Propaganda of the deed

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Anarchism
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Propaganda of the deed (or propaganda by the deed, from the French propagande par le fait) is specific political action meant to be exemplary to others.

It is primarily associated with acts of left-wing resistance of the late 19th and early 20th century but also had non-violent applications.[1]

Anarchist origins[edit]

Various definitions[edit]

One of the first individuals to conceptualise propaganda by the deed was the Italian revolutionary Carlo Pisacane (1818–57), who wrote in his "Political Testament" (1857) that "ideas spring from deeds and not the other way around." Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), in his "Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis" (1870) stated that "we must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda."[2] The concept, in a broader setting, has a rich heritage, as the words of Francis of Assisi reveal: "Let them show their love by the works they do for each other, according as the Apostle says: 'let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.'"

Some anarchists, such as Johann Most, advocated publicizing violent acts of retaliation against counter-revolutionaries because "we preach not only action in and for itself, but also action as propaganda."[3] Most was an early influence on American anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Berkman attempted propaganda by the deed when he tried in 1892 to kill industrialist Henry Clay Frick following the deaths by shooting of several striking workers.[4]

By the 1880s, the slogan "propaganda of the deed" had begun to be used both within and outside of the anarchist movement to refer to individual bombings, regicides and tyrannicides. In 1886, French anarchist Clément Duval achieved a form of propaganda of the deed, stealing 15,000 francs from the mansion of a Parisian socialite, before accidentally setting the house on fire. Caught two weeks later, he was dragged from the court crying "Long live anarchy!", and condemned to death. Duval's sentence was later commuted to hard labor on Devil's Island, French Guiana. In the anarchist paper Révolte, Duval famously declared that, "Theft exists only through the exploitation of man by man... when Society refuses you the right to exist, you must take it... the policeman arrested me in the name of the Law, I struck him in the name of Liberty".

As early as 1887, a few important figures in the anarchist movement had begun to distance themselves from individual acts of violence. Peter Kropotkin thus wrote that year in Le Révolté that "a structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of dynamite".[5] A variety of anarchists advocated the abandonment of these sorts of tactics in favor of collective revolutionary action, for example through the trade union movement. The anarcho-syndicalist, Fernand Pelloutier, argued in 1895 for renewed anarchist involvement in the labor movement on the basis that anarchism could do very well without "the individual dynamiter."[6]

State repression (including the infamous 1894 French lois scélérates) of the anarchist and labor movements following the few successful bombings and assassinations may have contributed to the abandonment of these kinds of tactics, although reciprocally state repression, in the first place, may have played a role in these isolated acts. The dismemberment of the French socialist movement, into many groups and, following the suppression of the 1871 Paris Commune, the execution and exile of many communards to penal colonies, favored individualist political expression and acts.[7]

Anarchist historian Max Nettlau provided a more complex concept of propaganda when he said that,

Every person is likely to be open to a different kind of argument, so propaganda cannot be diversified enough if we want to touch all. We want it to pervade and penetrate all the utterances of life, social and political, domestic and artistic, educational and recreational. There should be propaganda by word and action, the platform and the press, the street corner, the workshop, and the domestic circle, acts of revolt, and the example of our own lives as free men. Those who agree with each other may co-operate; otherwise they should prefer to work each on his own lines to trying to persuade one the other of the superiority of his own method.[8]

Later anarchist authors advocating "propaganda of the deed" included the German anarchist Gustav Landauer, and the Italians Errico Malatesta and Luigi Galleani. For Gustav Landauer, "propaganda of the deed" meant the creation of libertarian social forms and communities that would inspire others to transform society.[9] In "Weak Statesmen, Weaker People," he wrote that the state is not something "that one can smash in order to destroy. The state is a relationship between human beings... one destroys it by entering into other relationships."[10]

In contrast, Errico Malatesta described "propaganda by the deed" as violent communal insurrections that were meant to ignite the imminent revolution. However, Malatesta himself denounced the use of terrorism and violent physical force, stating in one of his essays:

Violence (physical force) used to another's hurt, which is the most brutal form of struggle between men can assume, is eminently corrupting. It tends, by its very nature, to suffocate the best sentiments of man, and to develop all the antisocial qualities, ferocity, hatred, revenge, the spirit of domination and tyranny, contempt of the weak, servility towards the strong. And this harmful tendency arises also when violence is used for a good end. ... Anarchists who rebel against every sort of oppression and struggle for the integral liberty of each and who ought thus to shrink instinctively from all acts of violence which cease to be mere resistance to oppression and become oppressive in their turn are also liable to fall into the abyss of brutal force. ... The excitement caused by some recent explosions and the admiration for the courage with which the bomb-throwers faced death, suffices to cause many anarchists to forget their program, and to enter on a path which is the most absolute negation of all anarchist ideas and sentiments.[11]

At the other extreme, the anarchist Luigi Galleani, perhaps the most vocal proponent of "propaganda by the deed" from the turn of the century through the end of the First World War, took undisguised pride in describing himself as a subversive, a revolutionary propagandist and advocate of the violent overthrow of established government and institutions through the use of 'direct action', i.e., bombings and assassinations.[12][13] Galleani heartily embraced physical violence and terrorism, not only against symbols of the government and the capitalist system, such as courthouses and factories, but also through direct assassination of 'enemies of the people': capitalists, industrialists, politicians, judges, and policemen.[13][14] He had a particular interest in the use of bombs, going so far as to include a formula for the explosive nitroglycerine in one of his pamphlets advertised through his monthly magazine, Cronaca Sovversiva.[14] By all accounts, Galleani was an extremely effective speaker and advocate of his policy of violent action, attracting a number of devoted Italian-American anarchist followers who called themselves Galleanists. Carlo Buda, the brother of Galleanist bombmaker Mario Buda, said of him, "You heard Galleani speak, and you were ready to shoot the first policeman you saw".[15]

Illegalism[edit]

Main article: Illegalism

Propaganda of the deed is also related to illegalism, an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 20th century as an outgrowth of anarchist individualism. The illegalists openly embraced criminality as a lifestyle. Influenced by theorist Max Stirner's concept of "egoism", the illegalists broke from anarchists like Clément Duval and Marius Jacob who justified theft with a theory of individual reclamation. Instead, the illegalists argued that their actions required no moral basis – illegal acts were taken not in the name of a higher ideal, but in pursuit of one's own desires. France's Bonnot Gang was the most famous group to embrace illegalism.

Relationship to revolution[edit]

Artist's rendition of the bomb thrown by the anarchist Auguste Vaillant into the Chamber of Deputies of the French National Assembly in December, 1893

Propaganda of the deed thus included stealing (in particular bank robberies – named "expropriations" or "revolutionary expropriations" to finance the organization), rioting and general strikes which aimed at creating the conditions of an insurrection or even a revolution. These acts were justified as the necessary counterpart to state repression. As early as 1911, Leon Trotsky condemned individual acts of violence by anarchists as useful for little more than providing an excuse for state repression. "The anarchist prophets of the 'propaganda by the deed' can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses," he wrote in 1911, "Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise."[16] Vladimir Lenin largely agreed, viewing individual anarchist acts of terrorism as an ineffective substitute for coordinated action by disciplined cadres of the masses.[16]

Sociologist Max Weber wrote that the state has a "monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force", or, in Karl Marx's words, the state was only the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois class. Propaganda by the deed, including assassinations (sometimes involving bombs, named in French "machines infernales" – "hellish machines", usually made with bombs, sometimes only several guns assembled together), were thus legitimized by part of the anarchist movement and the First International as a valid means to be used in class struggle. The predictable state responses to these actions were supposed to display to the people the inherently repressive nature of the bourgeois state. This would in turn bolster the revolutionary spirit of the people, leading to the overthrow of the state. This is the basic formula of the cycle protests-repression-protests, which in specific conditions may lead to an effective state of insurrection.

This cycle has been observed during the 1905 Russian Revolution or in Paris in May 1968. However, it failed to achieve its revolutionary objective on the vast majority of occasions, thus leading to the abandonment by the vast majority of the anarchist movement of such bombings. However, the state never failed in its repressive response, enforcing various lois scélérates which usually involved tough clampdowns on the whole of the labor movement. These harsh laws, sometimes accompanied by the proclamation of the state of exception, progressively led to increased criticism among the anarchist movement of assassinations. The role of several agents provocateurs and the use of deliberate strategies of tension by governments, using such false flag terrorist actions as the Spanish La Mano Negra, work to discredit this violent tactic in the eyes of most socialist libertarians. John Filiss and Jim Bell are two of the best known modern advocates, with the latter developing the concept of an assassination market—a market system for anonymously hiring and compensating political assassination.

Regicides and other assassinations[edit]

Numerous heads of state and heads of government were assassinated between 1881 and 1914. Regicides were for obvious reasons celebrated as popular victory over counter-revolutionary forces, which remained strong a century after the 1789 French Revolution. The first assassinations were carried out by Russian anarchists, which would lead to the creation of the term of "nihilism". For example, U.S. President McKinley's assassin Leon Czolgosz claimed to have been influenced by anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman. Bombings were associated in the media with anarchists because international terrorism arose during this time period with the widespread distribution of dynamite.[citation needed] The image remains to this day. This perception was enhanced by events such as the 1886 Haymarket Riot, where anarchists were blamed for throwing a bomb at police who came to break up a public meeting in Chicago, Illinois.

Timeline of historical actions[edit]

Two men are sitting at a desk while a third man enters the office carrying a gun
Alexander Berkman's attempt to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick, as illustrated by W. P. Snyder for Harper's Weekly in 1892
  • April 4, 1866 Dmitry Karakozov made an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II at the gates of the Summer Garden in St Petersburg. As the Tsar was leaving, Dmitry rushed forward to fire. The attempt was thwarted by Osip Komissarov, a peasant-born hatter's apprentice, who jostled Karakozov's elbow just before the shot was fired.
  • May 11, 1878 – Max Hödel attempts to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany. His two attempts to shoot the monarch both fail, and he is apprehended and executed by beheading on August 15.
  • August 4, 1878 – Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky stabs to death General Nikolai Mezentsov, head of the Tsar's secret police, in response to the execution of Ivan Kovalsky.
  • November 17, 1878 – Giovanni Passannante attempts to assassinate with a dagger King Umberto I of Italy. It is the first attempted murder against the monarch and the first in the history of House of Savoy. Passannante is sentenced to death but his penalty is commuted to prison for life. While in jail, he goes insane and is taken to the asylum.
  • February 1879 – Grigori Goldenberg shoots Prince Dmitri Kropotkin, the Governor of Kharkov in the Russian Empire, to death.
  • April 20, 1879 – Alexander Soloviev attempts to assassinate Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The monarch spots the weapon in his hands and flees, but Soloviev still fires five shots, all of which miss. He is captured and hanged on May 28.
  • February 17, 1880 – Stepan Khalturin successfully blows up part of the Winter Palace in an attempt to assassinate Tsar Alexander. Although the Tsar escapes unharmed, eight soldiers are killed and 45 wounded. Referring to the 1862 invention of dynamite, historian Benedict Anderson observes that "Nobel’s invention had now arrived politically."[17] Khalturin is hanged on the orders of Alexander's son and successor, Alexander III, in 1882 after the assassination of a police official.
  • March 1 (Julian calendar) 1881 – Alexander II is killed in a bomb blast by Narodnaya Volya.
  • July 23, 1892 – Alexander Berkman tries to kill American industrialist Henry Clay Frick in retaliation for Frick's hiring of Pinkerton detectives to break up the Homestead Strike, resulting in the deaths of seven steelworkers. Although badly wounded, Frick survives, and Berkman is arrested and eventually sentenced to 22 years in prison.
Assassination of Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo by Michele Angiolillo in August 1897.
  • November 7, 1893 – The Spanish anarchist Santiago Salvador throws two Orsini bombs into the orchestra pit of the Liceu Theater in Barcelona during the second act of the opera Guillaume Tell, killing some twenty people and injuring scores of others.
  • December 9, 1893 – Auguste Vaillant throws a nail bomb in the French National Assembly, killing nobody and injuring one. He is then sentenced to death and executed by the guillotine on February 4, 1894, shouting "Death to bourgeois society and long live anarchy!" (A mort la société bourgeoise et vive l'anarchie!). During his trial, Vaillant declares that he had not intended to kill anybody, but only to injure several deputies in retaliation against the execution of Ravachol, who was executed for four bombings.
  • February 12, 1894 – Émile Henry, intending to avenge Auguste Vaillant, sets off a bomb in Café Terminus (a café near the Gare Saint-Lazare train station in Paris), killing one and injuring twenty. During his trial, when asked why he wanted to harm so many innocent people, he declares, "There is no innocent bourgeois." This act is one of the rare exceptions to the rule that propaganda of the deed targets only specific powerful individuals. Henry is convicted and executed by guillotine on May 21.
  • June 24, 1894 – Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio, seeking revenge for Auguste Vaillant and Émile Henry, stabs Sadi Carnot, the President of France, to death. Caserio is executed by guillotine on August 15.
  • November 3, 1896 – In the Greek city of Patras, Dimitris Matsalis, an anarchist shoemaker, attacks banker Dionysios Fragkopoulos and merchant Andreas Kollas with a knife. Fragkopoulos is killed on the spot; Kollas is seriously wounded.
  • April 22, 1897 – Pietro Acciarito tries to stab King Umberto of Italy. He is sentenced to life imprisonment.
  • August 8, 1897 – Michele Angiolillo shoots dead Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo at a thermal bath resort, seeking vengeance for the imprisonment and torture of alleged revolutionaries at the Montjuïc fortress. Angiolillo is executed by garotte on August 20.
An artist's rendition of the stabbing of Empress Elisabeth of Austria by the Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni in Geneva, 10 September 1898
A sketch of Leon Czolgosz shooting McKinley in New York, September 6, 1901.
  • March 28, 1908 – Anarchist Selig Cohen aka Selig Silverstein tries to throw a bomb in New York City's Union Square. A premature explosion kills a bystander named Ignatz Hildebrand and mortally wounds Cohen, who dies a month later. Several contemporary pictures taken after the explosion show the mortally wounded Silverstein with his victim next to him.[18]
  • November 14, 1909 – Argentine anarchist militant Simón Radowitzky assassinates Buenos Aires chief of police, Lieutenant Ramón Falcón by a throwing a bomb at his carriage while Falcón was returning from a deceased fellow officer's funeral. The assassination prompted President Figueroa Alcorta to declare a state of siege and pass the Social Defense Law, which allowed the deportation of anarchist "agitators".
  • September 14, 1911 – Dmitri Bogrov shoots Russian prime minister Pyotr Stolypin at the Kiev Opera House in the presence of Tsar Nicholas II and two of his daughters, Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana. Stolypin dies four days later, and Bogrov is hanged on September 28.
  • November 12, 1912 – Anarchist Manuel Pardiñas shoots Spanish Prime Minister José Canalejas dead in front of a Madrid bookstore. Pardiñas then immediately turns the gun on himself and commits suicide.
  • March 18, 1913 – Alexandros Schinas shoots dead King George I of Greece while the monarch is on a walk near the White Tower of Thessaloniki. Schinas is captured and tortured; he commits suicide on May 6 by jumping out the window of the gendarmerie, although there is speculation that he could have been thrown to his death.
  • July 4, 1914 - A bomb being prepared for use at John D. Rockefeller's home at Tarrytown, New York explodes prematurely, killing three anarchists, Arthur Caron, Carl Hansen and Charles Berg,[19] and an innocent woman, Mary Chavez[20]
  • October 13 and November 14, 1914 – Galleanists – radical followers of Luigi Galleani – explode two bombs in New York City after police forcibly disperse a protest by anarchists and communists at John D. Rockefeller's home in Tarrytown.[19]
  • In 1914, Marie Ganz threatens to shoot John D. Rockefeller as she arrives with a crowd and a loaded pistol in front of the Standard Oil Building in Manhattan. He is not in.
  • July 22, 1916 – San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing. 10 persons killed, 40 injured.
  • November 24, 1917 9 policemen and a bystander in Milwaukee, Wisconsin killed when a time bomb left at a Catholic church by Galleanists was taken to a police station, where it exploded.[21]
Assassination of George I of Greece by Alexandros Schinas in 1913 as depicted in a contemporary lithograph

Later developments[edit]

The abandonment of bombings[edit]

Propaganda poster depicting an angel protecting against a bomb-throwing, knife-wielding Bolshevik activist: propaganda of the deed was widely viewed negatively

Propaganda of the deed, as a violent form of direct action involving bombings and assassinations, was abandoned by the vast majority of the anarchist movement after World War I (1914–18) and the 1917 October Revolution.[citation needed] There are various causes for this, but important factors include state repression, the level of organization of the labour movement (in particular the new importance of anarcho-syndicalism in European Latin countries such as France, Italy and Spain) and the influence of the October Revolution. Although the Leninist thesis of an avant-garde party composed of professional revolutionaries didn't break that much with the Socialist-Revolutionary organization, it did make completely individual acts of propaganda of the deed less relevant. Despite this abandonment, the concept of propaganda of the deed remained popular in the anarchist movement, and thus influenced various social and cultural movements, including the Underground[clarification needed], during the 20th century.

For example, the concept of direct action itself continued to be central in the libertarian socialist movement, in particular in the anarcho-syndicalism movement through the concept of the "revolutionary strike" inspired by French theorist Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence (1908). In the 1950s, the Situationist International's conception of creating "situations" may be related quite easily to propaganda of the deed (which is not surprising, given the influence of council communism on Guy Debord). The autonomist movement and urban guerrilla group then took on the concept in the 1970s. It is also during this period that the concept of culture jamming, Spaßguerilla, guerrilla communication and other kinds of non-violent and sometimes simultaneously artistic and political acts become popular as a new form of "direct action". The Living Theater, in the 1970s, for example, mixed direct actions with an artistic intent, mixing, as did before them André Breton and the Surrealist movement, Arthur Rimbaud's "change life" with Karl Marx's "XIth These on Feuerbach", "transform the world."

The importance of riots and rebellions in the creation of the conditions of an insurrection has never been abandoned, going through anarcho-syndicalism to autonomism and today's anti-globalization mediatic black blocs. In the 2000s, a Swedish group called the Invisible Party carried on various direct actions which could be related to the tradition of the propaganda of the deed.

Urban guerrillas and the autonomist movement[edit]

The concept of "propaganda of the deed" received renewed attention in the 1970s–1980s, especially among "urban guerrilleros" and the Italian autonomist movement, which had a large part in the creation of the squatting and Social Center movement.

Since some of the most radical autonomist or other far-left activists engaged not only in direct action (stealing, squatting, bank robberies – called expropriations – etc.) but also in assassination and bombing, "propaganda of the deed" again became synonymous with terrorism. For example, the German Red Army Faction (RAF) kidnapped and murdered Hanns Martin Schleyer, who was president of the German Employer's Association and a former high-ranking SS member during the Third Reich, and targeted NATO centers.

The appearance in developed countries during the 1970s of militant leftist groups – such as the Red Brigades, the RAF or the less important French Action Directe – which, although they were not anarchists, did engage in "propaganda of the deed" – were part of larger social movements. These included the autonomist movement in Italy, which practiced various types of "direct action" other than assassinations (in Italy, shootings in the legs was more often used). These new groups viewed their actions from a global point of view, in order to link them with "world struggles", such as the Vietnam War (1965–75) or with South American struggles against military juntas (see for example the RAF's actions against NATO and its ideological relations with Uruguayan Tupamaros). In Italy, the concept of a "strategy of tension" (strategia della tensione) directly carried on by far-right forces linked to the security forces was popular in extra-parliamentary leftist movements; its existence was proved after Italian Premier Giulio Andreotti's 1990 revelations concerning Gladio, a NATO stay-behind anti-communist organization, and the parliamentary inquiries into the bombings carried on during this period (1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, 1980 Bologna massacre, etc.).

Timeline of modern actions[edit]

  • May 1968. Riots in Paris. The New-York based group "Black Mask" becomes Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers and carry out artistic propaganda of the deed.
  • October 8, 1969. The U.S. group Weatherman's first event is to blow up a statue in Chicago, Illinois, dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket Riot. The "Days of Rage" riots then occur in Chicago during four days. 287 Weatherman members are arrested, and one of them killed.
  • December 6, 1969. Several Chicago Police cars parked in a Precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago, are bombed. The Weather Underground Organization (WUO) later stated in their book Prairie Fire[26] that they had perpetrated the explosion to protest the shooting deaths of the Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark two days earlier by police officers.
  • 1970–1972. The British Angry Brigade group carries out at least 25 bombings (police numbers). Almost all property damage, although one person was slightly injured.
  • September 12, 1970. The WUO helps Dr. Timothy Leary, LSD scientist, break out and escape from the California Men's Colony prison.
  • October 8, 1970. Bombing of Marin County (California, US) Courthouse in retaliation for the deaths of Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, and James McClain.
  • October 10, 1970. The Queens Courthouse is bombed to express support for the New York prison riots.
  • October 14, 1970. The Harvard Center for International Affairs is bombed to protest the war in Vietnam.
  • September 28, 1973. The ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy are bombed in response to ITT's role in the September 11, 1973 Chilean coup.
  • November 6, 1973. The U.S. group Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) assassinates Oakland, California superintendent of schools Dr. Marcus Foster and badly wounded his deputy Robert Blackburn.
  • September 11, 1974. Bombing of Anaconda Corporation (part of the Rockefeller Corporation) in retribution for Anaconda’s involvement in Pinochet's coup exactly a year before.
  • December 1975. Greek organization Revolutionary Organization November 17 allegedly responsible of the assassination of CIA station chief in Athens Richard Welch. According to a December 2005 article by Kleanthis Grivas, journalist in Proto Thema, Sheepskin, Gladio's branch in Greece, was in fact behind the killing. US State Department denied Grivas' allegations in January 2006.
  • January 28, 1975. Bombing of the U.S. State Department in response to escalation in Vietnam.
  • April 21, 1975. The remaining members of the SLA rob the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, California and kill Myrna Opsahl, a bank customer, in the process.
  • September 1975. Bombing of the Kennecott Corporation in retribution for Kennecott's involvement in the Chilean coup two years prior.
  • May 1, 1979. French group Action Directe carries out a machine gun attack on the employers' federation headquarters.
  • May 30, 1982. The Canadian group Direct Action (aka "Squamish Five") set off a large bomb at an electricity transmission project. Four transformers were wrecked beyond repair, but no one was injured.
  • 1984. Bomb-attacks of the Dutch organisation RaRa (Radical Anti-Racist Action) against the Van Heutsz monument (Van Heutsz was the Dutch commander during the Aceh War).
  • 1985–1987: Dutch RaRa is responsible of several bomb-attacks on the Makro wholesale stores, which was active in South Africa.
  • 1985. Action Directe assassinates René Audran, in charge of the state's arms-dealing.
  • 1986. Georges Besse, CEO of Renault but before leader of Eurodif nuclear consortium (in which Iran had a 10 percent stake), is allegedly assassinated by Action Directe (although this thesis would be questioned, in particular by investigative journalist Dominique Lorentz).
  • June 28, 1988. US naval and defense attachée in Greece William Nordeen's assassination is reinvidicated by the Revolutionary Organization November 17.
  • September 26, 1989. Assassination of Pavlos Bakoyannis, parliamentary leader of the conservative New Democracy party, by Greek group Revolutionary Organization 17 November.
  • November 13, 1991. Dutch Rara blow up the house of state secretary of justice Aad Kosto.
  • June 30, 1993. Dutch Rara are responsible of bomb-attacks on the Dutch ministry of social affairs and employment.
  • November 30, 1999. Black blocs destroy the storefronts of GAP, Starbucks, Old Navy, and other multi-nationals with retail locations in downtown Seattle during the anti-WTO demonstrations.
  • June 8, 2000 Assassination of British military attache Stephen Saunders in Greece. Members of 17N are arrested. In December 2005, Kleanthis Grivas, journalist in Proto Thema, claims that Sheepskin, Gladio's branch in Greece, was in fact behind the killing, along with the first violent act of 17N, Richard Welch CIA station chief's assassination in 1975. US State Department denied Grivas' allegations in January 2006.
  • 2001. After the July Genoa G8 summit, the Publixtheatre Caravan, part of the No Border network, is accused of being part of a "criminal organization" called "Black blocs", although such "Black blocs" are not organized and only form themselves on a spontaneous manner during demonstrations, as in the older autonomist movement.
  • 2006. The Swedish Invisible Party announces its dissolution.

Justifications[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Anarchism and violence.

Anarchists and similar radicals often[citation needed] claim that their use of "political violence" is not terrorism, arguing that there is a fundamental difference between bombings carried out against a civilian population and assassinations carried out against people in positions of political, military, or economic power (even if non-combatants under international law). They emphasize that many[quantify] scholars define terrorism as the attempt to spread terror in the population through indiscriminate bombings, thus excluding anarchist propaganda of the deed from the definition of terrorism.

The United Nations Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter[27] defined the term "terrorism" as consisting of "Criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act."[28]

The use of political violence is understood by its proponents in the frame of a general conception of the state as the control apparatus of the bourgeoisie, and of class struggle as a form of effective civil war. Thus, as anarchists often put it, "peace without justice isn't peace", but war between exploited and exploiters. In their eyes, this "social war" morally legitimizes the use of violence against broader "social violence." This view, of course, is not shared by pacifist libertarians. Rioting is thus justified as a means to enhance class consciousness and prepares the objective conditions for a popular uprising (Georges Sorel, 1906).

A heated controversy concerning the use of violence continues to take place inside the anarchist movement[citation needed]. Even those who are not opposed to the political use of violence for theoretical reasons (as pacifist anarchists are) may consider it unnecessary or strategically dangerous, in certain conditions. Many note that the events of 1970s showed clearly how terrorism may be used to influence politics in the frame of the "strategy of tension" by a state and its secret services, through agents provocateurs and false flag terrorist attacks. In Italy and other countries, the Years of lead led to reinforced anti-terrorism legislation, criticized by social activists as a new form of lois scélérates which were used to repress the whole of the socialist movement, not just militant groups. Many also note that the rare cases in which terrorism has achieved its revolutionary aims are mostly in the context of national liberation struggles, while the urban guerrilla movements have all failed (Gérard Chaliand).

Armed propaganda[edit]

Armed propaganda is a type of propaganda used by revolutionary organizations that uses destructive, but ideally not lethal violence to make a political point known to the public and eventually gain supporters for its cause. The term was used in the United States by the Weather Underground and the Black Panther Party to describe some of their bombings. Although armed propaganda can use guns or bombs, its proponents argue that its goal is debatably different from that of pure terrorism.

United States[edit]

Dan Berger, in his book about the Weatherman organization, Outlaws in America, describes the planning section for a townhouse bombing by the group, describing the action as "armed propaganda". [29]

Latin America[edit]

The term has been applied to guerillas in Latin America in their revolutionary literature. [30]

Iran[edit]

Bizhan Jazani used a translation of the term to describe armed struggle in Iran, particularly the Fadai guerrillas. [30]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Anarchist historian George Woodcock, when dealing with the evolution of anarcho-pacifism in the early 20th century, reports that "the modern pacifist anarchists, ...have tended to concentrate their attention largely on the creation of libertarian communities – particularly farming communities – within present society, as a kind of peaceful version of the propaganda by deed." George Woodcock. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962)
  2. ^ "Letter to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis" (1870) by Mikhail Bakunin
  3. ^ "Action as Propaganda" by Johann Most, July 25, 1885
  4. ^ Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1912) by Alexander Berkman
  5. ^ quoted in Billington, James H. 1998. Fire in the minds of men: origins of the revolutionary faith New Jersey: Transaction Books, p. 417.
  6. ^ "Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume One | Robert Graham". Black Rose Books. Retrieved October 26, 2010. 
  7. ^ Historian Benedict Anderson thus writes:

    In March 1871 the Commune took power in the abandoned city and held it for two months. Then Versailles seized the moment to attack and, in one horrifying week, executed roughly 20,000 Communards or suspected sympathizers, a number higher than those killed in the recent war or during Robespierre’s ‘Terror’ of 1793–94. More than 7,500 were jailed or deported to places like New Caledonia. Thousands of others fled to Belgium, England, Italy, Spain and the United States. In 1872, stringent laws were passed that ruled out all possibilities of organizing on the left. Not till 1880 was there a general amnesty for exiled and imprisoned Communards. Meanwhile, the Third Republic found itself strong enough to renew and reinforce Louis Napoleon’s imperialist expansion—in Indochina, Africa, and Oceania. Many of France’s leading intellectuals and artists had participated in the Commune (Courbet was its quasi-minister of culture, Rimbaud and Pissarro were active propagandists) or were sympathetic to it. The ferocious repression of 1871 and thereafter, was probably the key factor in alienating these milieux from the Third Republic and stirring their sympathy for its victims at home and abroad. Anderson, Benedict (July–August 2004). "In the World-Shadow of Bismarck and Nobel". New Left Review. New Left Review. II (28): 85–129. 

    According to some analysts, in post-war Germany, the prohibition of the Communist Party (KPD) and thus of institutional far-left political organization may also, in the same manner, have played a role in the creation of the Red Army Faction.
  8. ^ Max Nettlau. "An Anarchist Manifesto"
  9. ^ Gustav Landauer, "Anarchism in Germany," 1895 [1]
  10. ^ Der Sozialist, (1910)
  11. ^ "Violence as a Social Factor," (1895) by Malatesta
  12. ^ Galleani, Luigi, La Fine Dell'Anarchismo?, ed. Curata da Vecchi Lettori di Cronaca Sovversiva, University of Michigan (1925), pp. 61–62: Galleani's writings are clear on this point: he had undisguised contempt for those who refused to both advocate and directly participate in the violent overthrow of capitalism.
  13. ^ a b Galleani, Luigi, Faccia a Faccia col Nemico, Boston, MA: Gruppo Autonomo, (1914)
  14. ^ a b Avrich, Paul, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background, Princeton University Press (1991), pp. 51, 98–99
  15. ^ Avrich, Paul, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1996), p. 132 (Interview of Charles Poggi)
  16. ^ a b Gage, Beverly, The Day Wall Street Exploded: A story of America in its First Age of Terror, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-514824-4 (2009), p. 263
  17. ^ Anderson, Benedict (July–August 2004). "In the World-Shadow of Bismarck and Nobel". New Left Review. New Left Review. II (28). 
  18. ^ Union Square Bombing 1908
  19. ^ a b Morgan, Ted, Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America, New York: Random House, ISBN 0-679-44399-1, ISBN 978-0-679-44399-5 (2003), p. 58
  20. ^ New York Tribune July 5, 1914
  21. ^ ODMP memorial
  22. ^ Delzell, p. 325; Roberts, p. 54; Rizi, p. 113
  23. ^ New York Times: "Bomb Menaces Life of Sacco Case Judge," September 27, 1932, accessed Dec. 20, 2009
  24. ^ Cannistraro, Philip V., and Meyer, Gerald, eds., The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism: Politics, Labor, and Culture, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, ISBN 0-275-97891-5 (2003) p. 168
  25. ^ Avrich, Paul, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background, Princeton University Press (1991), pp. 58–60
  26. ^ The Weather Underground. "Prairie Fire: The politics of revolutionary anti-imperialism" (PDF). Links to resources from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and related groups and activities. Prairie Fire Distributing Committee. Retrieved 15 September 2015. 
  27. ^ Acting under Chapter VII means the Council is speaking with its mandatory authority in matters of world security to set the world's policy around this issue. (Comparable to the Pope speaking ex cathedra.)
  28. ^ Security Council, United Nations Organization (October 2004). "Definition of Terrorism". Security Council Resolution 1566 (2004) (in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish). UNdemocracy.org. p. 2. Retrieved May 11, 2009. 
  29. ^ Berger, Dan, Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity, AK Press: Oakland, California, 2006, ISBN 1-904859-41-0 p. 144;
  30. ^ a b Vahabzadeh, Peyman (2010). Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy, and the Fadai Period of National Liberation In Iran, 1971–1979. Syracuse University Press. p. 100. Retrieved 7 January 2016. 

Bibliography[edit]

External links[edit]

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