scanners were used by anarchists to monitor police frequencies, for example to learn about nearby police activity while carrying out a direct action. In most contexts, this is now impossible because police communications are encrypted. Can we develop new techniques to functionally replace radio scanners or, more generally, to gain insight into police activity in a given area?
About the authors
We're the No Trace Project. For the past three years, we've been building tools to help anarchists understand the capabilities of their enemies, undermine surveillance efforts, and ultimately act without getting caught. We plan to continue in the years to come. We welcome feedback. You can visit our website at notrace.how, and contact us at notrace@autistici.org.
This text is available as a zine (in Letter and A4 dimensions).
Let's prepare ourselves, and may luck be on our side.
Brazilian anarchism lost influence over the masses with the decline and later, the end of revolutionary syndicalism in Brazil between the 1920s and 1930s. This syndicalism already had certain limitations when compared to the model of the historical AIT and its relationship with Mikhail Bakunin’s Alliance. The limitations can be summarised as purism, a-politicism and lack of understanding of the reality of Brazil, in addition to the centrality of anarchist organisation. What remained of anarchism in Brazil for more than half a century were small initiatives of propagandists, educationists and memorialists of anarcho-communist groups, composed of a mix of the old generation of anarchists in contact with young university students and punks, mostly from the petite bourgeoisie.
Between 1995 and 1996, through contacts between anarchist activists in Brazil and the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU), a new era emerged for anarchism in Brazil, culminating in the creation of the Libertarian Socialist Organization (OSL) in 1997 and, later, the Forum of Organised Anarchism in 2000. Despite the limitations and lack of theoretical and strategic unity of some local groups, it was in this context that Brazilian anarchism once again gained a small presence in the class struggle. Of note were the actions of the Gaucho Anarchist Federation (FAG) and, later, the Collective of Pro-organisation Anarchist of Goiás (COPOAG), with its work among waste pickers in the National Movement of Waste Pickers (MNCR), and the Libertarian Socialist Organization OSL-RJ (future UNIPA), with its urban occupations and secondary school movements in the outskirts.
Of the initiatives that stood out in the class struggle in the early 2000s, FAG’s activities lost traction among waste pickers and other social movements, adopting a shift towards post-structuralism. The Colective Anarchist Pro-organisation of Goiás, which was Bakuninist, ended in 2008. The only organisation that continued to advance, both in theory and in practice, was the group from Rio de Janeiro, which became the Popular Anarchist Union. At that time, the Popular Anarchist Union had already been debating the importance of building a revolutionary theory through Bakunin’s thought, criticising individualism and highlighting the importance of strategic action, as in the debate between CONLUTAS and INTERSINDICAL that existed within the Forum of Organised Anarchism. In this sense, the Popular Anarchist Union broke with Forum of Organised Anarchism and launched itself as a national organisation, criticising revisionism and eclecticism.
The Popular Anarchist Union, which was a local group in Rio de Janeiro until 2007, due to its more successful performance in the national context of degeneration of the left with the Worker’s Party governments, such as in the revolutionary bloc in Conlutas and in the promotion of a combative tendency in the student movement with the Class-Based and Combative Student Network, experienced relatively large quantitative and qualitative growth in the 2010s building centres in the Federal District, Ceará, Center South, Goiás, Mato Grosso, among others. Meanwhile the Forum of Organised Anarchism, which became the Brazilian Anarchist Coordination (CAB), despite its growth, changed little in terms of strategic unity and mass line, often acting as an auxiliary line of reformism or practicing welfare in social movements, resulting in less influence in the class struggle.
Garbage collector in Juazeiro, Bahia, 2007. Photo: Glauco Umbelino CC BY 2.0
In 2013, with the June uprising and the growth of its influence in several cities, the Popular Anarchist Union contributed to the call for the National Meeting of Popular, Student and Revolutionary Trade Union Organisations and the national reconstruction of Federation of Revolutionary Syndicalist Organisations of Brazil, becoming a reference for class-based tendencies in Brazil, mainly in the student movement with the Class-Based and Combative Student Network and in basic education with the Class Resistance Opposition group. There was a significant increase in the participation of Bakuninists in the class struggle, such as in the high school occupations of 2015 and in universities in 2016.
The Popular Anarchist Union, which established itself as the only bastion of revolutionary class-based anarchism in Brazil during the Worker’s Party governments (2003-2016), began to make its first mistakes after Dilma’s impeachment, by adhering to the coup narrative and, consequently, favouring the fight against the Worker’s Party “coup-mongering” and the defence of bourgeois democracy. This can be explained, in part, by the contradiction of its growth having occurred in intermediate sectors, such as the student movement of federal universities and the civil service. Meanwhile, the Brazilian Anarchist Coordination lost itself in social-democratic and identity-based narratives, having little influence in the class struggle.
After losing its way in the conceptual dispute with the reformists following Dilma’s impeachment, the only Bakuninist organisation in the world also failed to fully understand the changing context and the decline in struggles after 2016. Even in a new context of right-wing governments and a decline in struggles, it helped to convene the second National Meeting of Popular, Student and Revolutionary Trade Union Organisations, with a proposal de-contextualised from Western Europe by the anarcho-syndicalists of the International Confederation of Labor (CIT) with the creation of the SIGAs, parallel unions, breaking with the only model that was working: the class-based and disciplined tendencies. Thus, they created free unions aimed mainly at libertarians and doctrinaire revolutionaries, focusing only on agitation and propaganda, like the outdated models of the factory-gate unions of the 20th century.
The Popular Anarchist Union/ Federation of Revolutionary Syndicalist Organisations of Brazil continued to present errors in reading the context and promoting hasty and misguided structural changes, and as a result, several internal disagreements arose, mainly on issues such as the “Coup”, “Bolsonaro Out”, “identitarianism” and the “stay at home” policy. In this context, between 2021-2023, there were many ruptures in The Popular Anarchist Union/ Federation of Revolutionary Syndicalist Organisations of Brazil, some public, others not. In the Brazilian Anarchist Coordination, there were also disagreements on two main issues: the advancement of the national organisation with political and strategic unity and the criticism of liberalism/identitarianism, which culminated in a split, mainly of the southeastern organisations of the Brazilian Anarchist Coordination, which formed the new Libertarian Socialist Organization (OSL) in 2023.
With all these changes in the situation in recent years – right-wing governments, the pandemic and the return of the Lula government, even more bourgeois – splits were created that today divide militant anarchism in Brazil into four main lines: Brazilian Anarchist Coordination, Libertarian Socialist Organization, Popular Anarchist Union/ Federation of Revolutionary Syndicalist Organisations of Brazil and its dissidents, such as GLP/Jornal Amigo do Povo, Ofensiva Revolucionária, among others.
Our humble position, the result of these ruptures and more than 20 years of activism even though we are not an anarchist group today, but rather a group of class-based activists, is summarised in advancing where the historical Popular Anarchist Union (2003-2016) was unable to do so. We want to make a quantitative and qualitative leap not only with intermediate sectors, but mainly with strategic sectors and the marginal proletariat, continuing with disciplined activism and theoretical and strategic unity as a legacy of Bakunin and Makhno. We must go to the people and continue fighting for the social revolution.
