Let’s Talk About Attack
Anarchists sometimes talk about attack; some of them do so a lot. The media, on the other hand, don’t feel as tempted to do so. The news of successful attacks, robberies, escapes, revolts, etc, aren’t always broadcast in the news, and it makes sense. The police are the main scavengers of such news, and as the defenders of order have no interest in displaying these hostilities and broadcasting them through their channels.
Why then, is their censorship so often considered a problem? It seems to us that the problem isn’t so much that what we don’t talk about remains hidden (in terms of mass diffusion, since there are always witnesses who will speak to others, etc; in extreme cases, there remains those who repair the attacked target), but rather that what we don’t talk about (again through the channels of power) cannot even exist in the spirit of many people. Because if it did, the loyal spokespeople (which is to say, loyal to power) of the truth and the news would engage with a word. And so, if we don’t say anything, it’s that it doesn’t exist.
And so it remains up to the Spectacle to decide what exists and what does not. The relationships between people and the relationships between people and the world have been so mutilated by power that we always need a proxy, a product of power, to make our desired connections: the media, internet, phones. That the news of hostilities are only heard through these channels (or isn’t) is a sad reality. If it’s not on facebook, it doesn’t exist, and if we’re not on facebook, how will we talk about it?
That said, the solution to the problem certainly isn’t to participate in the Spectacle. What would we gain from being represented via the channels of power? Where does this hunger/greed for representation in the Spectacle come from, a hunger/greed that always resurfaces; the media serves as a vanity mirror (recognition by the enemy, what a treat!), some proof that says we exist? All this spectacular culture reproduces the world of power and the mechanisms it needs to continue. So, for example, we wait with impatience for riots in the neighborhoods, while remaining blind to the lower-intensity destruction of the structures small or large of power around us – this game between rebels who have an eye for it, and for which no one determines the rules.
Beyond all that, the channels of power deprive hostilities of their content and replace it with a message that will instead affirm power. When the media frogs croak about an arson, a bomb, an assault against an oppressor … it always serves a counter-insurrectional goal. It’s everything but an invitation to everyone to take up hostilities. The newspapers speak of something we were not able to conceal, and always find a way to say it was a marginal act, an absurdity: out of place and incomprehensible to “normal people,” to whom no one can relate since the act comes from a well defined “category” of person (the residents of a certain neighborhood, people who share a certain anomaly, the youth of a certain ethnicity). Thus the hostilities are reduced to one of many diverse phenomena.
In the end, it’s not the fact and the fetish that hand-in-hand can convince whomever (one can find something cool to “like” – but only as a spectator who immediately sets it aside, a mechanism stimulated by the media and all aspects of this existence that push people into a passive role); rather, it is the idea. The idea of breaking in the first person with this world that imprisons us in a thousand ways and has nothing to offer us, the idea to personally go on the offensive. If we think that there are too few attacks in this incredibly rotten world, it’s also because the idea of attack is not present enough. We can find quite a few people who are against something, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are very ready to do something. As long as the conflict with this miserable existence isn’t engaged, the faith in the oracle of power will not disappear; the dependence on the mediated/virtual will remain, as will the thoughts that other worlds aren’t possible or imaginable. A vicious cycle?
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Well, since we’re talking about attack here, some things should be clarified beforehand, like what is an attack?
To start, let go of the testosterone, the dress codes, the boastfulness. None of this has to do with attack. A child can be courageous enough to attack, and some children do. To attack you don’t need to be a virile Hercules, trained and belligerent, nor have a loud mouth.
The attack breaks with mediation (that which causes one to let go of one’s own life), with the patronage system (the bootlicking of people in power in order to obtain better survival conditions; for example, to obtain public housing or a residency visa), and with waiting. To attack is to stop letting things depend on people with power, and to act with one’s self. It is to break the ongoing chain of the management of your own shit. To put it into words, we’re talking about self-organization (down with official organizations, with politicians, with unions, and other leaders) and taking direct action here and now.
The attack is the refusal of dialogue with the enemy, the refusal of democracy. The attack is irreconcilable. We can’t measure the attack by the number of burned targets. These are without a doubt attacks, but the attack is also more than this. The attack does not come without the strength of will to break with what power offers us. In the same way that it begins with taking a decision and the courage to put it into practice.
When we talk about attack, we give courage to the idea of “to be done with it.” And it’s not just in the desire of wanting to “be done with” a miserable life and those who make this miserable life possible that gives us life, but above all it is detonation of no longer passively submitting and swallowing the shit they push down our throats, that mutilates, kills, and eats from within generations of humans. The attack is thus not only what is destroyed, but is also a horizon of inspiration: the end of oppression; freedom. By not only what is destroyed, but also equally the realization of a mental rupture – the end of resignation, the end of negotiations, the end of bootlicking.
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To go on the offensive, you need not only the decision or the will, but also the means. That’s another problem. In the past, a portion of anarchist propaganda concerned itself with this. Sabotage manuals were distributed on worksites, for example against war efforts and mobilization. This requires direct contact with rebels, insurgents, or revolutionaries, in the same way it demands the courage to defend one’s own ideas and not to water them down in the hopes that they will be more navigable. In this case, we once again hurl ourselves against the walls of the open-air prison. For as long as someone has not decided to destroy their cage and begin to struggle against power, it remains a challenge to talk about the subject and to make it understood.
It’s a lengthy task, because obviously someone who feels a deep hatred for the singular party of oppression doesn’t automatically become a potential accomplice. In the same way that someone has perfect anarchist theories, but doesn’t know how to throw a rock. Or how defending a certain means of survival doesn’t necessarily mean the development of a completely other ethics on which we could build a new world.
The work of defending our ideas is long and not always easy or pleasant, because many of our convictions shock and repel many people, or are welcomed with a smile without it meaning that the mechanisms of delegation are broken and that the person will go on to attack. On the other hand, if we do not defend our ideas ourselves, no one else will, that much is certain.
Evidently, when you place your hopes on the revolt of the oppressed, you risk disappointment. Cause the oppressed don’t rebel because anarchists tell them they should, even when they perceive themselves as oppressed and share the idea that those responsible for the oppression deserve to be attacked. There are numerous factors in the game: depression, fear, calculation, communitarianism, worry and daily survival, mechanisms of delegation, not being able to take one’s life into hand, the desire for concrete solutions to concrete problems. We could go on and on, but no thanks, rather not. Especially since we are not addressing “the masses,” but rather those who still feel revolt coursing through their veins, those who cannot stand to passively watch so much misery, or to those who don’t content themselves with giving out bandaids for injuries or living a tranquil life, whether in the middle of or in the margins of this crazy existence.
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If we talk about attack, it’s not because we want to prove something to whoever. Someone who rebels does not need proof to give others to take action. And it isn’t by giving it to others that they will follow the example. This reproduces roles familiar to the system, spectators and actors; this reinforces the mechanisms of delegation – “Good job, bravo!” – and this itself changes nothing about the feeling of powerlessness that an individual can feel. The proposition of diffuse attacks requires the exact opposite, the end of delegation and of command, self-confidence; the destruction of all moralism.
But where to begin?
We can try by forcing, through struggle, spaces to exist that did not before. Spaces where we encounter each other on another level, where recognition is not based on esteem or popularity, but on a shared revolt. These spaces open up and shrink down depending on the intensity of the struggle and other conditions we cannot influence. Within these spaces we’ve opened up, it becomes easier to be understood. A perspective on struggle that proposes to everyone to stop waiting, to stop being a spectator to the misery we live in, a perspective on struggle based on self-organization and attack can thus take on life.
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If we defend attacking in this space, opened up by struggle, we can be more precise, more concrete, identifying the enemy. Who is our enemy and where we can hit them? Identifying the enemy is like giving out keys to anyone who wants to attack, but doesn’t know where to start.
Let’s take, for example, the construction of a new prison, very original. She who wants to struggle against this construction must know against whom she is fighting, researching whose idea it was, who wants to realize it and the means they plan on using to do so (from the media that promotes the new project, to the access roads to bring trucks to the construction site and carry primary materials, to parts of cells, technological infrastructure…). She who wants the fight to open up into a true struggle must spread this information as widely as possible. To stimulate the diffusion of attacks, it is important that the names of the architecture firms, the responsible politicians, the enterprises … are available to everyone, for everyone has their own reasons to sabotage the project.
But, please, without the campaign logic….Because it’s not about bringing a mean enterprise to better intentions, of forcing it to change its bad habits via punitive measures, nor of pressuring an institution to change its mind. Certainly, sometimes it is necessary in a concrete case for comrades to act this way (for example, to stop the execution of comrades or to make the state back off a specific point because the consequences would be too much). But when we’re talking about, for example, companies that build prisons, TGV lines (Translator’s note: TGV stands for Train a Grande Vitesse, a high speed train), airports, let’s refuse all forms of communication (even the radical ones) with the enemy; let’s refuse all forms of reformism. Better still: we don’t want to spread the logic of reformism, we want to destroy it. The goal is, then, not to convince (by way of damage, material or monetary); the goal is to sabotage and attack the entirety of the project on all terrains. Attack – not to convince, but because we are convinced we don’t want this project. Attacking, not to punish, but to make life harder for the enemy. From the construction companies to the security coordinators and engineers; from the civilian participants to the banks who finance the project.
And yes, we want to really and effectively stop the construction of this prison, but that’s not the only thing that counts. Again, it’s about creating spaces of struggle where everything that came before can be experimented with and understood. It is not always easy to explain in a world where everything is pointed toward obtaining concrete results; where all action, before being taken, is evaluated for its significance, its feasibility, its effectiveness.
Finally, add that the fact that building a prison, for example, is not just physical walls, but also an arsenal of state propaganda calling for more Justice and the raving security that casts its shadow on everyone’s freedom (or the possibility of freedom). A company that will no longer take part in the construction doesn’t change the state’s vast repressive project. That’s why it’s important to not talk only about a single target, a single place, but also to critique with words and actions the context in which the project is built. Why it is built, what is linked to the project. If we don’t do it, no one will become smarter.
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It isn’t in the name of a dreamy anarchist movement with the muscle capable of bringing the enemy to its knees that information is distributed. It is an invitation to self-organize and to attack, an attempt to stimulate a reciprocal exchange of knowledge, understanding the world in which we live, knowing where to hit the enemy.
So that finally the feeling of facing an invincible reptile can disappear, this feeling of powerlessness when facing a machine that crushes everything. The machine can be sabotaged. It is made up of numerous pieces and gears that are not invulnerable.
“But what can we do?”
“Talk with people you trust. Attack, damage the machine, put it out of order. Break resignation, hit the arrogance of power in the face. Cause the jail builders nightmares. Everywhere. On the worksites, in the neighborhoods, in the places they want to build the monster. To all the places where a piece of the monster comes from: from ministries to workshops, from university study groups to community boards, from foremen to prison administrators. Take small steps, take big steps, but take steps. Because if we don’t take steps we are always pushed further back.”
* Original published in Salto 4. Translation published in Movement for No Society *