Contribution from La Rebelión de las Palabras for the meeting taking place in Santiago, Chile on 23rd December in combative memory of nihilist-anarchist comrade Sebastian Oversluij, “Angry”. The meeting was also within the context of Black December and internationalist anarchist praxis. 5th year since Sebastian’s death during a bank expropriation.
From the Spanish State, we greet first of all the compas that raised the commemorative activity for Angry, to a new anniversary of his death in action when he was trying to expropriate one of the temples of Capital. The noise of the blast that killed him awoke new feelings of rabid sadness that roamed the globe, unleashing actions of revenge, activities in his memory, and that inspired more individuals and groups that from the offensive or not, returned to take a breath to continue on this difficult path. We did not know Angry, nor did we know the political and social context of the Chilean territory where he developed, lived and fought. However, the courage, the determination and the coherent commitment that he showed with his last action reverberate in us, and we also feel affinity with his words, his music with the rap band Palabras En Conflicto, which we know and like, and with his drawings and gestures, contributions that mark his offensive trajectory, feeling honored to be able to participate in this activity contributing the present writing.
We have been asked to write something about the context of anarchism in the territories dominated by the Spanish State. However, to be honest, we do not feel legitimacy for such a task, since we do not know in depth the concrete context of many places of the state, and others we know them in a partial, ephemeral way or in any case, from an approach that starts from our assessment, our subjectivity and our own processes, affinities, preferences, with what we have decided to make a general assessment that, we repeat, part of our own personal valuations, without having to be taken as an absolute reason or that we intend to speak for others companions who, perhaps, have another point of view and something to say about it.
For us, the anarchist movement in the Spanish state is difficult to value as an “everything”, since we are talking about a geographical territory where different realities coexist, marked by a political and social diversity that, while in general aspects, shares basic problems (the same that are shared in common with many other countries in this world of the globalization of misery), also maintains at the same time a series of particularities that distinguish each context. So, we can not value in the same way an anti-authoritarian space in Madrid, to that in Galiza, to that in Catalonia or Euskal Herria, since neither the situation is the same, nor do they have the same scenarios of conflict or the same tensions, nor has repression acted in the same way in recent decades. However, we can speak of a context, in general, that although it has managed to stand firm in recent years, counterattacking with solidarity, support networks and offensive practices to the repressive operations that we all know (Column, Pandora, Piñata, Ice, repression of comrades in strikes and demonstrations, repression of cultural activists such as the theater company Títeres Desde Abajo, repression of activism in social networks, the recent repression of anarchists for their participation in the protests against the G20 in Hamburg in the summer of 2017…), has been very touched and has greatly diminished in potential capacity. The intensity of the conflict (on our part) also experienced a downturn compared to previous moments, which does not mean that we anarchists have not been able to respond with force to various aggressions such as evictions, fascist attacks, arrests etc. these have strengthened, far from weakening, the ties and determination of many comrades. It is important to point out that the repression in the Spanish State is very hard, with courts directly inheriting the Franco regime that punishes even the simplest and “mildest” actions with the real possibility of entering several years in prison without trial for any reason (now sometimes without needing even a “reason”, beyond that of having consciously declared ourselves as enemies of the State), and that also increasingly narrows its siege, updating its laws and improving its strategies thanks to international cooperation between cops that the “European community” allows.
It is also important to point out the slow but significant growth experienced by Neo-Nazi, fascist and far-right groups in recent years, with new fascist parties becoming more and more involved in institutional politics and with a new charitable face for the same Nazi brawlers, has unfortunately allowed them to win the sympathy of a part of the population that, desperate from scarcity, yields to any alms that these bastards can give them, even if it carries with it a racist discourse of “always help the needy who are Spanish and white”. The Neo-Nazi aggression has also increased in these years as a result of this (in some cases being about to kill comrades) and the laws are advancing more and more to an unabashedly philofascist scenario. A context, in any case, comparable to that of other European regions, and a consequence of the social and economic situation that we suffer.
Luckily, one thing is clear and that in the face of adversity, combative initiatives maintain their pulse and continue raising the possibility of taking the conflict to other points that continue to emerge, and that is why it is worth to keep going on. Squatting buildings to live or conspire in, social centers rise from the rubble of each eviction, fire and hammers destroy the real estate agencies and banks in the struggle against gentrification, the repressive blows are answered with new attacks and initiatives that transform the fear into impulses, publishing projects are born to train criticism and there is also a good connection with some social struggles (struggles for housing, against gentrification, struggles of solidarity with migrants…) and with the struggle of many prisoners, who, although they might not enter prison for “political reasons” (we believe that all prisoners are political prisoners, because the reasons for the occurrence of crimes are also, although that does not mean that all of them deserve our solidarity) are fighting very worthy struggles against the abuses and mistreatment they suffer, with collective hunger strikes and other forms of protest. In addition, there are increasingly new spaces for debate that introduce interesting perspectives on the need to connect different partial struggles (feminisms, antispecism, earth liberation and ecodefense, anti-psychiatry and anti-ableism, decolonial approaches …) within a multiform project that covers them all from a blunt and clear approach: Destroy domination, whatever the form it adopts. Although some ways to carry out this purpose may not be the right ones, the road, from our point of view, is the right one, fighting to remove those resistances from the institutional or leftist recovery to which many “double agents” try to drag them, and allowing them to include new debates and perspectives that invite ourselves to deconstruct our own privileges and to sharpen more weapons and tools for the revolt, opening new fronts against reactionary elements not from a messianic position nor from the function of “pious missionaries” that “help the weak”, but with the conviction that the only way to destroy a society based on domination is to make sure that we ourselves do not become oppressors, and that until we are all free, no one will really be.
With this clear purpose, we keep walking, each one in our own initiatives, with our own subjectivities and affinities, understanding that conflicts between us and learning from our own mistakes are also part of the journey. Let’s say it for the third time, this is our own way of seeing things, on a general scale and without stopping too much to analyze the particularities of each scenario in a more concrete way. Of course, other comrades could contradict us, and in fact, we think it would be great if it were to feed the debate.
From somewhere in the Spanish state to Chile, we send greetings and a big hug for all the comrades present in the activity. We do not want to end without sending greetings (which we hope they can receive) to the comrade Tamara Sol, who avenged Angry, to Joaquín García, to the subversive prisoners of the Security Case even in prison Marcelo Villarroel and Juan Aliste, to comrade Juan Flores, and all the comrades who continue in the Chilean dungeons.
Angry, Mauri, Jhonny Cariqueo, Matías Catrileo, Claudia López, Camilo Catrillanca, and those whose names and stories we do not know but who also fell fighting for a world without masters or slaves, are also present with us.
La Rebelión de las Palabras
Virtual Project of Anarchist Counter Information
via 325.nostate.net
