I will not insult any of you (es. Johnny, who has the lowest tolerance threshold haha) by writing something on the go but will try to think of something meaningful to add on the morrow, after I am sober.

People like you really give me hope for a future better from the current reality of production -> consumption -> wastage -> death.

I am off to a date with a Capitalist lady; hope to score some base carnal marks there!

Adios to all and never stop dreaming

I noticed that the insurrectional movement has a large support within the population in Greece, as in many other countries, but the lack of a serious organization to not just defend themselves against the State repression but to carry out strong attack against it is keeping them away from “drafting” into a larger social war; so it leads us to have a movement of marginal insurrectional groups who will never go any further than doing that “guerilla spectacle” and thus fueling further repression and Big Brother-like tactics from the State. If there is a problem of vanguard elitism, it is not to emerge from an armed struggle movement. Actually, you can see it these days, with the organizing of the most coherent direct actions being carried out by closed affinity groups and the rest of protesters not being able to organize more than general actions, consisting mainly of more-or-less peaceful demos where the cops are never really taken care of.

We have to understand such a military organization as something that will most probably not attack the State through conventional means, as most of the war made by the capitalists upon the masses is of a “passive” and permanent nature, putting in place and maintaining a large-scale propaganda machine and multiple devices of policing and social control (that are not yet so overwhelming here in Greece as they are in most place of the Western world), as a huge weaponry of psychological warfare over the population. Obviously this machinery they brought forward can and must be brought down systematically, and this is one of the reasons why of such an armed force is necessary.

And the other main reasons would be:

- You cannot wage war against a dominant armed force (the capitalist State in this case) without an army, or any form of highly coordinated military organization, such a brigade, or popular guard. The insurrection of December have met their political reality, that they didn’t have the coherent organization needed to reach its goals. Moreover, the goal of this insurrection was somewhat unclear, aside from asserting their collective might into bringing retribution for the crimes of the capitalists, and the conditions of victory were apparently absent from the minds of most insurgents. A military organization, being in a logic of war which aims at a total victory over the enemy, has to have clear goals for achieving such victory, at least in a given chain of events, that is related to a more global strategy such as bringing down an entire system or making it largely dysfunctional. If it’s to bring down the capitalist system once and for all -something that surely can’t be done within just a few weeks, months and even years, unless some huge global catastrophe helps in the process- concrete efforts have to be made to ensure the material conditions of victory, such as to provide ways for the insurgents, the fighters as we could call them, to sustain themselves (which was surprisingly absent during the riots, aside from squatting buildings), and to defend themselves against foreign forces such as the police and reactionary groups.

- Before having weapons, even primitive things such as sticks, people need to know how to use them, and how to coordinate on the spot into making a battle successful. Only through training this can be achieve. Only through training people can learn how to fight or scare cops, make formations and develop ways to communicate effectively through codes. This iis who they can have the DISCIPLINE required to become a real threat to any occupational force such as the police. And sorry to be harsh, but a bunch of drunk Alpha Kappa machos is not sufficient to take down the police forces in a demo, just as in an entire city. They’ll give them the chills for some time, even hurt a few, but eventually the cops will only grow bigger and more equipped in the face of people who don’t organize seriously.

- In a war logic, you try to avoid attacking enemies where they are at their strongest, so participation to demos should be left to the leftists and students who seem to like being gassed and run away to safe places. Before they attack demos, the cops are usually at their weakest, unsuspecting and unsuspicious of any threat which could come from the passers-by. They do not fear anything coming from the ordinary so this is from the perspective of the ordinary that they can be taken down, but it is only through a network of groups and individuals who are all following the same set of martial codes, practices and goals that such attacks can come from ordinary life, and that ordinary people, at the same time, can rely upon such network to defend themselves against government repression.

- The whole concept of “resistance” is baseless, and gets eventually meaningless, without bringing forward ways to go on the offensive. Resistance cannot sustain itself by being solely, or even mostly, defensive, since it will always bring us down on the dangerous path of self-victimization. It has to be an offensive, a savage shift of roles between the oppressed and the oppressor. The Greek people, as do the people in most countries in the world, have a capacity to become the aggressors and to stop waiting to get attacked by cops in demos to thrown things at them. Many groups already carry out aggressive actions against key points of the State, but most of these actions are elitist in nature and thus not let the tens of thousands of angry people out there to take part in any offensive by themselves… Provide them with food and protection, and you can bring up any form of social order (or disorder), so Machiavelli said. These things are the within the main logistic concerns of any military organization or network. If the troops have no shelter, food and ways to protect themselves, they are eventually doomed, no matter how revolutionary they are, and this is why so many people will stick to the dominant system in times of crisis… Not because they are too brainwashed or lazy; because they’ve got no better options!

- A popular army of sort has the potential to overwhelm any form of State armed force, at least by the numbers, if not with added technological support such as home-made or more conventional weaponry and shielding. As I explained above, armed struggle is not just about getting guns and shooting bastards, although it might get to this point in some advanced state of the insurgency. The ruling capitalist elite has become dependent upon a huge infrastructure of economic flux, social control and propaganda that can be somewhat easily attacked extensively without fearing direct repercussions from above. If such an insurgent force does not have the guns and tanks to smash the State out in the open -which would be completely demented on a strategic perspective at such a precarious state in the struggle- they can carry out a multitude of tactics against the machine that keeps running.

Aside from just disconnecting from the capitalist system, that logically implies leaving these crappy big cities it has created and try to built a libertarian-communistic way of life in the countryside, and hopefully redefine their relation with Nature, I don’t see how it is possible to bring a social revolution without the use of an insurrectional force attacking the oppressors and their system from below. Enlighten me, please, since I don’t see any other concrete solution to the problem. A “permanent revolution”, consisting of such a defensive and exclusive insurrectional movement such as the anarchist networks are in Western countries does not seem to be an answer, since it has already shown its failure to protect the people against the takeover of their lives by a police State and corporate propaganda. A coordinated and extensive offensive is perhaps all what we need to get stronger, gain more concrete support and eventually throw down capitalism down the drain with all its parasites, but the so-called radicals have to wake up and stop playing the role of the victim in this big game. Let’s become their oppressor, damn it, so that they will fear us so much that they will be weakened!

To gain the support of elements within the current dominant military machine is, indeed, a must, but remember that, unlike the civil army that we call the “Police”, soldiers and even officers are actually just ordinary people, who mostly come from the same proletariat that the rioters come from, and are not trained an brainwashed to intervene into domestic scenarios and wage war upon the people like the cops do. Especially in a country like Greece, a large part of the army’s work force could actually turn quite easily in favor of an insurgency movement (which would be the end of the police) if that would happen and there are no short-term measures that the government can take to prevent against that.

The only way out of this mess is through confrontation with authorities. You have my word for it… there are countries where activists have so much run away or either resorted to peaceful, civilized action that now it has become an orwellian nightmare. I lived in some of these places and could say that many Greek radicals would have preferred to commit suicide rather than to live in such oppressive forms of social peace. And this could be where Greece is going if things just keep going down so peacefully. Mark my words.

P.S. “Inclusive democracy”??? LOL! You guys are just gonna get screwed by yet another reformist ploy for alienated imbeciles. You wanna change things? Organize, damnit!

I noticed that the insurrectional movement has a large support within the population in Greece, as in many other countries, but the lack of a serious organization to not just defend themselves against the State repression but to carry out strong attack against it is keeping them away from “drafting” into a larger social war; so it leads us to have a movement of marginal insurrectional groups who will never go any further than doing that “guerilla spectacle” and thus fueling further repression and Big Brother-like tactics from the State. If there is a problem of vanguard elitism, it is not to emerge from an armed struggle movement. Actually, you can see it these days, with the organizing of the most coherent direct actions being carried out by closed affinity groups and the rest of protesters not being able to organize more than general actions, consisting mainly of more-or-less peaceful demos where the cops are never really taken care of.

We have to understand such a military organization as something that will most probably not attack the State through conventional means, as most of the war made by the capitalists upon the masses is of a “passive” and permanent nature, putting in place and maintaining a large-scale propaganda machine and multiple devices of policing and social control (that are not yet so overwhelming here in Greece as they are in most place of the Western world), as a huge weaponry of psychological warfare over the population. Obviously this machinery they brought forward can and must be brought down systematically, and this is one of the reasons why of such an armed force is necessary.

And the other main reasons would be:

- You cannot wage war against a dominant armed force (the capitalist State in this case) without an army, or any form of highly coordinated military organization, such a brigade, or popular guard. The insurrection of December have met their political reality, that they didn’t have the coherent organization needed to reach its goals. Moreover, the goal of this insurrection was somewhat unclear, aside from asserting their collective might into bringing retribution for the crimes of the capitalists, and the conditions of victory were apparently absent from the minds of most insurgents. A military organization, being in a logic of war which aims at a total victory over the enemy, has to have clear goals for achieving such victory, at least in a given chain of events, that is related to a more global strategy such as bringing down an entire system or making it largely dysfunctional. If it’s to bring down the capitalist system once and for all -something that surely can’t be done within just a few weeks, months and even years, unless some huge global catastrophe helps in the process- concrete efforts have to be made to ensure the material conditions of victory, such as to provide ways for the insurgents, the fighters as we could call them, to sustain themselves (which was surprisingly absent during the riots, aside from squatting buildings), and to defend themselves against foreign forces such as the police and reactionary groups.

- Before having weapons, even primitive things such as sticks, people need to know how to use them, and how to coordinate on the spot into making a battle successful. Only through training this can be achieve. Only through training people can learn how to fight or scare cops, make formations and develop ways to communicate effectively through codes. This iis who they can have the DISCIPLINE required to become a real threat to any occupational force such as the police. And sorry to be harsh, but a bunch of drunk Alpha Kappa machos is not sufficient to take down the police forces in a demo, just as in an entire city. They’ll give them the chills for some time, even hurt a few, but eventually the cops will only grow bigger and more equipped in the face of people who don’t organize seriously.

- In a war logic, you try to avoid attacking enemies where they are at their strongest, so participation to demos should be left to the leftists and students who seem to like being gassed and run away to safe places. Before they attack demos, the cops are usually at their weakest, unsuspecting and unsuspicious of any threat which could come from the passers-by. They do not fear anything coming from the ordinary so this is from the perspective of the ordinary that they can be taken down, but it is only through a network of groups and individuals who are all following the same set of martial codes, practices and goals that such attacks can come from ordinary life, and that ordinary people, at the same time, can rely upon such network to defend themselves against government repression.

- The whole concept of “resistance” is baseless, and gets eventually meaningless, without bringing forward ways to go on the offensive. Resistance cannot sustain itself by being solely, or even mostly, defensive, since it will always bring us down on the dangerous path of self-victimization. It has to be an offensive, a savage shift of roles between the oppressed and the oppressor. The Greek people, as do the people in most countries in the world, have a capacity to become the aggressors and to stop waiting to get attacked by cops in demos to thrown things at them. Many groups already carry out aggressive actions against key points of the State, but most of these actions are elitist in nature and thus not let the tens of thousands of angry people out there to take part in any offensive by themselves… Provide them with food and protection, and you can bring up any form of social order (or disorder), so Machiavelli said. These things are the within the main logistic concerns of any military organization or network. If the troops have no shelter, food and ways to protect themselves, they are eventually doomed, no matter how revolutionary they are, and this is why so many people will stick to the dominant system in times of crisis… Not because they are too brainwashed or lazy; because they’ve got no better options!

- A popular army of sort has the potential to overwhelm any form of State armed force, at least by the numbers, if not with added technological support such as home-made or more conventional weaponry and shielding. As I explained above, armed struggle is not just about getting guns and shooting bastards, although it might get to this point in some advanced state of the insurgency. The ruling capitalist elite has become dependent upon a huge infrastructure of economic flux, social control and propaganda that can be somewhat easily attacked extensively without fearing direct repercussions from above. If such an insurgent force does not have the guns and tanks to smash the State out in the open -which would be completely demented on a strategic perspective at such a precarious state in the struggle-

Aside from just disconnecting from the capitalist system, that logically implies leaving these crappy big cities it has created and try to built a libertarian-communistic way of life in the countryside, and hopefully redefine their relation with Nature, I don’t see how it is possible to bring a social revolution without the use of an insurrectional force attacking the oppressors and their system from below. Enlighten me, please, since I don’t see any other concrete solution to the problem. A “permanent revolution”, consisting of such a defensive and exclusive insurrectional movement such as the anarchist networks are in Western countries does not seem to be an answer, since it has already shown its failure to protect the people against the takeover of their lives by a police State and corporate propaganda. A coordinated and extensive offensive is perhaps all what we need to get stronger, gain more concrete support and eventually throw down capitalism down the drain with all its parasites, but the so-called radicals have to wake up and stop playing the role of the victim in this big game. Let’s become their oppressor, damn it, so that they will fear us so much that they will be weakened!

To gain the support of elements within the current dominant military machine is, indeed, a must, but remember that, unlike the civil army that we call the “Police”, soldiers and even officers are actually just ordinary people, who mostly come from the same proletariat that the rioters come from, and are not trained an brainwashed to intervene into domestic scenarios and wage war upon the people like the cops do. Especially in a country like Greece, a large part of the army’s work force could actually turn quite easily in favor of an insurgency movement (which would be the end of the police) if that would happen and there are no short-term measures that the government can take to prevent against that.

The only way out of this mess is through confrontation with authorities. You have my word for it… there are countries where activists have so much run away or either resorted to peaceful, civilized action that now it has become an orwellian nightmare. I lived in some of these places and could say that many Greek radicals would have preferred to commit suicide rather than to live in such oppressive forms of social peace. And this could be where Greece is going if things just keep going down so peacefully. Mark my words.

- How can Anarchist A balance his/her ‘anarchic’ beliefs with living with parents, being supported by them, having a job, paid by an employer, etc.

Anarchists living with their parents, well, I don’t think you’ll find a lot of ‘anarchists living with their parents’, as in people who have chosen the life under parental watch as their lifestyle. It is true that many youngster anarchists still live with their parents, but I don’t see why that would be a problem, it is what youngster do. Or do you suggest that as soon as someone becomes an anarchist (which could be around, say 12), he should leave home and parents behind?
On anarchism and jobs:
Certain jobs are ofcourse to be avoided. Anarchist cops, no way. You’ll never find real anarchists in the higher regions of a company neither I think. In general, I find that working man jobs, public service jobs (ofcourse not at the point where you’re working for the ministry of defence or something like that) and normal servant jobs in companies are acceptable. If possible, big multinationals like MacDonald’s, Microsoft and carcompanies are to be avoided, but for workingmen, the choice is rarely there. We have to make a living aswell, no?
What jobs are more than just acceptable, and even ‘good’ for an anarchist? Educating people is important, so journalism and teaching (as long as you put in your own ideas and don’t simply follow the government-layed-out schemes). Some anarchists live in communes. In Tarnac, they had a farm for most of their food, they opened up a grocery store, etcetera. Such small self-owned enterprises are cool too, I think. Fixing bikes, baking bread, selling 2ndhand CD’s,… as long as the purpose is to make a living and not to make tremendous ammounts of money out of it.
Many anarchists also combine a lot of little jobs. Some are unemployed. ‘Living of the system’ is the insult often thrown at them. But go think about it, in Greece, unemployment rates are incredible. Add to that the fact that anarchists often come into conflict with their employer’s because of working conditions, authority, etcetera. Add to that a criminal record because of particpation in direct action for some. Anarchists are highly likely to become unemployed one day. This doesn’t make them lazy farts, living of the system though. Most of them do search for jobs, so it’s not them that choose for unemployment, but the system that forced them into it, because they could not adapt.
Also, unemployment anarchists are far from lazy. Many are active in Food Distribution campaigns like Food Not Bombs, their squats are open to illegals and homeless, they spread their ideas, keep information evenings, engage in various struggles, ….

- How can Pieter (for example, not personal) balance his ‘anarchic’ beliefs with attending university – surely a major instrument of authority and oppression, right? Further, who pays for tuition? If it’s parents – authority, you sold out. If it’s a government grant or loan, even worse.

How do I balance my anarchist beliefs with attending university? Well, first of all, I think everybody has the right at education. Secondly, I do think university is less authoritarian then normal school. Atleast in my class, which is history. I have little real lessons, we are taught how to think critically, we have to make a lot of tasks on chosen subjects (which would be the Spanish Revolution) for me, I have a mass of books in the library on anarchism (though I believe these books should be available everywhere and not just there), …
I do not think the current education system is perfect. But it has it’s merits. An anarchist movement needs street-wise working men aswell as students. It needs the power of the youth combined with the experience of elderly. Nobody wants to go back to the point where education was only for the rich, and for none else.

- How can Anarchist A balance his ‘anarchic’ beliefs with doing national service in the army (in Greece it is compulsory) – surely the armed forces are yet another instrument of authority and oppression?

Who pays for it? My parents do, because the State forces them too. Education should be free for everyone. I am happy my parents offer me the chance. I try to waste as little as possible of the money they give me. In the long run, I intend to take on a job and squat some place in order to reduce the costs, but at this point, I can only be grateful for the support of my parents. But I will never tell them: “fuck off, I don’t wanna live of your money”. What’s the anarchism in refusing education whilst so many never get the chance? All the knowledge I get at school, I pass on to those who didn’t have the chance (contrary to capitalist students who keep their knowledge for themselves because they think it gives them an advantage). The only thing I had a catfight over with my parents was the class I would take. They wanted a class like economy that would ensure me a job. I wanted a class I would enjoy and one that would give me a lot of freedom.

-I am not joking, you should see how many ‘anarchists’ I met when I was in the navy. Oh yeah, they got into fights and preached all day long to anyone about authority this and authority that, but in the end kissed ass like the rest of us to get some holiday to go back to Mommy and Daddy.

In this sense I genuinely respect Jehova’s Witnesses, who in Greece will choose imprisonment rather than do national service and carry arms. That’s balls there, Camping Gaz folks.

If there’s no forced military service, any anarchist you find in such an army, at whatever echelon, is not an anarchist, but someone who thinks the words sounds very cool and tough.
If there is forced service, the natural anarchist approach is to avoid it. Which is what many is Israël do. When we had it still in Belgium, one could avoid it by working with an NGO like Medics without borders, which many did. But in many cases, it involves a lot of guts and a law-trespassing with serious consequences. Not any anarchist has tons of guts, and not anyone with guts is an anarchist. If the military service is force, I could agree with the choice. Though I’d still think it is wrong.

“Anyway, do what you do and break what you break…just do not claim some higher moral ideology because there is none. This crap sticks with impressionable 18 year olds but under the slightest scrutiny it collapses like the paper tower it is.”

I’m 18 (and I’ve been into anarchism for a couple of years). And there doesn’t pass a day in which I question my choice. So far, I have not seen any reason to alter it.
You may also find it interesting that atleast half of the anarchists I know are middle-aged folks of 30-40 years old. I bet the number would be higher if it weren’t for the fact that I’m in uni, and in uni, you necessairly meet youngsters, ofcourse
Not trying to claim here that most anarchists are older than 25 or something like that. But I think the most militant in Belgium are. I know something similar is happening in England, and the evolution is present in the US aswell. In Israel, for as far as I know, they are all mature groups. In Greece, for as far as I can observe, the movement is indeed quite young. But I doubt many of these youngsters will part with anarchism under the current economic and political circomstances, that only affirm their ideas.