a critical individual's proposal for a diffused offensive attack

“Our lives are at stake and we will not renounce any weapon that we can use as our own.”
- Anonymous

In regards to the brief history of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an organization which has brought much inspiration to the North American context and drawn significant media attention, I would like to present a few points in order to critique, clarify and highlight the ways the ELF can be understood as a methodology instead of as an ideology. At the end of this piece, a proposal is drawn out for anarchists to develop their own actions separately in cells, groups or any informal structure they see fit whether or not these are aligned with the “ELF guidelines”.

Obviously this is something that is difficult, because on the one hand the ELF does exist as an organization but is also made up of many dispersed cells and individuals. So the critique will follow the ELF guidelines and not critique the individuals themselves.

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND — Donald Vose arrived late in the day and was the final customer at Fritz Moller's Bainbridge Island barbershop. That was just what Vose wanted.

Moller was a transplant to the island. Known as the Belgium barber, he set up shop in Rolling Bay next to Lucas Rodal's grocery store. A sign in his window advertised shaves on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. About 2 miles north he owned 5 acres where 200 chickens were under his watch.

Vose and Moller were mid-shave when Vose asked the question: "You are David Caplan, aren't you?"

I am an atheist because I don’t believe in any god; I am an anarchist because I don’t believe in any government; I am a criminal because I don’t believe in any law; and (I add) I am me because I am not you or anyone else, and I cannot escape from my “self.” . . .

Walk slow or fast;
but walk.
Think quiet or loud;
but think.
Life is short
and whoever doesn’t self-determine,
neither sows,
nor reaps,
nor enjoys,
nor savors existence.
Walk!
Think!

—Extracted from our brother Gabriel Pombo da Silva’s book Diary and Ideology of a Criminal, which the Fire Cells Conspiracy is currently translating for future release by the Black International publishing initiative

I think Gersten is correct in his assessment: Neither the Democratic Party apparatus nor union officialdom has captured Occupy Oakland, and for the reason Gersten gives, namely, the insurrectionary anarchists have more or less established political hegemony in the various committees and groups that are most deeply involved in Occupy Oakland.

At the same time, I think there is an element of substitutionalism in these activities, at least in relation to the port workers; or, to utilize Gersten's rather solicitous phrase, Occupy Oakland runs the danger of acting only as a solidarity movement. Here, I think it is important to be specific: I said “an element of substitutionalism” because I do not think it is cut and dried question of activism versus agency. Permit me to explain.

For the most part I think insurrectionary anarchism is a phenomenon of youth. For the most part.

On December 31st at around 6 pm in New Orleans, LA a group of 30 or so people came together to protest the existence of Orleans Parish Prison and usher in a new year of resistance. With saxophones, clarinets, buckets and bass drums, the band took position at the entrance to OPP's main holding facility, the House of Detention, where prisoners could be seen through the windowless facade of the building. Like a penal colony from times of creole imperialism, the 10 floors of HOD holds its inhabitants captive with nothing but steel fencing to protect them from the biting cold and scorching heat of New Orleans' weather.

This essay was written in the summer of 2011 after Slavoj Žižek sported a Lenin T-shirt during his talk with Amy Goodman and Julian Assange in London. The talk was held on July 2, 2011, and hosted by the Frontline Club.

Alain Badiou's "Communist Hypothesis" rests on a simple, yet important conviction: we need to be able to envision something other than capitalism and the notion of communism makes this possible. Badiou's understanding of communism, however, remains rather vague. He calls it "an Idea with a regulatory function, rather than a programme". (1) Just like his friend and communist ally, Slavoj Žižek, Badiou considers the twentieth-century attempts to implement communism a fiasco. While Badiou speaks somewhat long-windedly of "the apparent, and sometimes bloody, failures of events closely bound up with the communist hypothesis", (2) Žižek corrects the BBC's HARDtalk presenter Stephen Sackur who calls communism a "catastrophic failure" only to call it a "total failure". (3) Yet both Badiou and Žižek are the main stars of a series of popular communism conferences that kicked off with a 2009 event in London, based, in Badiou's words, on the conviction that "the word 'communism' can and must now acquire a positive value once more". (4)

We stayed in the front of the jail long enough to get across our hatred of it and receive the endorsement of someone who had just been released, and then marched around back. Unsatisfied, we decided to march a few blocks more to a yuppie stretch of cafes, restaurants and nightclubs, blocking traffic and chanting “Avenge Anthony Smith” and “On the count of three say fuck the police. 1-2-3 ‘Fuck the police!” The mood was celebratory and for a moment a few youths joined us chanting “Fuck the Police!”

Police presence was scarce to non-existent.