Why We Need Real Anarchy

https://cwc.im/RealAnarchy

Politicians have come together across the aisle to decry the storming of the Capitol on January 6 as “lawless,” “anti-democratic,” and “extremist,” going so far as to misrepresent the result as “anarchy.” The problem with the invasion of the Capitol was not that it was unlawful, undemocratic, or extremist, per se, but that it was an effort to concentrate oppressive power in the hands of an autocrat—which is precisely the opposite of anarchy.

Direct action, militant tactics, and a critique of electoral politics will remain essential to movements against fascism and state violence. We must not let the far right gentrify revolt, nor permit centrists to confuse the issue.

Over a week after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, police have made less than 100 arrests.

By contrast—on J20, the day Trump was inaugurated, DC police arrested 234 people for the crime of wearing black in the vicinity of confrontational protests.

Most of those arrested for storming the Capitol have been charged with negligible misdemeanors.

All of the arrestees from the mass arrest at Trump's inauguration were immediately charged with felonies. The vast majority of them faced a minimum of 8 felonies each.

We're not calling for more charges against the fascists who invaded the Capitol. We know that whatever the cops do to their friends, they will do to us ten times worse.

The point is—the police and the justice system exist to repress us, not to protect us. We organize against fascists ourselves because we know that the state will always side with them.

It's worth reading about the J20 court case to see the lengths the state will go to repress us—and how we can defeat them.

https://cwc.im/J20legal

In 2017, Trump and his supporters took control of all three branches of government. Fascists came to DC to celebrate.

We honor the courage of those who mobilized against his inauguration:

https://cwc.im/J20Analysis

This report also offers vital insight into the strategies—and limits—of the police.

There is also a choose-your-own-adventure protest simulator based on the experiences of participants in the black bloc march against Trump’s inauguration and the subsequent court case that followed it:

https://cwc.im/J20Simulator

#J20

6 de Janeiro: Uma Base de Massas Para o Fascismo?

cwc.im/6JanDC

Como consequência da invasão de apoiadores de Donald Trump ao edifício do Capitólio em Washington, DC após um comício promovendo suas alegações infundadas de fraude eleitoral, o Partido Republicano está se fragmentando, preparando o cenário para a consolidação de um novo centro político bipartidário. Isso também abre caminho para que setores massivos da base de Trump rompam totalmente com a democracia representativa, adotando uma alternativa explicitamente fascista. Os acontecimentos de 6 de janeiro lhes oferecem mártires e uma narrativa revanchista que eles aproveitarão por muitos anos.

Mas esse não é o único perigo à frente. Em nome de uma guerra contra o extremismo, os centristas vão exigir a expansão da mesma máquina de repressão estatal que o próximo Trump inevitavelmente usará contra nós e demais anticapitalistas. Isso é essencialmente o que aconteceu na República de Weimar, preparando o cenário para a ascensão do Terceiro Reich.

We may be entering an era when a variety of political actors will find it more strategic to be positioned outside the government, so as to avoid being discredited with it. Now that the state can no longer mitigate the effects of capitalism, people are bound to become more and more disillusioned and rebellious. Where left parties hold state power, seeking to pacify those who remain in the streets, it will be easier for right-wing groups to present themselves as the real partisans of revolt—as they have in Venezuela, for example. The insurrections of the past decade are sure to continue, but the important question is what kind of insurrections they will be. Will they put people in touch with their own collective power, setting the stage for the final abolition of capitalism? Or will they look more like what happened in the US Capitol?

In 2015, when SYRIZA, a far left party, won Greek elections on the platform of anti-austerity, we correctly predicted that they would fail and that, in their failure, they would pave the wave for a groundswell of far right movements. Looking back at our reflections just six years ago still feels helpful for thinking through the problems we face today:

https://crimethinc.com/2015/01/28/feature-syriza-cant-save-greece-why-theres-no-electoral-exit-from-the-crisis

The FBI is visiting anti-fascists around the country, using the invasion of the Capitol as an excuse to threaten the movements that have done the most to resist those responsible for the events of January 6.

They don't protect us from fascists—they coddle fascists and attack us!

Introduction to security culture: https://cwc.im//texts/security

If the FBI question you or ask you to become an informant: https://cwc.im/ifthefbi

Beware of agents provocateurs and entrapment: https://cwc.im/entrapment

Basic security in protest situations: https://maskon.zone

Dozens of police officers participated in Trump's rally on January 6—if not more—and many of them participated in storming the Capitol.

Giving the police and FBI more power in hopes that they will control the far right means giving more resources to the people behind January 6.

TELEGRAM CENSORS BLM-AFFILIATED CHANNELS
AFTER FAR-RIGHT DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, 18 January 2021

In the weeks following the January 6th assault on the U.S. Capitol, various right-wing extremist Telegram channels coordinated a campaign to remove BLM-affiliated and anti-fascist groups from the platform by submitting false reports to Telegram’s moderators. On the morning of Ma¬rtin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, owners of the targeted groups woke up to find that a number of their communities had been shut down over¬night without warning or explanation. These groups were used to share information, resources and community in times of unrest and uncertainty. These groups date back to the George Floyd protests or mutual aid initiatives in the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic. Their censorship and removal are the result of a deliberate effort by white nationalist groups to silence opposition during a moment of political turmoil.

Telegram did not provide detailed notices of any kind to channel owners, instead replacing all content with a generic message alleging a Terms of Service violation. While BLM-affiliated channels were taken down, many of the extremist groups coordinating the campaign were left in place, including “Proud Boys: Uncensored” (where the Proud Boys retreated after being removed from other platforms for violent activity) and “GypsyCrusader News Network” (a non-stop deluge of racial slurs, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and a man dressed as the Joker giving Nazi salutes) as well as the group "archived1488" which gloated over the TOS announcement on one of these channels.

After several hours most of the targeted channels were brought back online. Telegram has offered no explanation for the initial shutdowns or the reinstatement of these channels. One possibility is that the spurious mass-reporting by right-wing spam accounts triggered an automatic removal violation, but no actual Terms of Service violation was found upon review by content moderators.

Attacks like these targeting non-violent groups on the left exemplify the double-standard used to silence marginalized people and their allies. Activists use Telegram to provide and receive real-time information related to protest actions, to communicate with allies across regional and national boundaries, and to share resources ranging from recipes to first-aid training. Topics of conversation range from heartbreak over news of Black deaths at the hands of police, to coordinating support for unhoused people in their communities, to organizing mutual aid efforts for those affected by the pandemic. These community resources were taken down while multiple channels openly affiliated with far-right hate groups remained online and functional.

As fallout from the Jan 6 Capitol attack continues to be felt, we anticipate increased attacks on leftist social media channels as well as political targeting of leftist activists. We vehemently maintain that there is a fundamental distinction between groups calling for justice, equity, the end of state sanctioned murder, and an end to homelessness and poverty, and groups calling for the murder and abuse of vulnerable populations to aid in the dissolution of our democracy.

That fundamental difference must be recognized by content moderators at Telegram and other social media networks, and freedom of peaceful organization and protest must be maintained. Equating groups advocating for Black Lives or Anti-Fascism with those calling for genocide, murder, and race war to perpetuate systems of white supremacy only serves to assuage a misguided sense of fairness, and lacks both moral and ethical judgement.

JPG: https://news.1rj.ru/str/BLMProtests/9806
PDF: https://news.1rj.ru/str/BLMProtests/9807

PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY TO PRESS & MEDIA!

The Trump Years—A Chronology of Resistance

https://cwc.im/TrumpYears

Now that it's time to confront the risks and opportunities of a new era, let's review the essential roles that direct action and ungovernable movements have played in the events of the past four years.

This is how we will remember Donald Trump—as a teapot tyrant whose power was undercut by his own cartoonish ambitions, whose reign was lethal but also ridiculous.

https://cwc.im/TrumpYears

The most dangerous was that Trump was able to make the old status quo seem preferable by comparison—when in fact it was the ways that the previous status quo was insufferable that brought him to power and that generated the fierce resistance that prevented him from achieving his goals.

Now it's time to reorient towards fighting the centrists and their goal of reestablishing a dismal Business as Usual.

Before there is confusion about why people would smash windows at the Democratic Party building in Portland, remember, it is Democratic politicians that oversee ongoing police violence in Portland, along with imprisonment and deportations.

Democratic politicians are actively inflicting evictions and homelessness on people in Portland:

https://twitter.com/PortlandDSA/status/1350566558913839104

And this same march was attacked from the beginning by police overseen by Democrats:

https://twitter.com/R3volutionDaddy/status/1352029010755162118

Rather than just being grateful that the lesser of two evils is in power, let's keep organizing to resist oppression.

The team that maintains the crimethinc.com site is renovating our digital infrastructure for 2021. Unfortunately, this means rebuilding the monthly sustainer program from scratch.

https://cwc.im/support

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“The usual passive attitude that is typical for these kinds of protests has been abandoned. People are fighting back against the police. Likewise, these rallies aren’t just in the typical places, nor are they comprised of just the same politically active upper-class people. From the city of Chita, we hear stories that the cops have been routed. In Perm, a crowd applauds after anarchists speak about rebellion, self-organized activity, and solidarity against repression. In Irkutsk, people are receiving anarchists and their words warmly as well. In one place, people block police cars, while in another, they de-arrest a protester. On one street, a man knocks out a cop, while on another, people chant “Freedom! Freedom!” as a woman wrestles a baton from a cop’s hand. Beyond the growing interest in anarchist ideas, which is certainly exciting, there is an even more exciting anarchic potential in the revolt that broke out today, however humble.”

A letter from Russian anarchists on the protests shaking the country this week:

https://crimethinc.com/2021/01/24/letter-from-russia-on-the-protests-of-january-23