via e-mail tormentasdefogo@riseup.net
17/11/2017
“Operation Érebo” the earth moves.
Agitations and anarchic reflections the wind blows.”
At dawn on October 25, 2017 the weather darkened for the anarchists of Porto Alegre. The Civil Police with the so called “Operation Érebo [Erebus]” launched raids and assaults televised by the local media and transmitted by the speakers of the system in maximum volume.
From this police reaction, from the show and media scrape, and from the agitation in the anarchist orbit a thousand and one needs, urgencies, ideas, impulses and feelings have crossed us. From this reflection was born this will to communicate. We point our determination against the enemy and we strengthen our pace with those who live anarchy in its positions and practices.
Our natural tendency to chaos.
We are, we exist and we act beyond the state, the laws and democracy. We seek and spread autonomy, but we know that we can’t achieve it through negotiation with power1.
Heirs of the struggles for freedom and land, of the warriors who still teach us that we can exist in many ways beyond the society imposed against us. We feel an inconformity that persists and insists.
Looking from this side of the river, democracy is just another form (the current) in which civilization dominates, kills and tries to erase forms of existence that leaked from the military order and blind obedience. Even more, this democracy that presents itself as the one value of fashion. And many fall blindly, or dazzle their eyes with democracy’s brightness. But those who love to be free know that this is only a way of governing and life is ungovernable, like the rivers that change its paths, like the animals that attack its tamers, like the people who do not “sell” themselves to the slave labor of the western society. Thus democracy is an ideal incompatible with those who do not let themselves be governed.
Its axioms, the rights, are tools of colonization and a form of humanism that still distinguishes humans from first, second, third, and more categories. Can anyone argue that?
Their punishments, the laws, are chains that some love, but that punish and mark those who starve and therefore steal what they need instead of begging for it.
Negotiation with this world is impossible, our relationship with it can only be antagonism2.
They try to dominate and we can not stop fighting this, without respite. In this instinctive tendency to freedom without rules and order, we recognize ourselves in the chaos of anarchy.
The search for anarchy is itself a challenge to power. All the prospects of anarchy are aimed at dismantling the institutions of power. We may have among us some misunderstandings about how to do it, but every anarchist wants states, corporations, their institutions and values in ruins. We believe we are not mistaken on that. In this way the desire for anarchy in democracy is in itself criminal.
Not being in the penal code, anarchism and affinity with it are not really crimes. Which gives us a margin of action and leaves more freedom to identify with it. But the rope of this freedom is not very long.
The key that undid the mystery. Exotic plants and anarchic agitation.
The idea that alien beings bring “evil” in is an old mechanism of control and repression. From Europe, several anarchist comrades, expelled or fugitives, arrived in this continent. Here they have been detected and cataloged as exotic plants [translation note: literally, this was how the government called anarchists in their “first appearance” in the brazilian territory by the year of 1890], trigger of dangerous ideas and actions.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the masters of power already expelled anarchists considered to be harmful to “social peace”. That is, indomitable beings, beasts who did not submit to the laws and order that guarantee exploitation. We remind Giuseppe Gallini that along with other agitators comrades in the city of São Paulo were arrested and expelled. We also remember José Saul, who was expelled from the city of Pelotas for being an anarchist agitator. Other anarchic comrades had the same fate.
In 1907, in response to growing social agitation (revolts, strikes, autonomous workers’ organizations) and the growing anarchist presence, the Brazilian government tightens its policies of expulsion against the undesirable. Then “Adolpho Gordo law” [translation note: A. Gordo was the name of the senator who came up with this law, which mainly aims to expell any “foreigner who, for any reason, compromises national security or public tranquility, from part or all of the national territory”] this law was made, stitching a new legal fantasy for the repressive dances.
When rulers, judges and police say from 1800 to now that anarchists are “exotic plants”, they harbor feelings of xenophobia, and they also construct the image of a supposed native “passivity.”
The policies of expulsion and rejection against those who bring the “chaos theory”3 was and continues to be a mechanism for dispersing combative meetings. According to these, the anarchic agitation would be exotic and could be torn away by throwing it out of the Garden.
One thing is for sure, the anarchists arrived by boat and continue to come across several trails; however, the anarchic impulse and the fight against domination4 have been in these lands since immemorial times. The desire for freedom has no epoch, homeland or frontiers, and, anarchic as we are, we do not recognize the division of the world into countries, into states. The weakness we would have in thinking the world divided into artificial lines make us sick, without the ability to recognize the land with its own changing borders, mountains, rivers, forests, cribs.
So, therefore, we do not recognize that our comrades belong to one or another country, we are anarchists and comrades because of the affinity we have in opposition to control and domination. We have no homelands or flags and we are far from being guided by nationalist feelings that only flirt with fascism. The world is ours because we are with it, and by the land we inhabit we feel disgusted with progress.
Moreover, the actions taken in the “ Cronologias da Confrontação Anárquica [Chronologies of Anarchic Confrontation]”5 are far from being alien or disoriented within the current context of the territory controlled by the Brazilian State, as we can see.
Political parties PSDB [Social Democrats], PSB [Socialist Party], PSD [Social Democrats], DEM [Democrats] received anarchic visits6. Agribusiness, devastating to the land and people, was attacked with the fire against Bradesco Bank, the destruction of eucalyptus seedlings, as well as incendiary barricades and road blockades in territory struggling against civilization.
Also the militarization of life was clearly rejected with the attack by the “Galera do Pixo do Triangulo CAV do Terror” graffiti group to the monument of the war praise in the arches of the Redemption with the partial destruction by the “Group of Hostilities Against Domination” of the monument of the Battalion of Suez/ONU grandfathers of those who militarize Haiti today, and the attack of the “Anti-authoritarian Wild Vandals” that contributed to the withdrawal of the war tank exposed as a monument on Ipiranga Avenue.
Several of these actions were, we think, incomprehensible to the logic of competition for power. They were actions that neither ask for something nor demanded. They only attacked domination. Until the key appeared that undid the mystery (according to the “Fantastic TV show” news), the “Chronologies of Anarchic Confrontation” and the publication “Welcome to Hell”.
The books that are in the sights of cops, besides spreading an idea, speak of real actions. It collect and present various adventures and dares of some indomitable. Several bands that beat against what they felt it oppressed them. Books that a lover of control and submission would never like to see diffused. That is why these books are abominable to the authorities, but also because of this, they are books of high consistency insubmission.
Walking through the anarchic path, several examples of this kind of literary persecution within democracies have taught us that writing about confrontation is considered as an affront to power. The publication “Armed Joy” written by Alfredo Maria Bonanno provoked his arrest in Italy and years later his edition and printing was one of the “evidence” of an accusation against the anarchist comrade Spyros Mandylas and Nadir squat in Greece. On the same continent in Spain, the book “Against Democracy” was used as evidence of a supposed participation in an organization cataloged as a terrorist by the Spanish State, which resulted in several raids, arrests and operations against comrades, which allowed us to join forces with them, to come closer to them and to gain more strength in the search for freedom and in the certainty that we are in antagonistic plans of life; those who love freedom and those who are able to lock up, isolate, control the hours to see the sun and forms of contact.
Yesterday as today, the search for anarchy printed in words on paper has its power of diffusion and inspiration. Panic for the authorities on duty who react with assault, raids and kidnappings.
In 1969, in Rio de Janeiro, the military destroyed and assaulted the space of anarchist agitation, the CEPJO (Center for Studies Professor José Oiticica [note: famous anarchist from the XX century in the territory dominated by the brazilian state]), yet robbing a vast library in the residence of the anarchist Ideal Perez. In addition to stealing the original writings of the book “Nationalism and Culture” that was about to be edited by the anarchist Edgar Rodrigues, who to recover it bought it back from the repression agents.
In 1973, in Porto Alegre, the DOPS (Department of Political and Social Order [note: main organism of repression against the opposition to the military dictatorship]) headed by the deputee Pedro Seelig invaded the Gráfica Trevo [Graphic Trevo], a graphic led by anarchists who, in addition to commercial prints, printed the anarchist newspapers that circulated at the time: The Protest, sold in the newsstands of Porto Alegre and the newspaper Dealbar, edited by the anarchist Pedro Catalo, spread in São Paulo. They also printed books edited by their distro called Proa [Prow]. On this occasion, the police assault destroyed almost the whole impression of the book “The future belongs to libertarian socialism” and confiscated copies of future editions. In this storm, houses were destroyed and lives were sadistically beaten.
Damned are our books, newspapers, writings. Damned we, the ones who have the courage and daring to write them, edit them, translate them, print them, spread them.
The state, the police, democracy…
Do not need proof to persecute anarchists.
It is well known that in persecution of anarchists no proof is needed. The books were the only thread they were able to handle to point some people that the bothered from their agitation and propaganda.
Without proof but not without justification, yes, the reaction of power has its justification. And that justification is paradoxically our biggest smile. Knowing that some anarchic gangs have hit power can only value our position since it manifests antagonism. Knowing that some anarchic bands have hit power can only value our position of manifested antagonism. If we call ourselves anarchists it is because we do not admit authority in our lives or on earth, so antagonism to the ruling order is a basic indicator of following the path we say we follow.
“Operation Érebo” “seeks to deal with the perpetrators of the attacks”, that is to say, pursues actions but seems to go after ideas. Sniffing at the Achaic literature and taking samples of the various trends of anarchy. Confusing the written propaganda with the propaganda by deed.
Written propaganda shows something that they seem to want to keep as a secret: that power can be beaten by anarchists.
It is clear for us that if one pursues the anti-authoritarian positions, it is because the banks, cars and churches were not burned for pyromania but for the active and combative rejection of the mercantilization of life and the punishment and control. And when we talk about it, it is not a complaint but a cry of joy. That is where ideas and affinities “weigh”. We are several, all, targets in the repressive sight. Then in the storm, in the eye of the hurricane, or we flirt with systemic passivity in the makeup of laws and rights, or we get louder by shouting LONG LIVE ANARCHY against all forms of power.
Light, camera, action. The media show.
Television has overwhelming force in Bra$il. It is a reference in people’s lives to understand their surroundings, to create priorities, to have a position. It is no exaggeration to say that TV trains people, manipulates lives, openly realizes experiences in people’s behavior from the stimuli emitting their waves, in their news advertisements and soap operas.
When we talk about the TV, we line up together their printed newspapers, faces of the same body, like: Zero Hora-RBS.TV/Globo7. These next to the Correio do Povo and SBT8 protagonized lawfully association with the police during the revenge of power against the anarchists.
If TV is the remote control for citizens to know who are the “new enemies of social peace”… For its enemies, that is, to us anarchists, the show pretends to be the fan that spreads the fear. Dumbly created scenes like the hooded guy reading the Chronology or pet bottle molotovs and the police breaking doors shouting “police!”, they want to send the message of the persecution, they want to provoke the fear in our band and still in an investigation that claims to be “top secret”, they slander and expose the “suspects”.
It is a media lynching and certainly for those who do not seek dialogue with the social order this has a weight. Comments abound in addition to the lynching that ask for photos of the suspects or complain about untying their lives from something that once portrayed as “evil” so then it has to be banished and thrown away to not pollute their impeccable citizen life.
Political analysts and jurists gave the illustrated touch to spread fear with “fundament.” Can anarchists be judged by the anti-terrorist law? This was the debate presented by them on the show. In addition to the useful lessons they gave on the subject in the “Fantastic TV show”, they showed that along with the repressive forces, the sages of society also collaborate with the creation of the new social fear. It is no longer a police note, it is now a social, legal, political, philosophical issue.
The scope of this fable may be greater, fear can silence all kinds of dissent. Thus, the show serves to calm possible protests and nonconformities with the genocidal way of governing democracy.
We know that anarchists and peoples outside of civilization and marginals have an antagonism that remained after the show. But did the other dissidents rush into whitening as obedient citizens? Has fear penetrated to the bones of those who call themselves rebels?
Not among us. This text as well as other manifestations seem to affirm the rejection against the domination and not letting ourselves down by fear.
The show sells and buys. It bought the premise in the police auction of “Operation Érebo”. And it sells. We know that the news have a purpose, they are elaborated and played on the board of domination, for specific purposes. Of course, they will tell us they are impartial, bearers of the just view of facts, of truth.
There is no media of “free expression”. The association between the media, police and justice are deep to punish everyone who does not dance to their music.
November 2017.
Our salutes to those who do not let the wind pass without the breath of solidarity:
To those beings who made a solidarity demonstration on the great island of the Pacific
To the comrades who sent solidarity from across the Andes mountain.
The comrade who sent poetry to the persecuted since Rebelion De las Palabras.
To all who did not keep quiet.
All these actions were felt.
1. We distance ourselves from the idea that power is good or bad depending on who exercises it. We toast with Bakunin “All power corrupts”.
2. We use the word antagonism to express the incompatibility of anarchy with power and domination.
3. Words of the deputee Jardim to the news on the morning of October 25, 2017, trying to define the anarchists investigated.
4. We take as reference the positions against the domination from some of the communiques that claim responsibility for the attacks that detonated “Operation Érebo”. The struggle against domination, according to these actions, is not an antagonism that prioritizes a line (class, race, gender, defense of the earth), but of an antagonism in conflict with all this and more, against the subtle and complex forms of control and domination.
5. The “Chronologies of Anarchic Confrontation” are two of the three books that are in the focus of “Operation Érebo”.
6. According to the “Chronologies of Anarchic Confrontation” actions of attack claimed as those not claimed (known only by the news) present the anarchic principle if they act in antagonism with the institutions of control and domination. The parties, in this case, are the main contenders in the aim to govern, control and rule over population and territory.
7. The company “Zero Hora-RBS.TV/Globo” in the prosecution against the so called “Block of Struggles [group of several autonomous collectives and individualities]” in the uprisings of 2013 disposed of reporter as a witness during the trials.
8. On the morning of 10/25/2017, SBT reporter Thiago Zahreddine presented the aberrant mix of anarchists investigated as neo-Nazis, adding: “They define themselves as vandals of neo-Nazi ideology in order to face everything type of authority “. Given the receptiveness of people to what TV tells them, that aberration goes beyond the stupidity of the reporter.