![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/1.jpg\")
Detentions for anti-war actions by year, first half of 2025, according to OVD-Info.
\nAcross three decades, Russia has been at the forefront of the worldwide descent into authoritarianism. Vladimir Putin’s government has suppressed opposition in ways that aspiring autocrats like Donald Trump are still striving to emulate. Yet despite widespread repression, there is still resistance in Russia, and as Putin’s model proliferates, people everywhere around the world stand to benefit from learning about it. Likewise, we should support Russian anarchist and anti-war prisoners, both because resistance within Russia offers hope for the eventual end of war and totalitarianism and because, should autocrats consolidate power where we live, we will wish for people to support us, as well.
\n\nThe following text is based on a presentation Antti Rautiainen offered at the Baltic Anarchist Book Fair in Tartu on May 30, 2026. You can watch a video of the presentation here or listen to it via Spotify. The above photograph shows the consequences of an action carried out by the anarchist Ruslan Sidiki.
\n\nIn Russia, street protests against the war were crushed in 2022, the first year following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to the human rights organization OVD Info, 18,901 arrests for anti-war protests in year 2022 were followed by 274 arrests in 2023, 41 arrests in 2022, and just 13 arrests in first half of the year 2025. The reason for this sharp decline was the “Ilya Dadin” law of 2014, according to which “repeated offenses in following the established organization of protests” across a period of 180 days can result a prison sentence of up to 5 years. Thousands of people were arrested once or twice for taking part in anti-war street activities in 2022 and received either a fine or a prison sentence of a few days—but few risked being arrested for a third time.
\n\n Detentions for anti-war actions by year, first half of 2025, according to OVD-Info.
\nRussian polls have been unreliable since spring 2022. After the criminalization of anti-war opinions, some polling companies reported that up to 60% of people queried refused to give answers. Before the polls became unreliable, 58-71% of Russians indicated a pro-war sentiment in various polls. However, opinions were intensely polarized between different groups. People in major cities were more anti-war than those in other locations; younger people were more anti-war, as were women. The greatest division was between people who watch television, the chief propaganda tool of the state, and people who do not watch it. Among people less than 30 years old who do not watch television, 80% were anti-war.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/2.jpg\")
\nThe general impression among critical Russians is that the majority of those in Russia still share a pro-war sentiment. However, a shift is visible even in officially tolerated opinion polls. According to polls by the Levada Center, over the past two years, the share of Russians supporting the continuation of the war effort has dropped from around 41% to around 28%, and share of those who support peace talks has grown from 51% to 62%. At the same time, the number of those who support making concessions to Ukraine is at 24%: people want peace, but on terms favorable to Russia.
\n\nOf course, this may simply reflect what people are willing to say to anonymous pollsters.
\n\nAnother difference is that now, people in small cities and rural localities are expressing more anti-war sentiment than those in major urban centers. Moscow is the most pro-war city. The likely explanation is that most of the frontline casualties are from small, peripheral communities.
\n\nWhy, after more than four years of war, with more than a million Russian soldiers wounded or dead, is anti-war sentiment still confined to a minority?
\n\nAs the saying goes, “It’s the economy, stupid.” During the first years of the war, salaries were growing even with high inflation rate. Starting in 2004, the Russian ruling class hoarded huge profits of the oil and gas trade in a fund currently known as the “National Wealth Fund.” Instead of raising the standard of living by investing in healthcare, social benefits and services, and the like, the money was stashed to be spent on wars and militarization. Now these billions are finally flowing into the economy in the form of wartime investment. The unemployment rate is negligible; in some cases, salaries have multiplied at factories in regions that were previously economically depressed. Generous monthly payments for contract soldiers are up to five times the average salary in poorer regions. At the same time, payments to widows and orphans are shifting the economy in the most destitute areas of the Russian federation, from which most of the enlisted soldiers come.
\n\nDuring the first months of 2026, the Russian economy contracted for the first time since the beginning of the war; but now, once again, it is on a growth trajectory, due to the oil price hike following the war in Iran. The Russian state budget is running on a deficit due to the costs of the war, but there are plenty of ways to solve that issue, such as tax increases, using what remains of the National Wealth Fund, cutting social spending and education, and forcing oligarchs to buy state obligations. The Russian economy will likely be able to sustain the war for several years yet, although the standard of living is stagnating now and drone strikes are causing increasing inconvenience.
\n\nAnother factor explaining Russian support for the war is the situation on the frontline. Russia’s advances have been very slow for years, but most weeks, Russia is still gaining more territory than it is losing. The traditional dream of socialists of all stripes is that soldiers will turn their rifles against the ruling class and finish the war. But throughout world history, this usually takes place in a situation in which a war has already been lost, as in Russia in February 1917 and Germany in November 1918. It is not certain that Russia will win this war, but as long as the chances are high, many people would like to be on the winning side.
\n\nThe third factor is that for a random person, the risk of ending up in the war remains low. The independent media project Mediazona, originally established by members of Pussy Riot, has been tracking Russian losses by monitoring social media and other sources, and they have been able dig up information about 239,000 dead at the front. Of these casualties, the service branch of 22.5% of the casualties is unknown. 36.7% are volunteers, 11% are inmates, 21.5% are contract soldiers, and only 8.3% are mobilized soldiers. Some of the volunteers, inmates, and contract soldiers have not signed their contracts voluntarily; inmates and conscripts are pressured to sign contracts. But the vast majority of them had a choice, and even those mobilized often had the option of not appearing in the enlistment office and leaving the country or dodging the draft by other means. Few people who have died in the front have genuinely used every means at their disposal to avoid this.
\n\nAlso, many of those who would otherwise have opposed the war have left Russia. The exodus that took place in 2022 involved up to 700,000 people. Many of them have returned due to the difficulties of life in emigration, but emigration is continuing.
\n\nAt the same time, the intensity of the repression targeting anti-war opinion is without precedent since the beginning of Perestroika in 1986.
\n\nYet there are still protests and social movements. Activatica is a project monitoring protests in Russia, and they are tracking several hundred protests and direct actions every month. The most popular topics are environmental issues; anti-repression events, such as letter writing events for political prisoners, are still tolerated. Activatica lists much fewer anti-war protests, and those are usually direct actions. In a few cities, lone pickets of stubborn pensioners are still occasionally tolerated without a resulting prison sentence, such as the pickets by Viktor Gilin in Perm.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/3.jpg\")
Protests and direct actions by type, monthly, year 2025, according to Activatica.
\nThe number of anti-war direct actions actually appears to be growing. In 2024, Activatica recorded 145 actions; in 2025, 233 actions. Activatica tries not to count actions provoked by Ukrainian internet scammers, who hack the bank accounts of (usually elderly) persons, then blackmail them into carrying direct actions, which often result in severe sentences. The internet scamming industry is widespread in Ukraine, and it is contributing to the war effort in this dubious way, perhaps also as a consequence of its links to Ukrainian security services.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/5.jpg\")
Direct actions by region, 2024, according to Activatica.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/6.jpg\")
Direct actions by Russian region, 2025, according to Activatica.
\nHowever, Activatica does not attempt to differentiate between actions carried out by activists and Ukrainian secret services—which is challenging in any case, because the secret services occasionally masquerade as activists. One may assume that actions involving explosives that occur not far from the Ukrainian border, or professional-level assassinations of Russian officers in major cities, are unlikely to be the efforts of activists, whereas small-scale Molotov cocktail attacks far from the frontline are probably the work of activists. Often, it is difficult to be sure who is behind what. Moreover, it is possible that people who genuinely oppose the war are contacting Ukrainian secret services in order to solve their own financial problems, or in order to combine their financial and a political interests. The model of Ukrainian secret service hiring civilians for money might be described as “Sabotage as Service”—the same model that is widely used by the Russian secret services in Ukraine and around Europe.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/7.jpg\")
Oil storage facilities burned in Kandry, Bashkokorstan, in an action claimed by Rospartisan on May 26, 2026. Rospartisan has a big-tent policy of covering any anti-war direct actions, from anarchists to the far-right.
\nThe vast majority of small-scale sabotage actions are not claimed by any group. During the first years of the war, the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK) succeeded in conducting several major sabotage actions. BOAK was established before the 2022 invasion; it represents the direct continuation of the wave of insurrectionary anarchism that occurred in Russia from 2008-2013, inspired by the uprising in Greece in December 2008 after the police murdered Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Among the founders of the organization was Dmitry Petrov, an anarchist from Moscow who was killed by Russian forces while defending Ukraine in 2023.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/8.jpg\")
The logo of the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists.
\nNo one that the authorities have caught has been proven to be a BOAK activist. In one case, the authorities claimed that they had arrested a BOAK member for carrying out direct action, but an anarchist political prisoner who was held in the same prison confirmed that the activist had nothing to do with BOAK or anarchism. The case of another person who was arrested last year and accused of being a BOAK member still awaits confirmation or refutation, due to the secrecy of the court materials. BOAK cannot confirm or refute such claims because it does not preserve the personal details of its contacts.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/9.jpg\")
A photograph from a BOAK action.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/10.jpg\")
A photograph from a BOAK action.
\nBut although BOAK members have been able to evade the Russian authorities, several have been forced to flee Russia or to tone down their activities. This has largely reduced BOAK to a propaganda organization promoting direct action and anarchism.
\n\nAnarchists have established several organizations to support anarchists facing repression. Currently, the oldest is the Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow, established in 2003. For more than two decades, ABC Moscow has supported repressed anarchists, anti-fascists, anti-authoritarians and their supporters. As of now, ABC Moscow lists 23 anarchist and anti-fascist political prisoners in Russia, of whom 14 are in prison for alleged actions against industry or the military. Most of the rest were imprisoned prior to the full-scale invasion in 2022. During the first years of the war, ABC Moscow spread information about and supported diverse anti-war direct-action prisoners, but lately, their efforts have been confined to supporting anarchist and anti-authoritarian prisoners, due to the sheer number of anti-war prisoners.
\n\nIn 2025, ABC Moscow (and all the other ABC groups) were declared “undesirable” in Russia, which means that donating to them can result in a three-year prison sentence. Eventually, ABC Moscow moved all of its activities and members abroad; today, it focuses on spreading information and raising funds outside Russia. News about ABC Moscow activity appears regularly on the Avtonom website and via the group’s own Telegram channel. ABC Moscow can receive donations via Paypal and cryptocurrencies.
\n\nAs ABC Moscow’s activities inside Russia have become impossible, another organization has emerged to support anarchist and anti-authoritarian prisoners, named Fires of Freedom. You can follow its Russian-language Telegram channel here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/12.jpg\")
Fires of Freedom.
\nSolidarity Zone is another initiative started by anti-authoritarians to support anti-war direct action prisoners of various political convictions (excluding the far right). It was established in 2022, at a time when mainstream human rights organizations were not willing to support those sentenced for arsons and “terrorist” charges. Since then, the situation has changed; now, Russian opposition and human rights organizations have a more positive attitude towards direct action. However, Solidarity Zone is still providing support for 15 prisoners serving lengthy sentences for allegedly carrying out direct action, and the organization is following the cases of many more.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/13.jpg\")
Solidarity Zone.
\nAlthough the mainstream democratic opposition has become more supportive of prisoners accused of direct action, in practice, the sheer number of prisoners has overwhelmed all prisoner support structures. The most significant Russian human rights organization, Memorial, has declared 1715 prisoners to be political, of whom 674 are anti-war prisoners. It has also listed 5608 people with “politically motivated charges.” Their process of identifying political prisoners has been slowed down severely by the number of cases. For example, Memorial designated the anarchist Alexandr Snezhkov as a political prisoner only two years after his case was submitted to them. In reality, the number of political prisoners in Russia is probably twice as many as they list.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/14.jpg\")
The growth of the number of political prisoners in Russia from 2012-2025, according to Memorial. Graph by Riddle.
\nIn the first half of 2026, 1234 people were sentenced for “terrorism” (including incitement)—an increase of 38% compared with the first half of 2025. The median prison sentence was 13 years. By the end of 2025, there were 5412 prisoners in Russia with “terrorism” charges, an annual growth of 40.9%. This number includes Ukrainian prisoners of war, who are routinely charged with ”terrorism,” sabotage as a service, provocateur victims etc. Motivations may also overlap.
\n\nAltogether, 21,600 people are listed as “terrorists and extremists” on the blacklist of the Rosfinmonitoring, the Russian Federal Service of Financial Monitoring. In addition to prisoners, this list includes people whose sentences expired long ago, and people who have emigrated. Ending up on this list means a lifetime ban on receiving almost any bank services. In practice, those on the list can only earn a living in cash.
\n\nAlthough supporting political prisoners has been a top priority for the Russian opposition, the avalanche of cases has caused prisoner support structures to collapse, and political prisoners have been reduced to statistics. More and more political prisoners have to face court without any financial support or lawyers.
\n\nAt this point, it is also worth asking what the point of such support even is, as no charges against political prisoners have been thrown out as a consequence of the efforts of lawyers, no matter how skillful. The outcome of every case has been decided long before they make it to the court. Nonetheless, lawyers provide a critical—albeit expensive—means of communicating with prisoners during the periods of investigation. Often, the authorities have stopped torturing prisoners after lawyers have become involved in their cases.
\n\nLegal work sometimes secures some minor victories. For example, in summer 2023, Ivan Kudryashov, who was supported by Solidarity Zone while imprisoned for putting up anti-war posters in his hometown of Tver, won a hunger strike after 40 days, gaining the promise that he would have access to vegan food and vitamins sent to him in parcels. Viktor Filinkov, who was arrested in January 2018 and sentenced to seven years in prison on the accusation of being a member of a supposed underground anarchist “Network,” was repeatedly placed in solitary confinement in his prison colony. But with help of lawyers, he managed to challenge these policies and spent last years of his imprisonment in general population.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/15.jpg\")
Ivan Kurdyashov.
\nDmitri Syutkin is a young anarchist, and as many of the younger anarchists, encountered with anarchist ideas online and was rather isolated from the anarchist movement. He is from a small city in the Sverdlovsk region, and he maintained a small telegram channel advocating anarchism and independent Ural region. Three years ago, at the age of 17, he was entrapped by the FSB, who deceived him, claiming to represent Russian volunteers fighting in Ukraine. Anarchist prisoner support groups only became aware of him this year. Accused of terrorism and other charges, he may face up to 10 years in prison.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/16.jpg\")
Dmitri Syutkin.
\nAnother anarchist prisoner who was discovered relatively recently is Alexey Grigorev from Novotroitsk in the Orenburg region. Accused of planning to burn an FSB building and military recruiting center and of having contact with the Ukrainian authorities, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February 2025, before any prisoner support group learned of his case.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/17.jpg\")
Alexey Grigorev.
\nPerhaps the most successful of the lone anarchist partisans is Ruslan Sidiki, who, unlike the prisoners listed above, had connection with the anarchist movement, having been active in a small and longstanding anarchist rural commune in the Leningrad area, close to St. Petersburg. He attempted to use drones to destroy strategic bombers, but failed as a consequence of electronic jammers. A second action against freight train was more successful, completely derailing a train transporting chemical ingredients. However, due to a small mistake, Ruslan was caught following a massive manhunt and sentenced to 29 years in prison in May 2025. This year, Ruslan’s lawyer was arrested, but Fires of Freedom managed to raise funds to pay for new lawyer to file his appeal.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/18.jpg\")
Ruslan Sidiki visiting the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in better times.
\nAlexey Rozhkov, another lone anarchist partisan, was one of the first people to attack military enlistment offices. He attempted an attack with Molotov cocktails on March 11, 2022, just two weeks after the war began. He was soon arrested, but because minor sabotage did not yet result in automatic terrorist charges during the first months of the war, he was released pending court and escaped to Kyrgysztan. Unfortunately, he was kidnapped there, brought back to Russia, tortured, and charged with terrorism. In May 2026, he received a sentence of 16 years in prison.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/19.jpg\")
Alexey Rozhkov
\nEventually, this and other actions against enlistment offices inspired a massive wave of arson attacks. Mediazone listed 94 such attacks during the first year and a half of the war. During that early phase of the war, many enlistment offices did not have their files digitized, so burning an office could protect everyone from an urban neighbourhood or rural region from being sent to war for several months. Eventually, the authorities began a hurried effort to digitize all the conscript files; although actions against enlistment offices still occasionally take place, the value of the target is now doubtful. Currently, most anti-war sabotage is targeted against transport and energy infrastructure such as railroads.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/20.jpg\")
Alexey Rozhkov with Molotov Cocktail. CCTV camera footage, scan from print of the court documents.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/21.jpg\")
Arson attacks against military enlistment offices and other administrative buildings during the first year of the war, according to Mediazona. Blue signifies before the August mobilization, orange signifies after.
\nCurrently, the most significant case against anarchists is the Tyumen case, which is still in court. Six anarchists from Yekaterinburg in the Ural region and Tyumen and Surgut of Siberia are accused of establishing a clandestine anarchist organization. In August 2022, Kirill Brik and Deniz Aydin were arrested in a forest in Tyumen, allegedly while attempting to test explosives. Arrests followed in Yekaterinburg and Surgut. All of the arrestees were brutally tortured; they confessed, but eventually all of them except Kirill Brik recanted their testimony. Still, with a cooperating witness, the situation of the others accused is dire. Nikita Oleynik, the founder of the anarchist library Burevestnik (“Storm Petrel”) in Surgut, is accused of being “a leader of a terrorist group” and is in a danger of receiving a life sentence.
\n\nThe life sentence was introduced in Russia in 1992 as a replacement for the death penalty. For 34 years, no one with a life sentence has ever been released in Russia. The other defendants in the Tyumen case face up to 25 years in prison each.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/23.jpg\")
Deniz Aidyn.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/24.jpg\")
Yuri Neznamov.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/25.jpg\")
Danil Chertykov.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/26.jpg\")
Nikita Oleynik.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/27.jpg\")
Roman Paklin.
\nAleksandr Snezhkov and Lyubov Lizunova were arrested in Chita in the far east of Russia in October 2022, while only 19 and 16 years old. Allegedly, they painted graffiti reading ”Death to the regime.” They were also suspected of administering a Telegram channel with anarchist and anti-war messages. Snezhkov was sentenced to six years in prison and Lizunova to three and a half years in April 2024. This year, Aleksandr received an additional sentence for “incitement” because he allegedly read his legal papers to other prisoners; he has been sent to a stricter prison for the remaining two years of his sentence.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/28.jpg\")
Lyubov Lizunova and Aleksandr Snezhkov.
\nSolidarity Zone tracked down the anarchist Roman Shvedov in the court system in autumn 2024. He was accused of anti-war arson. However, he refused the support that Solidarity Zone offered, insisting that there was nothing that could be done for him and emphasizing that he would prefer for the resources to be directed to other victims of repression. After being sentenced to 16 years in prison, he committed suicide in a Rostov jail in December 2024. The face of this fallen anarchist comrade remains unknown to us. Solidarity groups do not even have a proper photograph of him, only a pixelated face from Russian mainstream media.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/29.jpg\")
Roman Shvedov.
\nThe most straightforward way to act in solidarity with Russian prisoners is by spreading information—for example, translating news and carrying out banner drops, graffiti, and other forms of direct actions. A great deal of news about Russian anarchist prisoners is available on the English section of the website of Autonomous Action, the former Russian Libertarian Communist federation, which is now working as a media project.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/30.jpg\")
The logo of Autonomous Action.
\nWith automatic translation tools available for free online, it is easy to write letters even when the prison censors only allow prisoners to receive letters in Russian. It is possible to write to a number of anarchist prisoners via the prisonmail.online service at a small cost; the service also provides the opportunity to receive replies. It is possible to write other prisoners via snail mail. A full list of addresses is available via the ABC Moscow website.
\n\nPrisoner solidarity groups are in constant need of funds to pay for lawyers and other costs of imprisonment. You can donate to fundraising campaigns and projects that support prisoners—Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow, Fires of Freedom, and Solidarity Zone.
\n\nIt is also possible to donate to direct action initiatives such as BOAK using cryptocurrency. Last but not least, you cansupport the anarchists of Belarus (such as the Anarchist Black Cross of Belarus and Pramen) and Ukraine (such as Solidarity Collectives). All three countries are now locked in a common struggle against war and Russian authoritarian imperialism.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2023/11/17/revisiting-the-smash-edo-campaign-a-pressure-campaign-targeting-an-arms-manufacturer-1", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2023/11/17/revisiting-the-smash-edo-campaign-a-pressure-campaign-targeting-an-arms-manufacturer-1", "title": "Revisiting the Smash EDO Campaign : A Pressure Campaign Targeting an Arms Manufacturer", "summary": "Two decades ago, the Smash EDO campaign set out to shut down an arms factory in Brighton, setting an example for those who seek to stop the genocide in Gaza today.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/header.jpg", "date_published": "2023-11-17T21:18:57Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:58Z", "tags": [ "direct action", "protest campaign", "anti-war", "arms trade", "arms industry" ], "content_html": "In response to the genocide unfolding in Gaza, some activists have set out to target weapons manufacturers like Elbit Systems and Raytheon. Palestine Action has permanently shut down two of Elbit’s UK locations; in the United States, a similar campaign is underway to target Elbit facilities around the country. As these campaigns gain momentum, it may be instructive to look to previous such efforts for inspiration and ideas.
\n\nTwo decades ago in the UK, a campaign known as Smash EDO set out to shut down an arms factory in Brighton. Over the course of a years-long struggle, they experimented with a range of strategies. In one case, activists broke into the facility and did hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage to it—and then were declared innocent by a jury at trial. Here, we review that movement from its inception to its high point in 2010.
\n\nAn earlier version of the following text appeared in the ninth issue of our print journal, Rolling Thunder, in spring 2010. You can find an archive of the Smash EDO website here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/1.jpg\")
The campaign against EDO takes the street on May Day, 2009.
\nWhat started in 2004 as a dozen people banging pots and pans outside a local arms manufacturer mushroomed into the largest and most dynamic anti-militarist campaign in the United Kingdom. Over the following years, activists from Smash EDO maintained relentless pressure on the factory while surviving repeated attempts to suppress the movement. In 2009, they mobilized thousands for the May Day Carnival against War and Greed.
\n\n\n\n\n“Every bomb that is dropped, every bullet that is\nfired in the name of this war of terror has to be made\nsomewhere… and wherever that is, it can be resisted.”
\n\n–Smash EDO, March 2004
\n
\n\n\n“A crowd of 600, largely clad in red, many masked,\nsurges uphill towards police lines, throwing crash\nbarriers aside and using a sound system to batter their\nway through. Soon they’re inside the arms factory\ncompound, and the windows start going in…”
\n\n–participant in the Smash EDO Carnival\nAgainst the Arms Trade, June 2008
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/6.jpg\")
Anti-war protesters mobilizing as part of the Smash EDO campaign clash with police in January, 2010.
\nSmash EDO was an anonymous, non-hierarchical, fluid campaign: as much a slogan as an organization. This amorphous nature, coupled with an complete rejection of negotiations with the authorities, made it very difficult to repress.
\n\nThe goal was almost absurdly narrow—the closure of one weapons component factory in one town. But in the course of pursuing it, the campaign incorporated a diversity of tactics and approaches—from leafleting to lockdowns, from installation art to rioting—and sowing the seeds for a real challenge to the war machine.
\n\nSmash EDO never publicly identified itself as an anarchist campaign and never nailed its colors to any particular political mast. It was often compared—not least by the police and the weapons dealers themselves—to targeted animal rights campaigns such as\nStop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). In contrast to those campaigns, however, participants took great pains to keep a low profile, albeit with mixed results. There were organizing meetings for major actions, but the left hand did not always know what the right hand was doing—a person who had devoted years to the campaign might still find out about an action from Indymedia.
\n\nOther campaigns generally depend on a public organizing group that starts with a firm idea of what they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it. SHAC’s assault on the share price of Huntingdon Life Sciences by any means necessary, including the deliberate cultivation of bad press, was extremely successful at first. They achieved some phenomenal results—but by the time we began our campaign against EDO, the state was passing new laws and taking advantage of the focus on one target to isolate and immobilize SHAC activists.
\n\nBy contrast, unable to rely on the level of militancy common among animal rights activists, the Smash EDO campaign had to be more flexible. It took years for the animal rights movement to build up critical mass, starting from the struggle over live exports in the early 1990s. Half a decade later, SHAC’s predecessor, Save the Hillgrove Cats, could call monthly demonstrations in which thousands descended on a single cat farm near Oxford, pushing the policing costs into the millions. For reasons explained below, this was not an option for our campaign.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/9.jpg\")
A participant in a Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty shirt keeps tabs on the coppers during a demonstration on May Day, 2009.
\nBut who the hell was EDO and why was it necessary to smash them?
\n\nWhen the campaign began, EDO MBM was a subsidiary of the EDO Corporation—a United States company that was a major supplier of Raytheon as well as an arms manufacturer in its own right. In December 2007, EDO Corporation was purchased by the US arms conglomerate ITT. EDO MBM/ITT supplied vital parts for the Paveway series of laser-guided bombs, which were the most used guided munitions in the aerial bombardment of Iraq. They also designed a component for the bombing systems of F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighter aircraft; the US supplied some of these to Israel, where they were used against Palestinians. The Brighton factory also manufactured components for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS), which were used in assassinations and raids by the US army in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
\n\nQuestioned by the local paper in 2004, David Jones, then the managing director of EDO, said that he was proud to support the war effort in Iraq. However, EDO repeatedly denied that they knowingly supplied equipment to Israel.
\n\nFinding out what EDO did was not always easy; research was an integral component of the campaign. After David Jones’ press statement fueled public anger, EDO refused to make public statements and removed pages from their website advertising that their weaponry was used by the Israeli air force. Several directors resigned after being forced to give evidence in court about what the company produced.
\n\nITT Corporation is one of the most powerful transnational companies in the world. During the Second World War, it owned 25% of Germany’s Focke-Wulf, builder of fighter aircraft for the Nazis, and ITT subsidiaries made cash payments to SS leader Heinrich Himmler. ITT memos and declassified CIA documents suggest that ITT attempted to fund Salvador Allende’s opponents in Chile and helped prepare the military coup that occurred there in 1973. In response, the Weather Underground and others bombed ITT offices in New York, Rome, Zurich, and London. EDO’s factory in Brighton was only one part of this powerful corporation.
\n\nIn 2003, the UK saw the largest anti-war movement in its history. On February 15, 2003, over a million people took to the streets to protest the relentless march towards the invasion of Iraq. Many were angry at the ease with which Britain had been signed on as a willing lieutenant in what was widely seen as blatant US imperialism. Across the country, large numbers of people who’d never taken a political stance got involved in the movement. The left, used to the muted response to previous wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Kosovo, was taken by surprise by this.
\n\nBut the public mood was characterized by disapproval rather than resistance. The left-liberal classes that formed the mass of the movement were reluctant to take direct action, instead accepting the tone set by the biggest anti-war group, the Stop the War Coalition. For reasons too tedious to go into here but depressingly familiar to anyone who has worked with organizations dominated by Trotskyite vanguardist parties, this coalition opted to rely on predictable marches in London. Even after these (admittedly enormous) demonstrations failed to alter the plans for war, the Stop the War Coalition continued to repeat them with diminishing returns. The demonstration against the war in Afghanistan on October 24, 2009 brought out a mere 10,000 people.
\n\nOthers took steps to resist the oncoming conflict more directly. Gloucestershire’s Fairford airbase was a launching pad for US stealth bombers and one of many parts of the UK that was effectively US sovereign territory. The mobilizations there drew participants intent on more forceful resistance; however, the state was able to muster thousands of police to keep them under control. In one instance, two men managed to enter the airfield and came within yards of damaging aircraft before they were caught. They were acquitted by a jury in 2007, demonstrating how anti-war sentiment pervaded the country.
\n\nBrighton is a seaside resort on the south coast of the UK with a radical reputation and a faint whiff of patchouli in the air. It was one of a handful of UK towns where anti-war activism wasn’t the sole preserve of the Stop the War Coalition. Instead, a coalition evolved under the name Sussex Action for Peace, involving everyone from the Quakers and trade unionists to the anarchists and the just plain awkward. A non-critical atmosphere developed, opening space for a diversity of tactics: everything from “Pancakes for Peace” to fence-cutting at Fairford Airbase.
\n\n“For months, we had been preparing, organizing, arguing about how to take to the streets and show our anger once the bombing started in Baghdad. We made flags and called samba bands, we leafleted at colleges and to schoolchildren, we held meetings with over a hundred people and fended off bizarre suggestions for a workers’ and soldiers’ soviet. We talked about tactics and dug out our gas masks. But for all our planning, the day itself was a triumph of creativity and motivation from the people of Brighton.
\n\n“On the day the bombing started, a group of us hiked up to the local school expecting to stand outside the gates encouraging a few to brave the anger of their teachers. Instead, when we got there, hundreds of children streamed past and took over the main roads laughing and\nrunning into town, stopping traffic and hurling eggs at banks. All day, the streets stopped in the city. A group took on the symbols of capitalism, bringing down the American flag outside the American Express building and tearing it up.
\n\n“When the time for the mass assembly came, the ‘organizing collective’ gathered their flags and headed to the town center. However, a mass of 5000 people filled the streets, overflowing into the side roads. No one was leading this crowd anywhere; it had a chaotic dynamism. The band started and people swarmed through the city shutting down business as usual, anger palpable in the air.
\n\n“A group headed for the town hall with a ‘donated’ key card for entry. The plan was to occupy the town hall and start a ‘people’s council’ to plan future actions and resistance. When the crowd surged towards the doors, shoving the police and their pepper spray aside, high feelings took over and destruction and property damage followed. One man got into the debating chamber balcony and danced high above the crowd shouting ‘No blood for oil!’ It felt like a shout from the city of Brighton at those who were taking us to war against our will.”
\n\n–Brighton “Stop the City—Stop the War” participant, March 2003
\n\nOf course, the initial invasion was accomplished within weeks. Soon, UK forces were committed to the occupation of Iraq and the momentum behind the anti-war movement was starting to fade.
\n\n\n\n\n“We wanted to draw attention to the fact that this war was not an act of irrational aggression carried out by a particularly stupid president but something planned for, and for some corporations a real money-maker. In effect, we wanted to take the war back to the factory floor. We couldn’t directly affect the course of the conflict in Iraq,\nbut we could target the spear-carriers.”
\n\n–Smash EDO, 2004
\n
The discovery that one of those spear-carriers was EDO MBM, a company situated on a small industrial estate just a mile and a half from the city center, led to the formation of a new group. This was largely composed of the anarchist and direct-action-oriented wing of the rapidly shrinking Sussex Action for Peace.
\n\n\n\n\n“Our aim at the time was to take the fury at a war happening a thousand miles away and point out how the causes of that war were wrapped up in our everyday lives. The decision to target one factory has been controversial; we have been accused of diverting attention away from the real target, i.e., the government. Although EDO now has around 150 employees, they are a relatively minor link in the weapons supply chain. But we know this is how the arms trade functions. Weapons are not stand-alone devices; modern warfare is based on a series of weapons systems. The supply chain involves hundreds of small component manufacturers and EDO’s manufacture of bomb release mechanisms makes them vital accomplices in the mass aerial bombardments used by the powerful to cow uncooperative populations. It’s better to gain a small victory like this than suffer a series of magnificent defeats.”
\n\n–Smash EDO, 2004
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/17.jpg\")
Activists locking down to block access to the arms factory in 2004, near the beginning of the campaign.
\nActions kicked off in May 2004 with a rooftop occupation of the factory coordinated with a lockdown blocking access to the whole industrial estate. Regular and irregular noise demonstrations soon greeted the workers.
\n\n\n\n\n“Noise demos at the time consisted of a few people making noise outside the factory gates. We’d bang pots and pans, shout through megaphones, or slam the metal crash barrier that runs along the grass opposite the factory: anything to let the workers and their managers know what we thought of their business. At this stage [2004], we didn’t know how much the workforce knew about what EDO’s products were used for.”
\n\n–Smash EDO activist
\n
The noise demos continued as the regular backbeat of the campaign, occurring at least once a week.
\n\nThe first year saw a lot of nighttime sabotage, with the undefended factory coming under regular attack. Windows were smashed, doors superglued, paint bombs thrown. The cooling fan systems in the rear of the factory sustained £45,000 damage in one assault. The factory’s managing directors awoke to find their neighborhoods plastered with fliers accusing them of complicity in civilian deaths. More humorously, both horseshit and quick-drying concrete were dumped at the entrance. Nobody ever claimed responsibility for these actions, nor was anyone ever arrested; sporadic “pixie” actions like these continued for years. Eventually, the factory was fenced off with twenty-four-hour security, razor wire, and CCTV.
\n\nVarious groups, including the local Quakers, organized vigils outside the factory. Others, dressed in white overalls and masks and calling themselves the “Blix Block,” attempted to march into the factory to conduct a citizens’ weapons inspection.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/12.jpg\")
A Smash EDO protest in 2008.
\nThe stakes were raised in March 2005 with a combined effort from Sussex Police and EDO MBM to shut down protests outside the factory by means of an injunction under the Protection from Harassment Act. Under this act, which was originally designed to protect individuals from stalkers, companies were able to secure tailor-made injunctions on the basis of very little evidence, enabling police to make arrests for things that would not normally be crimes. In this case, they tried to limit protests outside the factory to two and a half hours a week, in groups of no more than ten people with no noise amplification.
\n\nPrior to this, such injunctions had only been aimed at animal right campaigners, notably the SHAC campaign. The process in these cases allowed the companies to use evidence of illegal activity—some genuine, some concocted—to place limits on legal activity such as gathering for demonstrations, waving placards, or using megaphones. Subsequent court cases revealed that the police had drafted the terms of the injunction, supplied intelligence to company lawyers, and manufactured arrests to provide sufficient evidence to shut down the protests.
\n\n“This demonstrated clearly that it was the police’s intention to shut down the public face of the campaign. Isolated illegal activity they feel they can deal with—but they’re frightened of movements that can function both above and underground.”
\n\nThis attempt at repression showed how the War on Terror\ninvolved attacks on civil liberties at home alongside warfare abroad. Compulsory ID cards were introduced, as well as new laws clamping down on protest and dissent: for example, by an amendment to the Public Order Act, the number of people required to constitute an illegal gathering was reduced to two. But this backdrop of repression, along with the unpopularity of the war, enabled the campaign against EDO to gather publicity and public support. A central press number complete with a ready-to-go press spokesperson helped the campaign to compete with both the police and the corporation in the local media.
\n\nIronically, the injunction provided the campaign with its first major publicity boost.
\n\n“First, it showed us that we were having an effect: an international arms company had been forced to spend thousands on lawyers simply to prevent us from standing outside the gates. We also looked like the underdogs.”
\n\nA demonstration dubbed “THE BIG ONE,” called May 2005 in the wake of the first injunction hearing, drew a hundred and fifty outside the factory. Fighting broke out as police moved to arrest an eighty-year-old man named John Catt. Eight people were arrested, targeted for being suspected organizers.
\n\nAfter a year of legal wrangling, EDO MBM was forced to drop the injunction case and pay all the legal costs, including a handout of £34,000 to those who had defended themselves. It’s estimated that the whole case cost them upwards of £1 million, tipping them over into a loss that quarter and directly impacting their share price.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/14.jpg\")
Smash EDO demonstrators in 2008.
\nDuring the court case, an interim injunction prevented filming at the factory and enabled EDO’s hired goons to intimidate demonstrators. Two campaigners were briefly remanded in Lewes prison. Despite this, the noise demonstrations and other actions continued.
\n\n“The decision was made to take our struggle into town. We were fed up with being pushed around up at the factory.”
\n\nOn August 13, 2005, around fifty people met in Brighton’s main shopping precinct1 and tried to march to the Level, about a half-hour walk.
\n\n“The police response was spectacular: 150 cops, dogs, and a helicopter. The message couldn’t have been clearer: you have no right to assemble without police permission.”
\n\nThus began a standoff with the authorities over the right to demonstrate, fought not only in the streets but in the local media as well. Successive town center demonstrations—one of which marched on the police station, forcing officers to form lines around their own headquarters—became enough of a headache for the police that harassment at the factory itself decreased.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/13.jpg\")
Participants in a Smash EDO protest discourage filming. 2008.
\nCan a small group of activists survive and get their message out without using the corporate media? Although huge advances had recently been made in alternative media, and Smash EDO was able to rely on coverage in Brighton’s SchNEWS as well as Indymedia, the fact remained that the vast majority of people got their news—and hence formed their opinions—from the mainstream press.
\n\nFor the first nine months of the campaign, no one put out a press release at all. Like most of the anarchist movement, we regarded the press as part of the enemy. It was assumed that local press in particular would automatically parrot the police and corporate line.
\n\n“We knew that the press requires the names of spokespersons and that they would be depicted as organizers and leaders—that’s just how it works.”
\n\nBut ignoring the media can be a dangerous gamble. A government-coordinated media onslaught against the animal rights movement had already led to their effective isolation as a political force. The equation “animal rights = extremism” was repeated whenever the subject came up, especially in left/liberal papers.
\n\nThe state’s strategy, with the police “anti-extremism” task force planting stories in the media, was to isolate groups from the mainstream, then attack them with specially-crafted legislation. For example, demonstrations that would be legal in any other context could earn you a prison sentence if they were carried out against an “animal research establishment” as defined in the Serious Organized Crime and Police Act 2005. Sean\nKirtley, whose conviction was later quashed, spent sixteen months in jail simply for organizing demonstrations and updating a website for the STOP SEQUANI campaign. Mainstream civil rights groups did nothing to protest this crackdown.
\n\nThe SHAC strategy was to use the press as a tool with which to inspire fear in their targets. At one national animal rights gathering, the press were only invited into one workshop—a self-defense class; footage of activists learning how to poke out people’s eyes was duly broadcast. They paid for this outlaw image later. Meanwhile, campaigners against genetically modified\ncrops were able to carry out “decontaminations” destroying crops worth tens of thousands of pounds, hitting the same pharmaceutical companies as the animal rights campaigners but without receiving the same level of repression. The crucial difference was that public opinion was more hostile to the forced introduction of GM foods.
\n\nThe injunction forced the campaign’s hand, in terms of dealing with the media and the legal system. At that point, there were perhaps twenty people involved in various aspects of the campaign. The injunction named fourteen individuals—basically everyone who had been arrested at the factory. It was clear that if the factory got the interim injunction they wanted, then the noise demonstrations that served as the public face of the campaign would be shut down.
\n\n“We didn’t have huge numbers of militants to defy the injunction, the preferred option; neither was it practical to abandon the noise demos and rely on clandestine activity. If we wanted the campaign to continue, we were going to have to fight on the enemy’s terrain.”
\n\nThe injunction cemented and centralized the campaign in\nunexpected ways. It was clear that a collective response was necessary—and a collective voice. The injunction, framed to deal with a centralized campaign like SHAC, referred to the defendants as Smash EDO, and the campaign took on that name. Bearing in mind that there was no Smash EDO party line, how were we to write a press release or frame a defense? Who could speak for the campaign? Andrew Beckett was appointed spokesperson, to avoid the trap of promoting individuals\nas “organizers.” One man had already found that a description of himself as an organizer, which had appeared in the local news source Argus, was being used against him in court.
\n\nWe were criticized in the insurrectionist publication 325 for relying on “mainstream” arguments in propaganda and in press releases:
\n\n\n\n\n“The language used to ‘justify’ the decommissioning of EDO offers a legitimate face of the law to the general public. However, this face is misleading, this façade implies that there is a society worth reasoning with, that democratic legitimacy itself will bring about social change and ‘justice,’ that adhering to some laws while others are manipulated by the State will gain a [sic] eventual positive outcome. This is in compliance with State-imposed hierarchies that exist within a capitalist framework and it is flawed and foolishly misguided.”
\n
It is true that success in those terms can come at a price. For example, as a group, we didn’t care whether the war in Iraq was technically illegal or not. If the US/UK alliance had succeeded in conducting a legal war by securing a UN resolution, we would still have opposed the attacks. But in our press releases and propaganda, we referred to “this illegal and immoral war.” Was that a cheap shot or common-sense PR?
\n\nLikewise, our efforts to produce lowest-common-denominator propaganda, in hopes of pushing what had been a broad anti-war consensus towards direct action, were criticized both in and outside the group as mawkish. Images of injured children can be arresting, but they can also reinforce the idea that the primary evil of war is the death of the “innocent.” The killing of conscripted Iraqi militiamen is just as tragic, but we didn’t put them on fliers.
\n\nYet in order to appeal to an imagined Joe Public, it became necessary to go along with certain preconceptions. It’s all very well to believe, as some of us did, that EDO/ITT’s business would not have been possible if homo sapiens had not built patriarchal militarism on the foundation of an inherently oppressive system of symbolic thought—but it’s not easy to cram that into a two-minute radio interview. Sound bites are antithetical to political sophistication, but we needed to win the argument. “EDO kills kids for cash” was crude but effective tabloid sloganeering.
\n\nTo win the legal battles, it was even more important to appear “mainstream,” at least in court. We had to fight the injunction case on grounds of civil liberties and human rights. For anarchists, this involved a degree of ideological contortion. The prospect of fighting the case on the grounds that atrocities were being committed in Iraq was ruled out by the judge early on, following an intervention by the Attorney General.
\n\n“We actually wanted to shut this factory down—we hadn’t physically attacked workers and management as the company alleged, but they were right in saying that we wanted to go beyond protest to action.”
\n\nTo win the case, we had to take the “freedom to protest” angle. “Freedom of expression is a right jealously guarded in English law”—these were the words of Judge Gross after the first phase of the injunction trial. This phrase was emphasized dramatically in subsequent press releases declaring victory. Given that what had happened was actually a massive restriction of our rights—we were allowed to demonstrate when we liked, but were confined to a narrow strip of grass across the road from the factory—we ran the risk of looking as if we accepted the court’s jurisdiction. But a decision had to be made whether we wanted to proclaim a “victory” or a “defeat”—shades of grey don’t work in the media.
\n\nWe also had to appeal to the general public in order to resist the crackdown on our town center demonstrations. Once again we fell back on the language of rights. In a letter to the local paper, Andrew Beckett argued that we had the “right to march peacefully through our town.” In that sentence alone, we circumscribed our action, asserting “peaceful” aims for everyone who might come to the demonstration without consulting them. And why should we have more right to march through “our” town than any other?
\n\nYet arguably, it was a success: the struggle between the campaign and the police was framed in terms that didn’t require an extensive background in leftist theory, and the next demonstration, in December, drew 400 people. It was “peaceful,” and we won the battle of public opinion over whether or not we should negotiate with the police. But we had run the risk of painting ourselves into a corner. If the authorities had stood back at this point and allowed us free rein, what would we have done? We had ended up in the position of being anarchists defending liberalism.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/16.jpg\")
A Smash EDO demonstrator in 2008.
\nOnce the campaign got going, the court cases came thick and fast. Different defendants chose to represent themselves in different ways. Some undertook “accountable” actions such as lockdowns in order to present a “war crimes” defense, arguing that they acted illegally “to prevent a greater crime.” This strategy implied that the court was a neutral arena, which it was not.
\n\nDespite this, activists scored an impressive set of victories in the courts. Chris Bluemel was acquitted after admitting to punching a policeman in the face during the Carnival Against the Arms Trade, for example. However, it’s worth considering how class privileges may have facilitated some of these victories. Chris, a music teacher, was able to call on his headmaster as a character witness; to prove his good faith and legitimacy, the latter mentioned that he had cancelled a meeting with a shadow government2 minister to attend court. This appeal to middle-class solidarity worked, but other defendants did not have such credentials.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/11.jpg\")
A Smash EDO protest in 2008.
\nAs US and UK forces settled into the slog of occupation, attention shifted away from the air power used in the initial invasion. But EDO’s equipment was still in use—for example, in the assault on Fallujah, and again in Somalia.
\n\nThe Israeli air force was the next to embark on a major air\nstrike campaign, using equipment supplied by US and UK\narms companies including EDO. In summer 2006, war erupted in Lebanon and over a thousand civilians were killed in a matter of weeks. From the beginning, the Smash EDO campaign had overlapped with the International Solidarity Movement in occupied Palestine.
\n\n“We were determined to show that the UK government and domestic arms suppliers were directly profiting from this war. We had to show solidarity with the Palestinian people.”
\n\nTwo men scaled the roof of the factory and unfurled a banner: “16 children killed in Qana Lebanon, EDO profits from murder.” A few weeks later, activists chained to concrete blocks blocked the entrances, forcing EDO employees to break into their own factory.
\n\nFollowing its early successes turning repression to advantage, the campaign received a new opportunity from Sussex Police. Local media collective SchNEWs produced a film entitled On the Verge charting the history of the struggle against EDO, and activists arranged a nationwide tour to raise awareness. The premiere was to be at Brighton’s art-house cinema, the Duke of York’s, on March 16, 2008.
\n\nLast-minute police intervention forced the cancellation of the film. The cinema was warned that violent activists might try to gain entry. The screening was hastily relocated to a nearby pub. The next day, the news came in that venues across the country had been visited by police and warned not to show the film on a variety of pretexts.
\n\nPolice across the country attempted to force the cancellation of screenings of On the Verge.
\nThe tour went ahead regardless, and what had been a relatively minor activist film produced on a budget of less than £500 became national news. “A misguided piece of official hysteria,” read the headline in The Guardian, the well-known left-liberal daily paper. Suddenly, the campaign had “the film they tried to ban,” and people flocked to see it. Over eighty screenings occurred in the UK. The film was also shown in Sydney, San Francisco, and Athens, and thousands downloaded it.
\n\nAll this gave the campaign a national profile. The goal of the tour had been to build support for the forthcoming Carnival Against the Arms Trade—a strategic effort to move beyond the confines of affirming the right to rally and march. Up to then, the largest EDO demonstration had consisted of a few hundred people.
\n\nOn the Wednesday afternoon designated for the Carnival, over 800 turned up. Many had traveled from around the country, having heard about Smash EDO thanks to the attempted suppression of On the Verge.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/15.jpg\")
Preparing to march to the arms factory for the Carnival Against the Arms Trade, Wednesday, June 4, 2008.
\nThe crowd that turned up at the Carnival Against the Arms Trade was not a passive group of spectators. The police had planned to confine people in a control pen down the road from the factory, but the pen was dismantled as the crowd pushed through police lines and then, gloriously, into the factory compound. As the windows started to go in and the managing director’s SUV was trashed, the police responded with a baton charge and managed to clear the parking lot via a liberal use of pepper spray and dogs. The factory remained closed for the day.
\n\nIt’s important to understand that at the time of this event, the UK activist movement had largely abandoned street confrontation as a consequence of successful police repression. After the successes of June 18, 1999, when large parts of London’s financial center were wrecked during the Carnival against Capitalism, police had devoted tremendous resources to cracking down on anarchic street gatherings. For many, this was their first experience of taking on the police and winning.
\n\nThe next major demonstration, dubbed “Shut ITT” in reference to the fact that the company had recently changed hands, was attended by four different police forces. Despite this, the crowd of 400 charged the police lines at the base of Home Farm Road, and a large number headed up into the woods behind the factory. The back of the factory was paint-bombed as police and protestors\nengaged in running skirmishes in the trees.
\n\nSpokesperson Andrew Beckett reported,
\n\n\n\n\n“We didn’t let the police control events. We went where\nwe wanted, when we wanted. All the police from four counties weren’t able to stop us making our stand against EDO/ITT.”
\n
On January 17, 2009—the last day of Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli attack on Gaza3—six activists broke into the arms manufacturers’ factory armed with hammers, determined to carry out a “citizens’ decommissioning” of the facility. They barricaded themselves inside and wreaked havoc for over an hour, causing up to £500,000 of damage before being arrested.
\n\nThe trial, scheduled for May 2010, focused attention on UK and US complicity in the continued repression of the Palestinian people. Before entering the factory, Elijah Smith, one of the “decommissioners,” explained his motivations: “I don’t feel I’m going to do anything illegal tonight, but I’m going to go into an arms factory and smash it up to the best of my ability so that it cannot actually work or produce munitions… [which] have been provided to the Israeli army so that they can kill children.” He remained in jail for a year and a half awaiting trial.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/3.jpg\")
On May Day 2009 in Brighton, traffic in the city was brought to a standstill as police and anti-war protesters clashed on the streets. At one point, protesters used a car welded out of sheets of metal to ram police officers intent on stopping the march from reaching the EDO MBM headquarters.
\nThe campaign’s next mobilization, on May Day 2009, was its largest yet. Thousands of leaflets had been distributed across the UK. Just a month earlier, London had hosted the G20 summit. As expected, protests around the summit had been brutalized by police and contained through “kettling,” in which lines of police surround and block a crowd from all sides. However, this time the police had murdered an innocent bystander, Ian Tomlinson. The authorities initially denied that officers had had any contact with him, then falsely claimed that they had been\nunder a hail of bottles as they tried to resuscitate him. Days later, footage arrived at The Guardian that showed Metropolitan Police subjecting Tomlinson to a vicious and unprovoked attack. Suddenly, police behavior at demonstrations was under unprecedented public scrutiny.
\n\nHistorically, May Day is a day of resistance to capitalism and this time, Smash EDO material was more explicit about the links between finance and the arms trade.
\n\n“This was really our most ambitious effort to date. We published an anti-militarist list of targets around town, showing how Barclays, McDonald’s, and the like were investors in ITT.”
\n\nBy now, there were about thirty activists in Brighton working on the campaign and a network of supporters around the country. A larger group of activists was able to seize and hold a squatted church in town as a convergence space.4
\n\n“We also organized first aid, and arrestee and trauma support. It’s vital for people to know that if they get nicked or injured the support is there.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/10.jpg\")
Protesters take over the roundabout by the pier before the march breaks up during the May Day 2009 protest.
\nFollowing the lessons of earlier demonstrations, organizers decided not to publish the route or even the starting point of the May Day street party. Instead, demonstrators obtained updates by calling an information number or tuning to a pirate radio station set up for the day.
\n\nOn May 1, over 1000 people turned out for the street party, creating a bizarre militant carnival atmosphere. A masked mob clad in black and red and armed with a dancing dragon made its way through town. As the mass marched through the town center, the army recruitment center was paint-bombed and a banner appeared high above Barclays, a major investor in the arms trade. Things came to a head as participants clashed with mounted police outside a McDonald’s, also an investor in ITT. The day ended with running skirmishes through the streets.
\n\nAfter May Day, the noise demonstrations and other direct actions continued. Smash EDO appealed for activists to take action against Barclays Bank, the New York Stock Exchange market maker for ITT. On the first day of action, there were seven different pickets across England and Wales; Barclays Bank ATMs were glued shut in Brighton, and a six-foot-high anti-arms-trade message appeared above a Barclays branch in Cambridge.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/5.jpg\")
May Day 2009 in Brighton. Traffic in the city was brought to a standstill as police and anti-war protesters clashed on the streets. As the march passed a McDonald’s, the tension came to a head; police struggled to regain control of the situation as rocks were hurled and protesters used large banners to push closer to the restaurant.
\nSome people stuck with the campaign from its inception on; others left, then returned. It was a relatively open movement; the weekly noise demonstrations offered a way to get involved and meet others. Gaining visibility made it easier to build numbers.
\n\nThe movement against the Iraq war faded in terms of\nstreet marches, but there remained a mood of skepticism around British involvement in Afghanistan. Public opinion also hardened against Israeli use of air power.
\n\nPerhaps there was a danger in fixating on big spectaculars such as May Day at the expense of local and national outreach. As the campaign engaged in more radical actions, the police started a PR counter-offensive. Within the liberal framework of the “right to protest” that we had adopted in the media, we were stuck for an answer. Our inalienable right to smash windows didn’t quite ring true.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/2.jpg\")
A riot van is vandalized and flares are set off as riot police and mounted police fight to split the march outside the McDonald’s. May Day, 2009.
\n“When people first started taking action against the factory, we were a bit of an ideological puzzle. The anarchist direct action mob seemed to file us under ‘ineffectual peaceniks,’ while the peace movement didn’t like our advocacy of a diversity of tactics rather than pacifism. The idea of taking on a single cog in the machine was borrowed from the UK’s high-profile animal rights campaigns, but it was combined with some of the old Reclaim the Streets carnival magic.”
\n\n“By concentrating on this one facility, we’ve managed to raise debate in the mainstream while maintaining a radical stance. Attacking a part of the system that is morally indefensible, we point out the rot than runs through the whole core. Time and again, the police have been forced to make public their role as boot boys for the corporations.”
\n\n“Victory is important to us… we’re going to shut this factory down. Since we started, they’ve already closed their smaller facility in Fishersgate and the number of employees has shrunk. But the development of an anti-militarist network around the country is equally important, rescuing the peace movement from obsolete, symbolic, and ineffective tactics. The Target Brimar campaign in Manchester and the Stop H&K protests in Nottingham are both welcome examples of this new mood of militancy.”
\n\n“There have been debates over whether what’s really needed is a victory over this one factory, which would ultimately give a whole movement something to celebrate, or the development of a network. That’s turned into a bit of a false dichotomy. The radicalization of the anti-war movement is what gives us the best chance of\nshutting down the factory.”
\n\n“It’s really what’s needed to revitalize the whole anti-war movement: a network of local but mobile anti-war groups that plug away week after week in their part of the country, against their arms factory, military facility, or whatever, but are able to rely on support from like-minded individuals and campaigns around the country. We’re not asking anyone to follow our model—what we’ve done has come out of specific set of circumstances. Our advice to anyone would be to stay flexible and seize opportunities when they appear.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/8.jpg\")
Anti-war protesters clash with police, leaving some officers injured. May Day, 2009.
\nOn January 18, 2010, over three hundred black-clad protesters descended on the EDO/ITT factory to commemorate the previous year’s bombing of Gaza. Meeting at Wild Park, the crowd carried symbolic coffins and a banner with a thousand handprints representing those who died during Israel’s twenty-two-day assault. Most of the participants were fully masked up.
\n\nThe demonstration marched to the junction of Home Farm Road, where the factory was situated, and split into two groups. Hundreds broke through police lines to pour up the hill into the woods behind EDO/ITT; another bloc remained at the intersection, blocking access to Home Farm Road, to read out some of the names of the people killed in Gaza. The first bloc of protesters made it to the rear of the factory, where some people breached the fence into the industrial estate.
\n\nAfter word circulated that the factory had been closed for the rest of the day, protesters proceeded to central Brighton, managing to outflank several police cordons. Around one hundred people tried to go on to Barclays Bank, but got kettled as riot police and horses flooded into North Laine.
\n\nIn July 2010, Elijah Smith and the other “decommissioners” who had inflicted up to £500,000 of damage on the facility in 2009 were all found not guilty. In court, they had demonstrated that by supplying weapons to the Israeli air force, the factory was implicated in violations of international law.
\n\nRegular demonstrations against the factory continued with a mobilization in October 2010, though police repression increased steadily, in the form of infiltration as well as arrests. The ITT Corporation Board of Directors eventually approved a plan to split the company, but the factory remained in use. In 2019, it came to light that it was implicated in a Saudi attack on a civilian target in Yemen. A new protest movement got underway to against the facility, building on the achievements of Smash EDO.
\n\nThe Smash EDO campaign didn’t conclude with a clear-cut victory, but it struck several blows against EDO and against the arms industry in general, legitimizing direct action for a wide swath of the population. Such efforts are part of building a long-term struggle against militarism and expanding the scope of what participants can undertake together. Today, it offers us examples of how an anti-war movement can employ a broad tactical repertoire against a specific target. It should be instructive for those seeking to stop the genocide in Gaza and other manifestations of nationalist militarism around the world.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/17/7.jpg\")
Anti-war protesters clash with police in January, 2010.
\nTo convey a sense of scale for North American readers, this would probably fit into a single Wal-Mart. ↩
\nIn the UK, “shadow government” simply refers to the party not currently in power—in this case, the Conservatives. ↩
\nTo convey the asymmetrical character of this “conflict,” we’ll confine ourselves to reporting the number of casualties: Palestinian deaths numbered between 1166 and 1440, depending on whether you believe the killers or the mourners, while everyone agrees that 13 Israelis lost their lives—four of them killed by friendly fire. ↩
\nThe building had been empty for some years. UK squatting law dictates that property possession cases are referred to a civil court, although cops regularly carry out illegal evictions. ↩
\nOn November 13, demonstrators in southern California blockaded a defense contractor facility in solidarity with the Palestinians on the receiving end of the bombs that it produces. This report explores how they managed to do so.
\n\nAt 7 am on November 13, dozens of people converged on the sprawling southern California campus of the defense contractor Raytheon in response to a call from Workers in Palestine to take direct action to block the flow of arms to the Israeli military. They blockaded the facility for more than seven hours, during which a couple hundred more demonstrators joined the action in waves, drawn by social media announcements. Together, they succeeded in shutting down operations at the facility for the day.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/15/5.jpg\")
The sign at the main entrance to the facility.
\nLocated just south of Los Angeles International Airport and across from the controversial Chevron oil refinery, Raytheon is one of several weapons manufacturers headquartered in southern California. Like Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Elbit Systems, and General Dynamics, Raytheon profits from contracts with the United States Department of Defense. These contracts enable Raytheon and other weapons manufacturers to profit from providing military technology such as Sidewinder missiles, Paveway laser-guided bombs, Tamir interceptor missiles, and joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs) to the Israeli military.
\n\nSuch contracts have enabled the Israeli military to kill over 11,000 Palestinians since the Hamas attack on October 7. The Israeli military has intentionally targeted hospitals, housing, and educational facilities; almost half of the Palestinian dead are children. Approximately one out of every two hundred people in Gaza has been killed and there is no indication that the Israeli government has any intention of stopping. Elements of the Israeli government have explicitly proposed to force every single Palestinian that they do not kill to flee to the Sinai peninsula, killing or displacing 2.3 million people.
\n\nThis is genocide. The Israeli military is intentionally killing Palestinians by the thousand, solely on the basis of their ethnicity. Direct action against the arms industry that makes this possible is one of the only things that could mitigate the disaster.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/15/2.jpg\")
People holding banners in order to block the main entrance off El Segundo, midday.
\nPeople called for and coordinated this action autonomously, without the formal involvement of any organization or group. On Saturday morning, November 11, a save-the-date flier circulated on social media directing people to a link to join a dedicated Telegram channel. This announcement provided less than two days’ notice of the action. Exactly an hour before the start of the action, at 6 am, a message appeared on the Telegram channel announcing the exact location and target.
\n\nAn hour later, groups gathered at four locations around the facility, since it was necessary to block all three of the main entrances in order to shut down work for the day. The meeting points included the main driving entrance to the facility at the intersection of El Segundo Boulevard and Continental Boulevard, the first walk in/key card entrance on Continental Boulevard, the walk in/key card entrance in the nearby plaza with restaurants, and the back entrance on South Hughes Way and South Allied Way.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/15/12.jpg\")
The red bars represent the locations of blockades in the course of the action. Some of these were maintained for seven hours, whereas others emerged temporarily in response to developing situations.
\nFirst, people barricaded the main entrance and the walking entrances. Employees were redirected to the back entrance, which was over a mile away—a fifteen- to twenty-minute walk. This was the most isolated of all the entrances and the last one to be barricaded.
\n\nWhen participants arrived at the back entrance at Hughes/Allied Way at approximately 7:20 am, it only took three people to begin establishing a barricade and turning cars away. Shortly after the arrival of more people at that location, a large Raytheon truck pulled out of the gate. People stopped the truck at the barricade and the driver turned around, despairing of leaving the facility. In this area, participants used nearby construction materials to create three layers of barricades stretching from the back entrance out to the cross street.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/15/6.jpg\")
Demonstrators holding a banner in front of the barricade at the back entrance.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/15/1.jpg\")
The barricade on South Hughes at the back gate, which prevented a truck from leaving the facility early in the blockade.
\nAt two of the three entrances, people smashed the key pads like piñatas. A highly trafficked four-lane road was filled with rocks from nearby commercial landscaping along with various construction, roadwork, and traffic control materials. The atmosphere was lively, with music provided by a mobile sound system and the occasional use of smoke bombs. Some people displayed banners; others added messages to Raytheon signs. The participants did not police each other, but communicated respectfully.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/15/3.jpg\")
The keypad at the pedestrian entrance next to the main entrance, late morning.
\nThe organizers’ decision not to share the location of the action until the last moment may have limited the number of participants, but it also succeeded in delaying the police response. Police arrived at the back entrance at 9:25 am, over two hours after the blockade began. This included El Segundo police (ESPD), Culver City police (CCPD), and Hermosa Beach police (HBPD). Officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) joined them there later.
\n\nEl Segundo police arrived at the front entrance at 10:53 am, but eventually left. Torrance and Inglewood police showed up at front entrance with support from other agencies at 12:04 pm.
\n\nIt took police many hours to establish control of the situation. The various police departments called in struggled to coordinate with one another. The officers seemed confused. Those from one department would give an order from one direction and officers from another department would interrupt them with another order from a different direction. It wasn’t clear what they were telling people to do; often, their orders were completely unintelligible.
\n\nIt did not appear that the local police were experienced doing crowd control in this kind of situation. They prioritized getting into the Raytheon campus in order to protect it from the inside rather than interacting with demonstrators.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/15/8.jpg\")
A participant lounging amid the barricading material adjacent to the main entrance.
\nWhen the first barricade appeared at the more isolated back entrance, police got out of their vehicles and laboriously moved the barriers, traffic cones, and fencing out of their way. After the back barricade was cleared, demonstrators there established a roving picket, moving further out into the two streets that led to the back entrance. This enabled them to continue blocking access to the facility.
\n\nThis roving picket was eventually displaced by the large numbers of police that began driving into the site in order to position officers inside of the barricade at the main entrance. After a number of routine police cars entered this way, multiple SWAT Humvees and emergency vehicles began to barrel through.
\n\nIn the end, the police response included officers from El Segundo, Torrance, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Culver City, Gardena, Hawthorne, and Inglewood, as well as the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and police from Los Angeles International Airport. Four helicopters hovered above the site for hours. Nonetheless, protestors strategically shifted between the three entrance sites, reinforcing numbers as needed and effectively protecting each other from arrest. The action concluded without any arrests or injuries, despite the fact that by the time the participants decided to disperse, the numbers of protesters and police were roughly even.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/15/4.jpg\")
The main entrance to the facility at midday.
\nThis was not the first action against Raytheon since the latest chapter of the tragedy in Palestine began. On November 1, over 100 Jewish and Palestinian solidarity activists staged a die-in to block an entrance to a Raytheon office in Tucson, Arizona. On November 8, activists in Arlington, Virginia staged a die-in and issued Raytheon a “subpoena” for a Merchants of Death Tribunal. The following day, 150 people disrupted Raytheon’s site in Goleta, California to demand that the United States government call for a cease-fire, an end to private military contracts between Raytheon and the Department of Defense, and for the United States to stop arming Israel. They blocked the main entrance to the site, forcing workers to enter from another entrance. All of these actions drew attention to the role of Raytheon, but it remained to be seen how a smaller number of people could completely shut down a Raytheon facility, even only for a single day.
\n\nLos Angeles can be a challenging context in which to organize direct action. Almost 13 million people live in the vicinity of the metropolitan area, but this population is spread out across a vast space. While public transportation is available, it is rarely accessible or rapid; this makes gathering difficult, whether for organizing or for actions. Most of the more radical political networks are more or less isolated, owing to geography, ideological conflicts, and the complications of identity politics.
\n\nConsequently, turnout at demonstrations in this city has often been much smaller than what you would expect in a place with such a large population. Many of those who do show up are leftists and liberals who, at best, are absorbed into organizations that focus on actions involving a high degree of top-down control and deliberately limited impact. Such organizations often use rhetoric about safety to justify cooperating with the police.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/15/9.jpg\")
Adjacent to the main gate: landscaping rocks doing their part.
\nThis sort of horizontally organized action is rare in the political terrain of Los Angeles. The method via which this action was announced did not draw massive numbers of people, but it minimized the danger that police or counterprotestors would mobilize in response. Once the action got underway, the news about it drew out more people, who were integral to its success.
\n\nIt’s worth noting that the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) did not respond to the action, and this was a factor in how it played out. LAPD is one of the largest police forces in the United States; they have a lot of practice using crowd control and counterinsurgency tactics, and they train with the Israeli occupation forces. At the same time, they have a more established protocol for engaging with protests, so they can be somewhat more predictable. In some cases, they choose a more hands-off approach in responding to occupations. Arguably, it is easier to overwhelm smaller police departments from neighboring towns, but this can result in them taking a heavy-handed approach. In this particular case, the absence of LAPD worked out for the best, as the small-town cops were overextended and did not frontally attack the crowd.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/15/7.jpg\")
The barricade at the main entrance to the facility.
\nDemonstrators adding rocks to the road as the police look on.
\nParticipating in direct action always involves a leap of faith, placing one’s trust in the value of solidarity and setting out to discover what is possible in the course of acting. This is something that demands practice: we must act, reflect and try again. This particular experiment succeeded in bridging several communities, bringing people together across different strategies, experiences, skillsets, backgrounds, and degrees of risk tolerance. Prioritizing security, diversity of tactics, and concrete impact over symbolism set the stage for an effective intervention relative to the number of people who participated in it and the time it took to plan.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/11/15/10.jpg\")
Between the barricades at the main gate, looking at Raytheon in the distance.
\nOn September 21, following the Ukrainian counteroffensive of early September, Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilization” of the Russian population to support the “special operation” that the Russian military has been carrying out in Ukraine since last February. In the following analysis, written in collaboration with Russian anarchists and including translated material from the Russian anarchist project avtonom.org, we examine the response from the Russian anti-war movement and the potential of unrest in Russian society at large.
\n\nIf you are looking for ways to support anarchists organizing in Russia, consider donating to avtonom.org, arguably the chief Russian anarchist media platform.
\n\nAt the end of March 2022, we wrote that the first phase of the Russian anti-war movement had reached its limits, suppressed chiefly by brute force. We anticipated that the next phase would not get underway until economic sanctions and casualty reports began to take their toll on ordinary Russians. Contrary to expectations, however, the Russian economy has not collapsed—due in part to Western capitalists’ loyalty to Russian oil—and Putin has succeeded in minimizing blowback in Moscow and St. Petersburg by drawing recruits disproportionately from smaller towns.
\n\nThe other development that could exert a strain on Russian society is the mobilization of those who have been conscripted for military service—for in Russia, all men 18 and older are subject to conscription. After sustaining casualties well into the five-figure range, Putin has finally opted for this approach. Already, we are hearing stories about people being forcibly enlisted in the Russian military. Will this mean that the war grinds on indefinitely—or could it open a new era of political instability in Russia?
\n\nIn our view, a combative anti-war movement in Russia remains the only hope for peace in the entire former Soviet region. As we argued in March,
\n\n\n\n\n“The only way this war could have been averted—and likely the only way it can be stopped now without tremendous loss of life on both sides—would be if a powerful and internationalist anti-war movement broke out in Russia, destabilizing Putin’s government, hopefully followed by something similar in Ukraine and elsewhere around the world. If the war drags on indefinitely, or is concluded by the brute force of nationalist militarism, that will drive people on all sides of the conflict into nationalist and militarist camps for decades to come.
\n\nBut if the war in Ukraine comes to an end as a result of the rebellion and solidarity of ordinary people, that could set a precedent for more rebellion, more mutiny, more solidarity, and those could spread from Russia to Ukraine, Western Europe, and the United States.
\n
The problem is that over the past decade and a half, Putin has systematically crushed all movements in Russia as well as the surrounding nations. Countless Russians who might otherwise form the backbone of a Russian anti-war movement are already in prison or exile. As anarchists from Irkutsk observed on Telegram the day after Putin announced the “partial mobilization”:
\n\n\n\n\nSummer was a period of recession. No one protested, and if they protested, then they protested in an individual form, and it was more like everyday activism.
\n\nYesterday, the situation changed again. And as someone wrote at the end of February—congratulations, we have a revolutionary situation, but we hasten to add that we have no revolutionary force in our country.
\n
How do you create a revolutionary movement under conditions of extreme repression? This is more or less the same question that people have been struggling with in Iran over the past decade, though with greater volatility.
\n\nThe announcement of the “partial mobilization” prompted a new wave of emigrations. Long lines appeared at the borders, even the border with Mongolia. Ironically, if Russia successfully secures its borders against defectors in order to make conscription effective, that might also close the pressure valve that has made the Russian autocracy sustainable up to now.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/crimethinc/status/1572678694027534338\n\n\n
Immediately after Putin announced the “partial mobilization,” protesters took the streets around the country. As in February and March, feminists helped organize many of the demonstrations. The protests of September 21 and this past weekend were not quite as large as the demonstrations at the high point of the first wave of protest. But considering that the penalties have been increased to the point that one can spend years in prison now for holding a sign, it is impressive that they occurred at all. (As enthusiasts of the poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky, we would like to send a warm greeting to the protesters detained for attempting to read anti-war poetry at the monument to him on Triumfalnaya Square.)
\n\nThe police responded to all of these demonstrations with brutal force, as usual. In addition, the military mobilization itself is being used punitively: many arrestees were served notice to mobilize at the police stations to which they were taken. Of course, such practices will contribute to the disquieting impression that the mobilization is a partisan maneuver on the part of Putin’s government, targeting sectors of the population rather than advancing a patriotic goal—and could result in the troops at the front being less reliable, as well.
\n\nThe most interesting protests occurred in smaller towns around the periphery of Russia, where demonstrators have begun to attempt to defend themselves. In the village of Endirei, in Dagestan, for example, police were compelled to shoot over protesters’ heads to regain control. In Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, protesters attempted to block a road and clashed with police. If the Russian net of control begins to fray, it will start by fraying around the edges, not in the center of the metropolis.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/crimethinc/status/1573018899167182850\n\n\n
With conventional protest so costly, the chief form of protest that has gained momentum over the past seven months has been clandestine attacks, notably arsons targeting recruitment centers and railroad sabotage. Before the announcement of the “partial mobilization,” there had been at least 37 arson attacks against military enlistment offices and administrative buildings since the invasion of Ukraine; by the morning of September 25, at least 17 more such attacks were reported after Putin announced the mobilization. Another one occurred as we were completing this report, bringing the grand total to 55 altogether.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/sssmirnov/status/1574083499174203392\n\n\n
Some of these attacks may well be the work of organized anarchists such as those associated with the clandestine Anarcho-Communist Combat Organization, which has been receiving considerable publicity since we interviewed them last month. Others are simply acts of desperation. In the past 24 hours, a man protesting against the mobilization set himself on fire at the Ryazan bus station. Another shot the head of the recruitment commission in the city of Ust-Ilimsk, Irkutsk. Reportedly, when the military commissar was instructing recruits, the attacker declared “No one is going anywhere!” and felled him with a bullet. As in Kazakhstan, the fact that protest is so difficult means that the line between going out into the streets with a hand-drawn sign and going out alone with a can of gasoline or an improvised firearm is narrower than it is in Western Europe and the United States.
\n\nAlthough it is finally becoming thinkable that, backed into a corner, Putin might one day lose his grip on power, it is by no means guaranteed that what will come next will be better. Frustrated nationalism is the classic breeding ground for fascism, and many of those who have dared to criticize Putin’s foreign policy are hawks who have been demanding a more aggressive policy towards Ukraine and its allies. Putin has cultivated loyal nationalist and fascist movements while crushing autonomous and anti-authoritarian movements and subcultures, and the legacy of the Soviet Union has discredited leftist and communist proposals in the minds of millions of Russians.
\n\nIt is crucial that we direct resources and support towards Russian anarchists and anti-war protesters, so that they will have the means they need at their disposal to make their case to other Russians—not just for the end of the war in Ukraine, but also for a new model of society to follow Putin’s regime, more participatory and egalitarian. The capitalist feeding frenzy that took place upon the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a disaster of catastrophic proportions; it is understandable that many Russians consequently fear change, and it is up to anarchists to show that social transformation could have different results.
\n\nAs we argued in The Uprising in Kazakhstan,
\n\n\n\n\n“Real social change—in the Rusosphere as in the West—will require a protracted struggle. Overthrowing the government is necessary, but not sufficient: in order to defend themselves against future political and economic impositions, ordinary people will have to develop collective power on a horizontal, decentralized basis. This is not the work of a day or a year, but of a generation.”
\n
Russian police struggle to maintain control over protesters in Endirei, Dagestan.
\nWe have long emphasized that the situation in Russia does not warrant our attention because it represents an egregious and exceptional case of state oppression, but rather because it is a varient on the same situation that all of us face all around the world. Totalitarian autocracy has lost no ground in the 21st century as a template for state power. It is gaining ground in Europe—witness this week’s electoral victory for the extreme right in Italy—as well as the United States.
\n\nAs conflicts over resources intensify, exacerbated by ecological crises, we will probably see more wars like the one in Ukraine. Indeed, this is already occurring elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, as hostilities intensify between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Those fighting against authoritarianism and militarism in Russia today are fighting the same things that we must fight elsewhere across the world, and we should be learning from them and supporting them.
\n\nIn a totalitarian regime, sometimes the freest place you can be is the back of an arrest vehicle.
\nWhat follows is a translation of the September 25 episode of the weekly podcast of the Russian anarchist network and media platform, avtonom.org.
\n\nThe main news of the week is the so-called “partial mobilization” announced by the so-called President Putin. In fact, there is nothing “partial” in it: the population of Russia is simply given to the Ministry of Defense to feed on: the ministry will take as many people as they want for cannon fodder. First, they will take away the jingoistic patriots, then the apolitical townsfolk, and then they will come for the remaining intellectuals, even if those are of limited use.
\n\nThis is a gesture of desperation on Putin’s part: it shows that the strategy of carrying out a quick conventional war in Ukraine has definitively failed, that Russia has run out of its more or less professional army, that it has no air supremacy, the modern weapons are running out, and all that remains is to fill up the front line with the corpses of random men from around the country. And of course, this mobilization will not strategically change anything in the war (unless it brings the end of Putin closer). On the one hand, this is good: if the Russian empire began to win, in the long run it would be much worse for everyone who lives in Ukraine (and in Russia too). But in the short term, the mobilization will only bring great suffering to the Russians who end up crushed by the regime’s measures—like those caught in any senseless imperial meat grinder.
\n\nLet’s start with the fact that those who are mobilized will lose their jobs (employment contracts, it seems, are simply suspended for those who are mobilized, but it is clear that in reality, no boss will wait for potential 200s to return [“200” is a Russian expression for a soldier killed in action]), and we will conclude with the obvious risks of cannon fodder on the front line. You can return from the army fighting in Ukraine either in a coffin, or hospitalized with a serious wound, or as a deserter, which in this case is a criminal offense involving a real prison sentence. In other words, even from a purely pragmatic point of view, it is smarter to avoid the army and the mobilization even after you have received the summons, and in the worst case, receive a fine or a suspended sentence.
\n\nHowever, for now, queues of either volunteers or fearless idiots are still lining up. The behavior of those who are now ready to dutifully go to the draft board, although so far there is only an administrative punishment for not appearing (and many guides have come out about this), reminds us of the old Soviet joke, in which they announced at the factory: “Tomorrow we will hang everyone on the grounds of the plant! Do you have any questions?” and in response, a timid voice pipes up from the audience: “Do we have to bring a rope and soap with us, or will those be given out in the trade union?” [In Russian, “a rope and soap” is an expression for what one needs to hang oneself; the soap is to keep the rope from slipping.] It is especially amusing in this regard that in Moscow, one of the mobilization points was set up in the Darwin Museum—apparently in order to immediately present the Darwin Prize to those who show up. As Hannah Arendt wrote, “these people were not villains, perverts, or sadists: no, the worst thing is that they were and remain terribly, terribly normal.”
\n\nWe have no doubt that our readers do not aspire to Putin’s imperialist war of conquest. What are they supposed to do, if they face the threat of being mobilized? [There is a pun in the original Russian here: mobilizatsiya, the Russian for “mobilization,” is adjusted to “moGilizatsiya,” because mogila is Russian for “grave.”] There is only one answer: sabotage it in every possible way. Now, in September 2022, the real “Day of the Deserter” is coming. [In Russia, February 23 is observed as the Day of Defender of the Fatherland, honoring all who served in the military. Traditionally, anarchists organize anti-militarist events on that day, calling it “Day of the Deserter.”]
\n\nDo not go to military enlistment offices, do not accept subpoenas, do not stay at the address where you are registered. Do not tell any authorities where you are: let them try to find you. You can apply for alternative civil service regardless of your real beliefs. Don’t go to work, take sick leave. In general, feel free to break their laws: your life is more important.
\n\nAnother option is to flee the country. For example, Germany seems to be ready to accept deserters from the Russian army. Here, everyone should decide for himself or herself, but it is clear that not everyone has the resources to leave Russia, nor the desire to. In addition, there is the possibility that you will be detained when crossing the border.
\n\nFinally, remember: solidarity, mutual assistance and collective activity. If everyone just sits in the cellar alone or leaves for Georgia, Putin will rule forever [in the Russian, this is phrased “the collective Putin,” as in, the generalized mindset of resignation and obedience]. Participate in actions against the mobilization. The anti-war street protests around the country on September 24 did not draw particularly large numbers of people. But there seems to be some radicalization—in Moscow, demonstrators snatched detainees back from the police. In any case, it is better to be jailed for 15 days or even 10 years than to be torn to shreds by a HIMARS [a US-made light rocket launcher] shell or shot by bandits from Kadyrov’s detachments somewhere near Bakhmut [Ramzan Kadyrov is head of the Chechen Republic and a lieutenant general in the Russian military; Bakhmut is a city in the Donetsk Oblast].
\n\nIt is collective action that can change the situation in the country—not individuals trying to save themselves. Action by all available means. If we sit on the sidelines now, few will get away. On the day the mobilization was announced, military registration and enlistment offices began to catch fire more often, and the more of them burn down, the more slowly the mobilization will proceed. The night of the deserter begins. But be careful: it is important that at least some anarchists are still in Russia and at large when the protests start to attract large numbers of people.
\n\nEither way: sabotage the mobilization, throw sand in the gears of the death machine. Even if you just convince a couple of acquaintances not to take subpoenas, this is already an important act.
\n\nAnti-war demonstrators in Makhachkala respond to police brutality.
\nRussia is losing the ongoing conventional (non-nuclear) war. Yes, and a backward half-de-industrialized country cannot fight against almost the whole world, even if it has a very large territory (if anything, that represents an additional vulnerability). Therefore, if everything continues the way it is going now, then the future of Russia is: capitulation, reparations, poverty, and quite likely disintegration (voluntarily or not). It will be hard for people on the territory of the current Russian Federation, but at least they will have a chance to rebuild their societies from scratch. Anti-authoritarian forces can also play a significant role in this, and it does not matter whether they are called “anarchists” or some kind of “vague democrats.”
\n\nThere is another outcome: frightened by the prospect of repeating the fate of Gaddafi, Putin launches nuclear weapons (provided that those have not already rusted completely). It is difficult to predict the further development of events, but this threat is clearly not limited to the territory of Ukraine. So this possibility is much worse than the previous one. How to prevent it—and whether grassroots political movements can somehow influence this—is an open question. In any case, nuclear weapons are not a very good idea in principle, and nuclear weapons in the hands of a senile old man in the Kremlin are worse.
\n\nAs always happens, under the cover of the war in Ukraine, neighboring countries are also beginning to solve their problems by military force. Here, Tajikistan is exchanging fire with Kyrgyzstan on the border; there, Azerbaijan crosses the border with Armenia and occupies new territories, and all this involves corpses and wounded. The attention of the world is riveted on Ukraine—so why not take advantage of that? This is how the world wars started.
\n\nWe must not forget about this; we should at least pay attention to petty imperialists like Azerbaijan. After all, everything is learned through comparison: Russia, compared to the United States, is also a small-scale imperialist, but nevertheless, this does not mean that we should turn a blind eye to its misdeeds (even if we are told to do so by Noam Chomsky and Roger Waters, who are reliably protected from the electrodes of the FSB [the Russian secret police] by American and British passports).
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/09/26/1.jpg\")
Russian police attacking protesters in St. Petersburg—will they suppress the last vestiges of dissent in Russia, or make it into a pressure cooker?
\nSince 2001, the collectively-run website Antijob.net has provided a “blacklist of employers,” offering a space for laborers in Russia to report on their negative experiences at work. As Russian media and labor organizing have come under increasing pressure, Antijob continues to provide a crucial resource for ordinary employees, even in an extremely repressive environment. Russian corporations and government agencies have repeatedly attempted to bribe the publishers or suppress the site, without success. The so-called “Great Resignation” and a popular Antiwork Reddit site have recently made waves in the United States; we conducted the following interview with Antijob to learn what anti-work agitation looks like in Russia.
\n\nAntijob has also played a role in supporting protests against the invasion of Ukraine, informing Russian workers of their legal rights on the job if they arrested while protesting.
\n\nAs appendixes, we’ve included the Antijob manifesto, the Antijob statement against the invasion of Ukraine, and some examples of the reports workers publish on the site.
\n\n\n\n\n“Remember and tell others: your interests are opposed to the interests of the employer. This is a struggle that has been going on for centuries. The struggle between those who are trying to make a living and those who want to buy a new yacht.”
\n\n-Antijob, “No loyalty to the employer!”
\n
\n\n\nEmployers always write about Antijob. They say this and that—they slander, they claim that they were slandered, they talk about the intrigues of their competitors. Come on, they say, remove the story about the next LLC “Lepyoshki and Matryoshki,” otherwise we will sue you. Or, on the contrary, they offer money for us to remove the material…
\n\nTo be honest, we don’t really want to make employers better. Conflict between employers and workers, whether acute or dormant, is an integral part of capitalism. It will be fully overcome only with the rejection of the wage labor system as such.
\n\n-Antijob, “The presumption of class guilt”
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/21/2.jpg\")
“No loyalty to the employer!”
\nFirst, explain what Antijob.net is and what it does.
\n\nTechnically, we are a feedback web page where workers can leave negative feedback about their jobs. Also, we are a micro-media platform about work and labor.
\n\nPolitically, we are an anarchist project highlighting the problem of wage labor, calling for workers to organize to fight for better working conditions and, of course, against capital and the state.
\n\nWhat inspires you to maintain Antijob?
\n\nProbably the main reason for the continuation of the project and its constant regeneration (as most of the original team has changed) is the tangible result that we can feel from it. We know how many users use our server and we know that it helps put pressure on employers at a relatively low cost of effort from us. We give employees a pressure tool and they use it effectively. As far as we’re concerned, it’s a success.
\n\nTell us a bit about how the project has changed over time.
\n\nAntijob emerged in the early 2000s as a response to the emergence of job aggregators that targeted young people, who made up a large portion of Internet users at that time. These services romanticized the “careers” they promised, and then their users learned the hard way that these careers consisted of working temporary jobs for miserable wages, followed by being firing and cheated. That was the target of our criticism; the method was formed by direct statements from employees. Over time, the Internet expanded, but the problems remained the same. The audience of job search sites increased—and so did ours.
\n\nThe original version of the web page and message was more aggressive; now we are somewhat less radical. But we have not descended into orthodox Marxism, which is usually typical of groups dealing with the subject of the labor movement in Russia.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/21/9.jpg\")
“Blacklist of employers—Antijob.net. Add yours.”
\nWhat impact has Antijob had among workers in Russia? How has the political environment changed since you got started?
\n\nYou could say that our web page has been a pioneer in the field of job reviews in Russia. Employers realized that opinions on the Internet could be a threat to their businesses, and the field of “reputation work” emerged, which has itself become a kind of business.
\n\nFor the authorities, we do not seem to be an obvious threat. There are lawsuits against us and the authorities even block the web site, but these problems were initiated by employers.
\n\nOf course, the situation has become worse as control over the Internet has increased. The political situation has gotten worse, too. The authorities and the police have started to write to us more often, and we are sure that sooner or later we will be blocked for good, the way it is in Belarus and Kazakhstan.
\n\nHow do you moderate submissions? Do you have a fact-checking process? How do you make decisions about what you publish?
\n\nAll the materials are moderated manually. We have several levels of validation; the highest level is given to those reviews in which proof of working for the company has been attached, such as correspondence or documents. Then there are reviews that are confirmed by the person leaving their email address; these are the majority.
\n\nWe filter out any positive reviews because they are not objective in principle. It is almost impossible to check the validity of a positive review.
\n\nWe also have an automatic review checker that alerts us to suspicious activity and allows us to identify people who are trying to misuse our web page.
\n\nWe don’t do detailed fact checking. It is technically impossible with 150+ reviews coming in every week. In any case, we are not trying to claim total objectivity. For us, there is an obvious disproportion of power in the relationship between the employee and the employer—so we trust the employee more, by default.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/21/5.jpg\")
“Labor against work.”
\nWe understand that there have been attempts to suppress Antijob.
\n\nThey often try to hack us, and from time to time, we experience brute force DDoS attacks on our web page. These attacks are organized by employers: they are either getting revenge for the reviews posted, or they are trying to remove the reviews or find out who the author is. We do not remove reviews for money, so an angry employer chooses between spending money on legal fees or hiring hackers.
\n\nThe second type of attack is from what we can call “competitors” in the field of commerce. They create copies of our site, buy similar domains, and try to hijack traffic in order to make money from skimming reviews. Recently, they began to act in a more sophisticated way and attack the behavioral factors of the site using bots, which reduce the average time of visits to the site and the rate of denials in order to reduce the visibility of our site in search engines.
\n\nA separate topic is the courts and RosComNadzor (the Russian digital control authority). Some companies go to court to claim that reviews about them are slanderous. If their effort in court is successful, then after a while we get a request from RosComNadzor to remove the information. If we do not remove it, we are blocked. This has happened several times.
\n\nNow we remove reviews at the request of the RCN, attaching an invoice and a link to the court decision, which often contains the text of the review. If we do not remove the feedback, we get blocked, the website traffic decreases by 70%, and search engine rankings drop, which accordingly makes the attack on the reputation of employers less effective. We are constantly looking for ways to circumvent this threat. Recently, we managed to change it so that the blocked reviews are hidden only for Russian IPs, while all others (including VPN/TOR users) can easily view them.
\n\nSometimes the police and other authorities write to us demanding that we provide the data of the authors. To these requests, we answer by sending the data of disposable emails and the IP of a TOR node. It is an incredible coincidence that everyone that the police are looking for is using TOR and utilizing a high level of digital security, isn’t it =). The police are not very eager to find out what’s up.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/21/3.jpg\")
“No salary—eat the bosses.”
\nCan you give advice to people who might try to start something similar elsewhere?
\n\nIt must be said that starting such projects from scratch can be difficult. The weapon of our web page is its high visibility in search engines and the fame it has accumulated. Those who want to start should be prepared to work for free, but at a higher level than commercial companies. The reputation market appeared long ago and there are a lot of people who want to make a profit in it and are ready to invest resources. For example, we have to contend with commercial feedback pages, competitors intercepting users by advertising, bot attacks on the web page, etc.
\n\nWe are inconvenient for our competitors and for employers because of our adherence to the principle of not removing reviews for money. However, if you have a team or a powerful movement, you need comrades who have technical knowledge in web development, who understand the basics of SEO [Search Engine Optimization] and security in the Internet, as companies are quite willing to pay hackers if you do not agree to withdraw feedback.
\n\nYou have to be prepared to regularly spend time on moderation and on communicating with users, as well as confrontations with the state and the courts. In the Western countries, problems with the law may be even heavier than in Russia and the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States].
\n\nAt the first stage, what is most important is not super-functionality, but publicity. In terms of distribution, stickers helped us a lot. This is a trivial method, and it often did not work well in other projects, but our stickers usually hang for a very long time. Shitty work is a very understandable problem for people of any political conviction. While the anarchist movement in Russia has been active, we have accumulated enough users from big cities thanks to stickers.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/21/4.jpg\")
“Antijob.net—blacklist of employers.” These stickers have been essential to promoting the Antijob site as a resource.
\nHow do you see the connection between different forms of labor resistance such as labor unions, stealing from your workplace, public pressure campaigns, etc.? Which of these tactics are viable in Russia?
\n\nFor us, all methods are interconnected, and each has its pros and cons, as well as regional characteristics. Unions are a good organizational structure, but in Russia they can exist only in industries with large companies and are often overgrown with bureaucracy. Stealing is a good tactic for individual sabotage, but is not looked at well in the society and is unlikely to change the global problem of wage labor. Public pressure is effective on a big enough scale, but mobilizing people to fight thousands of small daily violations of rights involving hundreds of companies is impossible. Solidarity networks as an example of distributed pressure are good, but they require resources from regional activist groups (it is unlikely that anyone will initiate something like this in Russia except these kind of groups), and so far, we have not seen examples of such groups becoming sustainable.
\n\nAll of these tactics require mobilization and a degree of political freedom, which are both lacking in Russia, perhaps apart from passive sabotage (such as refusing to work effectively) or active sabotage (stealing and intentional damage), and perhaps hacktivism as well. In our opinion, the future lies in tactics that do not fall under the scrutiny of repressive structures and cannot be clearly attacked by the bosses, but which are capable of inflicting tangible targeted damage. Sooner or later, the political situation will change and the road will open up for the other tactics.
\n\nHow do you see the connections between labor resistance and other forms of political activity? Over the past 40 years, we have seen labor movements, unions, and workplace struggles grow weaker in the United States, while other fields of conflict (such as anti-police rioting) have intensified. Do you have an analysis about the ways that the terrain of labor struggles is changing and how workplace struggles can remain connected to other struggles?
\n\nWe see work as a central concept that will be zealously defended on all levels, from direct attacks by the police to conceptual criticism by right-wing intellectuals. Unions have been the answer before, but the neoliberal turn has provided a broad toolkit for fighting them. Struggles against police violence, like some other mass protests, are younger and more mobile in their choice of tactics that the state does not have an effective response to yet. In addition, unfortunately, in many ways, peaceful forms of resistance do not pose a concrete threat until they develop into occupations. An organized labor movement is not just about occasional rallies, but about the state having to spend money on social programs and businesses having to shell out on decent wages and offer guarantees to workers under the constant threat of strikes. This is probably more expensive than maintaining a few riot police units.
\n\nBut the labor movement is often very conservative, trade unions have their own structural problems, and new practices (like solidarity networks) have not yet become an effective instrument of struggle.
\n\nIt seems only natural for us that the problem of work remains relevant. The people who suffer the most from police brutality, racism, environmental crises, and other problems are rarely businessmen. They work—officially or illegally—and they suffer the toxicity of the market system. The only question is to what extent we (who are essentially part of the same workforce) can make this agenda relevant.
\n\nIn the United States, there has been a lot of news coverage of the so-called “Great Resignation,” discussing all the workers who have been quitting their jobs since the beginning of the pandemic. Has anything like this happened in Russia? Is quitting a job a form of resistance?
\n\nRussia has also had great resignations—even though these weren’t really resignations, it was more like businesses firing people to cut costs. Without benefits or any guarantees. The first lockdown made the atmosphere so tense that there were no more lockdowns afterwards. People were out of work, and since most Russians had no savings but did have credit debts, everything escalated. The state limited itself to a few cash handouts. If people were not allowed to go out to work and earn their bread, an uprising driven by hunger would have been unavoidable.
\n\nIn Russia, quitting a job as resistance is relevant only for those spheres where there is a shortage of personnel and a sense of their value. Mass resignations are very unlikely because there is no broad self-organization; the resignations of a few employees do not cause any damage. People often work unofficially, so they will receive no compensation, and the benefits to the unemployed are very small. More often, a visible form of struggle will be the continuation or sabotage of work as an individual practice. We are not seeing the opportunity for mass organized action just yet.
\n\nOne of several video shorts by Antijob.
\nHave you seen the Antiwork reddit page from the United States? How is it similar to your project, and how is it different?
\n\nNot only have we seen it, but we also have covered it, including a similar movement in China. In terms of its radical message, the movement is similar to the early Antijob, and we hope that at some point this will become more relevant in our country as well. For us, we see anti-work as a fatigue with the neoliberal work ethic (in the United States) and the pseudo-communist work ethic (in China). It seems that in our country, this ethic has not yet reached the peak after which a radical rejection of work will be perceived seriously.
\n\nAnother problem with this framework is our audience. Some of them work for something like $300-400 per month, while living with children and credit debts. It would be somewhat awkward to urge them to refuse to work.
\n\nWhat can you say about the invasion of Ukraine from where you are positioned?
\n\nBefore the war started, some of us doubted that such a turn of events was really possible. However, it did happen. We issued a statement condemning Russian aggression. Russia’s imperial policy is obvious to us. As usual, it is disguised as “security interests.” We have received several insults from patriotic users trying to prove to us that the war is being fought against “Nazis who spread LGBT propaganda,” but this is different from the patriotic frenzy of 2014 [when the Russian military seized Crimea from Ukraine].
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/21/10.jpg\")
“No salary—eat the bosses.” The sticker is in Ukrainian.
\nHow is the invasion of Ukraine affecting Russian workers? How are the sanctions affecting workers in Russia, and how do you think they will impact the working class in Russia in the future?
\n\nThere are definitely people in Russia who approve of the war, and there are quite a few of them. Many workers live in the information bubble of the state’s “fortress under siege” narrative. From their screens, they see the message “Everyone is against us.” This mobilizes them to support the invasion, shifting the focus to the idea that this is being done for the security of Russia.
\n\nPropaganda platforms use the international sanctions and condemnation to reinforce this narrative in order to draw support even among those who hesitated at first.
\n\nThis mobilization will not continue indefinitely, of course. In a few months, everyone will feel the economic consequences, and if the war is lost, the reputation of the government will be damaged. This will not necessarily lead to an uprising, but we can hope that the social agenda will be more successful in mobilizing for the overthrow of the regime.
\n\nWe plan to be ready for such a turn of events and, as a project directly related to labor issues, to support this process.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/21/1.jpg\")
\nFinally, is there anything people can do to support your project?
\n\nThe easiest way is to support us financially. The development of a project like this always needs resources with which to pay for hosting, or someone else’s work on the project. In addition to this, you can help spread awareness of the project. This is especially important in the CIS countries. Also, we always need people with experience in penetration testing to help find and fix vulnerabilities, and SEO experts to advise us on promotion in different regions in order to increase pressure on employers.
\n\nAnd on the macro-level, you could create an analogue of our project in your area and contact us to create a network of services like ours in collaboration.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/21/6.jpg\")
Antijob participated in publishing this book, “‘Work Sets You Free’—Stories about Workers and Employers.”
\nThis manifesto, which appeared on the Antijob site a decade ago, spells out their basic analysis and goals.
\n\nA significant part of life, we have to give work. Our capacity, time, ideas, successes and failures are reduced to rubles, dollars, and euros—empty bank notes that can never fulfill our desires and needs. Usually this work is accompanied by delays in paychecks, the machinations of employers, nervousness and humiliation from ridiculous rules and idiotic bosses.
\n\nWe do not believe that the existing system of “commodity-capital” relations, which put the exploitation and destruction of people and the planet on the conveyor, can somehow be reformed “from above.” Real change can only come about if people recognize their plight and begin to seek better conditions for their lives on their own—without begging for anything from party bureaucrats or crooks from the bureaucracy.
\n\nHistory shows many examples of rebellious people sweeping away exploiters and thieves overnight, administering true justice and distributing public goods fairly among those who need them most. In this sense, we are closest to the libertarian (anarchist) philosophy and principles of direct action. You can read more about this in the “Library” section of our website.
\n\nWe have no paid employees and no hierarchy. We focus on the use of a wide range of methods of struggle in labor conflicts. We deal with problems related to working conditions and payment, as well as problems that women, young people, and national, sexual, and religious minorities face at work.
\n\nThrough our actions and propaganda, we are trying to develop class consciousness among employees and an understanding that, as a class, we have an interest in social revolution, the victory of which will offer us the opportunity to control our lives.
\n\nWe see our site not only as a place where there is a black list of employers (and where you can leave feedback about employers), but also as a place for coordinating forces in the class struggle, promoting “direct action” in resolving labor conflicts—as opposed to the bureaucratic judicial system, which actually operates in the interests of our class enemies.
\n\nThis site was created over sixteen years ago by several members of the organization Autonomous Action and has been actively developing all this time. This year, Solidarity Networks were created in various cities of Russia, which have already helped people to reclaim stolen wages (Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, St. Petersburg). Thanks to antijob.net, more than a dozen employees received a salary after publishing a review on the site, because many employers are afraid to be included in such lists—and even more so on our site.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/21/7.jpg\")
“Labor against work.”
\nThis war is provoked by the stifled ambitions of the Russian elites. They try to disguise this by talking about the “national interest.” But the working people do not and cannot have any interests in the oppression of the people in Ukraine and the Donbas. Our interests are peace and decent work, not war with the Ukrainians.
\n\nThis is military aggression initiated from the top of the Russian Federation. Yet we will be the ones who bear the consequences of this decision. The oligarchs and the president will not bear the brunt of military spending. Their children will not go to the front, their salaries will not be eaten up by inflation and currency depreciation. You and I have been set up.
\n\nThe Putin regime is now taking revenge on the Ukrainian people for not wanting to live under the boot of the Russian Chekist [i.e., the Cheka, the Soviet secret police agency from 1917-1922, and its descendants, the NKVD, the KGB, and today, the FSB]. Tears and coffins await our mothers, too, but bombs will fall on the heads of our brothers and sisters, workers in Ukraine. We allowed this, but now our task is to stop it as soon as possible.
\n\nToday at 7 pm, anti-war actions will take place in Russian cities. Our antijob.net team calls on you to join them and demand an end to military aggression.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/21/8.jpg\")
Antijob helped to publish a Russian translation of our book about capitalism, Work. Tragically, the artist who designed it took his own life this week in response to the dehumanizing experience of seeking asylum—first in Ukraine, then in Poland.
\n\nhttps://twitter.com/crimethinc/status/1505616538749050884\n\n\n
\n\n\nJSC RTK is the official retail chain of MTS. Why should it be blacklisted?
\n\n1) Management style: Feudalism with authoritarian and totalitarian methods of influence. That is: all retail is divided into divisions, regions, and sectors, at the head of each such division is a person who most often feels like the absolute ruler of the territory entrusted to him and thinks that he has the right to humiliate his subordinates, put strong psychological pressure on them, force his subordinates to deceive customers, without their consent, or assuring them that “It is mandatory” to add items to purchase receipts that: a) are very marginal, b) are absolutely useless for the client. All this is done under the fear of disciplinary action, fines, demotion, or dismissal.
\n\n2) Liability. Every month, inventories are carried out by the store and every three months—with the auditor. All employees must be present at these inventories, regardless of whether they have a work shift that day. Returning to work on the day of the inventory is paid only for those who have a scheduled shift. In case there is a shortage, the re-sorting most often does not overlap; in this case, the surplus is put on the balance, and the shortage is withheld from employees. The shortage is retained in full, and not at cost, as required by the labor code…
\n\n \n
\n\n\nAt work, they held a meeting at which they announced that the entire team was being transferred to minimum wage due to problems in the company… Naturally, I wrote a letter of resignation, but it turned out that none of the employees was going to quit anymore, everyone continued working as usual. While I was working for two weeks before my dismissal, I found a vacancy on hh.ru [headhunter, a popular job search site] for my own workplace, at the previous salary, and I was very surprised. Some time after my departure, the former director called me for a conversation and offered to let me return on the condition that I stop going to political pickets and covering my actions on social networks. Allegedly, there were complaints from my clients that I was against Putin. That was the reason for my removal. In fact, it turned out that no one’s salary had been reduced, everyone was quickly returned to their previous working conditions, but they decided not to inform me about this, so that I would quit of my own free will without scandal. And this whole performance was carried out in order to deceive me, one person, and force me to quit.
\n\n \n
This surprising story was confirmed with a photograph of the contract, which is available on the post on the Antijob site.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2022/03/17/global-solidarity-against-the-states-and-the-militarization-of-the-planet-a-video-presentation-with-speakers-from-ukraine-belarus-and-russia", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2022/03/17/global-solidarity-against-the-states-and-the-militarization-of-the-planet-a-video-presentation-with-speakers-from-ukraine-belarus-and-russia", "title": "Global Solidarity: Against the States and the Militarization of the Planet : A Video Presentation with Speakers from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia", "summary": "A discussion with organizers in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia about how people are experiencing and resisting the invasion in each of those countries.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/17/header-panel.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/17/header-panel.jpg", "date_published": "2022-03-17T20:52:35Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:54Z", "tags": [ "Ukraine", "Russia", "Belarus", "war", "anti-war", "fascism", "anti-fascism" ], "content_html": "With the Anti-Authoritarian Movement Athens and Nosotros EKX, we co-hosted a video presentation in which anarchist organizers from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia speak about how people are experiencing and resisting the invasion in each of those countries, and what solidarity could look like elsewhere around the world.
\n\nThe presentation itself begins at 3:30, after a classic song from the Spanish Civil War, performed by The Ex.
\nThe speakers include Salem in Kyiv, a libertarian socialist and a founder of Operation Solidarity; Yana, a Russian anarchist and a participant in the support campaign for the targets of the Network Case, an entrapment operation carried out by the FSB, the Russian secret police; and Ivan Taratuta of the Anarchist Black Cross in Belarus.
\n\nDonate here to OVD-info, an independent news source about protest movements in Russia.
\n\nDonate via Paypal to the Anarchist Black Cross in Moscow: abc-msk@riseup.net
\n\nDonate via Paypal to the Anarchist Black Cross in Belarus: belarus_abc@riseup.net
\n\nFor anti-authoritarian news sources in Russia, start with avtonom.org. You can also consult the Anarchist Militant website. Meduza and \nOpen Democracy offer coverage of post-Soviet policy in Russia, as well.
\n\nAs of July 5, 2022, Operation Solidarity has suspended operations and is directing people to other projects, as you can read about here.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/crimethinc/status/1497125965415256064\n\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2022/03/04/spring-is-coming-take-to-the-streets-against-the-war-a-call-from-russia-for-demonstrations-against-the-invasion-of-ukraine", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2022/03/04/spring-is-coming-take-to-the-streets-against-the-war-a-call-from-russia-for-demonstrations-against-the-invasion-of-ukraine", "title": "Spring Is Coming: Take to the Streets against the War : A Call from Russia for Demonstrations against the Invasion of Ukraine", "summary": "Chamado para ações globais na Rússia contra a invasão na Ucrânia. ", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/04/header1.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/04/header1.jpg", "date_published": "2022-03-04T12:24:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:53Z", "tags": [ "Russia", "Ukraine", "fascism", "war", "anti-war", "anti-fascism", "call to action" ], "content_html": "
The following call to action originally appeared in Russian on avtonom.org, the platform that emerged from the Russia-wide anarchist network Autonomous Action.
\n\nOur Russian colleagues report that, under a new law introduced this week, those who are found guilty of spreading misinformation about the invasion of Ukraine can be sentenced to years in prison. This apparently includes those who simply refer to the invasion as a “war,” rather than a “special operation,” as Putin’s government has insisted on doing. In this context, demonstrators show tremendous courage taking to the streets.
\n\nThe next mass day of protest is scheduled for this Sunday, March 6. We hope their efforts will be echoed by demonstrators around the world, placing pressure from all directions on the Russian government, the global capitalist class, military profiteers, and all the other forces that are abetting the invasion.
\n\nTo support demonstrators in Russia, donate to the Anarchist Black Cross in Moscow here. To support anarchists in Ukraine, donate here or here. There is also a solidarity structure to support refugees fleeing from Ukraine.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/04/5.jpg\")
The chief supporters of the reigning order in Russia today.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/04/6.jpg\")
Anti-war protesters in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
\nThe Russian army has invaded Ukraine. Putin has lost his senses and his army is bombing cities, shooting civilians, and killing children. More than one million people have fled the country in order to escape from Putin’s “liberators.”
\n\nWe refuse to submit to Russian military censorship. We say openly and clearly: this is war. This is a war of conquest and the Russian army is running it. With weapons in their hands, Ukrainians are successfully defending themselves from the invaders, but we, who are inside Russia, cannot stand aside from these events. We must show each other and the world that we are against this war, that only Putin and his gang need it. To be against the war is genuine anti-fascism right now.
\n\nMarch 6, this coming Sunday, is the general day of anti-war actions in Russia. Take the central square of your city! One of the meeting points in Moscow is the Square of the train stations at 15:00. There are also meetings at 19:00 and other times. Decide and organize for yourselves, team up with your friends. The main thing is to get out on the streets.
\n\nThe Russian authorities are panicking now. They have realized that they are losing this war. That is why they hysterically threaten anti-war protesters—with expulsion, or with dismissal, or with immediate conscription into the army, or with jail. Don’t be afraid of them. Ukrainians in their cities go out into the streets with bare hands to protest against the invaders. They are standing against solders with riffles, against tanks. How can one be afraid of the rusty machinery of the Russian police?
\n\nWe demand an immediate end to the war. We demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. This is the main condition for any further action: the aggression of the Russian Federation must stop. We must stop the slaughter of people. Yes, Putin didn’t ask us when he planned the invasion—but we didn’t stop him in time. So it is important to do it at least now.
\n\nOf course, our main goal now is to stop the war in Ukraine. But we have to fight for the future of Russia, as well. There isn’t much time left for this deranged dictator. His small victorious war didn’t go according to the plan and now his removal is only a matter of time and concrete means. But what happens next, after Putin?
\n\nThe lands of the “Russian Federation” are now at a historical crossroads. The collapse of Putin’s regime may trigger the process of liberation. Sure, they won’t lead to anarchist ideals immediately—but at least Russia will no longer be at war with the rest of the world and with its own population. In this wave of changes, there will be opportunities for serious changes in the political system towards greater decentralization—for example, the complete abolition of the presidency and the transition to a parliamentary republic, which we have been talking about for a long time.
\n\nHowever, there’s another possibility for “what comes next” after Putin: the regime transforming into a pupal stage, into an even more authoritarian regime—the complete closure of all borders and the cessation of international contacts. Blocking half of the Internet in Russia tonight is only the first sign. There will no longer be any forces left for aggressive wars, but this will not make it easier for the inhabitants: they will find themselves in a state reminiscent of North Korea. And there is absolutely no anarchist movement in North Korea. None.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/04/4.jpg\")
The face of Russia’s future as well as present? It remains to be seen.
\nNow, in the coming days and weeks, we all have a unique window of opportunity. Putin’s authoritarian regime has made a fatal mistake and is reeling. If the psychopath in the Kremlin does not press the nuclear button, he will not live long. And now everything depends on us, the inhabitants of Russia. If we remain silent, then the agenda will quickly be hijacked by isolationists and conservatives, who are in the majority in the upper levels of power. But if we are active, we will win. A rusted leviathan needs only to be pushed and it will crumble into dust.
\n\nTake the streets on March 6. If you can’t go out on March 6, go out on other days. If you can’t go out at all, protest against the war in other ways: distribute leaflets and posters, stick up stickers, write “no war” on medical masks, hang posters from balconies. Finally, talk to people. This is now more important than studies, more important than work, more important than anything else in the world. Now the fate of not only Ukraine, but also Russia is being decided. Our future is being determined—and only we will be responsible for what it will be.
\n\nWinter is ending. Spring is coming.
\n\n\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/04/1.jpg\")
A sticker reading “no war” in St. Petersburg, Russia.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/04/2.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/04/3.jpg\")
A sticker reading “no war” on an urban map in Russia.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/03/04/7.jpg\")
A poster attached to a backpack with charming pins, belonging to a Russian anti-war protester.
\nIn this hasty update, we review some of today’s efforts to resist the Russian invasion of Ukraine—from both Russians within the repressive conditions of Russian society and Ukrainians experiencing the full force of military attacks. There is a great deal more to be said about this subject than we can cover here. We will return to analysis shortly, but for now, we aim chiefly to put this information at your disposal rapidly. Those who require background may begin here for a Russian perspective or here for a Ukrainian perspective.
\n\nToday, Russians participated in risky illegal public demonstrations around the country; you can see footage from several of them in this Twitter thread.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/EilishHart/status/1496903893812396039\n\n\n
Ukrainian anarchists made a call for demonstrations at Russian embassies and consulates around the world. As of now, we have seen reports from demonstrations in Finland, England, Turkey, France, Switzerland, and several cities in Germany including Flensburg, Bonn, Berlin, Dortmund, and Dresden. In Israel/Palestine, there were demonstrations in Haifa and Tel Aviv. In the United States, there were solidarity actions at consulates in Seattle and elsewhere. Many of these demonstrations involved hundreds of people—and significantly, they have not been filled with nationalist flags, like most of the other demonstrations in favor of the Ukrainian state. Banners expressing support have appeared from Bulgaria to Manila.
\n\nThose who wish to donate to support anarchists in Ukraine may donate here or here. There is also a solidarity structure emerging to support refugees fleeing from Ukraine. [Update, July 5, 2022: Operation Solidarity has suspended operations and is directing people to other projects, as you can read about here.] You can support the Anarchist Black Cross in Moscow in its efforts to support arrested and incarcerated protesters in Russia here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/02/24/2.jpg\")
On February 24, 2022, anarchists stood at the head of a demonstration for peace in Ukraine and the freedom of Russia, moving along Tverskoy Boulevard in Moscow in the direction from Pushkinskaya Square to Arbat. At about 8 pm, the march was dispersed at the monument to Timiryazev and the police made arrests.
\nA hasty translation of a statement from Food Not Bombs Moscow, which appeared on their Telegram channel a few hours ago.
\n\nWe will never take the side of this or that state, our flag is black, we are against borders and freeloader presidents. We are against wars and killings of civilians.
\n\nPalaces, yachts, and prison sentences and torture for dissenting Russians are not enough for Putin’s imperial gang, they should be given war and the seizure of new territories. And so, “defenders of the fatherland” invade Ukraine, bombing residential areas. Huge sums are being invested in murder weapons while the people are impoverished more and more.
\n\nThere are those who have nothing to eat and nowhere to live, not because there are not enough resources for everyone, but because they are distributed unfairly: someone has a lot of palaces, while others did not even get a hut.
\n\nIn order to keep and increase the benefits in their hands, the government declares wars. Who will collect their intestines with their hands, who will have their arms and legs torn off by explosions, whose families will bury their children? Of course, all this does not apply to the ruling minority.
\n\nWe must resist the militaristic regime and the war it is waging with all our might. Spread information among your comrades, fight as best you can. No war but the class war. Solidarity instead of bombs.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/bad_immigrant/status/1496961410261258240\n\n\n
\nhttps://twitter.com/EilishHart/status/1496940047693713413\n\n\n
We conducted an audio interview with a spokesperson from “The Committee of Resistance,” the newly formed anarchist coordinating group in Ukraine. They will be fielding public inquiries about what anarchists are doing and experiencing in Ukraine here. We transcribed the interview as we talked.
\n\n“The Committee of Resistance” is a coordination center connecting anarchists who are participating in resisting the invasion in a variety of ways. Some are currently on the front; some are engaged in media work about the conditions arising during this resistance, in hopes of clarifying the situation in Ukraine to those who have never been there and explaining to anarchists elsewhere why they believe that resisting Putin is connected with liberation. The project will also be engaging in some support projects in whatever remains of Ukrainian civil society as the invasion proceeds—for example, in Mariupol’, some participants brought material support to the center hosting children orphaned by the war—and will assist some comrades in escaping from the conflict zone, though “dozens and dozens” of anarchists and anti-fascists are participating in the resistance.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/crimethinc/status/1497957394193674244\n\n\n
As of now, the participants are watching to see what mutual aid projects will emerge in Kyiv out of efforts on the part of the population as a whole, and which ones they can participate in most effectively as anarchists.
\n\nThe person we spoke with is currently located in Kyiv; others have already departed to participate in territorial defense in the regions surrounding Kyiv. In Kyiv, many people are leaving the city, but there has not been aerial bombing since the morning, when the Russian air force attacked military targets around the city and also hit some civilian housing areas in outlying towns, including Brovary, killing dozens of people.
\n\nIn Kyiv, the atmosphere is tense, but there is no fighting in the city yet, only the aircraft attacks of the morning. Thus far, anarchists have experienced no known casualties, but they are facing serious dangers. It is a hard situation, but so far, the participants’ spirits are high.
\n\nThe majority of the participants in this project were expecting the invasion to begin soon, generally speaking, but they were not expecting it today, and were not entirely mentally prepared for it. In fact, they planned and prepared for months, but now they are discovering everything that remained unfinished in their preparations. Still, in the course of hasty meetings, they have pulled together this coordination project.
\n\nThe spokesperson described their immediate goal: it is not to protect the Ukrainian state, but to protect Ukrainian people and the form of Ukrainian society, which is still pluralistic, even though the Ukrainian state itself is neoliberal and a nationstate with nationalism and all the other terrible things that come with that. “Our idea is that we have to defend the spirit of this society against being smashed by Putin’s regime, which threatens the entire existence of the society.”
\n\nPanning back from that immediate goal, the spokesperson said that they hope to confront Russian military aggression while promoting anarchist perspectives both within Ukrainian society and throughout the world—to show that anarchists are involved in this struggle, that they have taken sides in it—not with the state, but with the people who are impacted by the invasion, with the society of the people who live in Ukraine.
\n\n“It is not an exaggeration to say that the whole population is confronting the invasion. Of course, some people are fleeing, but any force that has any investment in the political development of this place in the future has to be on the side of the people here right now. We want to make some inroads towards being connected with people here on a larger scale, towards getting organized with them. Our long-term task, our dream, is to become a visible political force within this society in order to secure a real opportunity to promote a message of social liberation for people.”
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/bad_immigrant/status/1499086971876032517\n\n\n
In response to the statement that the “whole population is confronting the invasion,” we inquired as to whether that included the people in the “republics,” the Luhansk People’s Republic [LPR] and Donetsk People’s Republic [DPR]—the regions in eastern Ukraine that have been occupied by Russian-armed and funded separatist forces since 2014, which Putin just recognized as “independent.”
\n\n“Honestly,” the spokesperson answered, “I have little perspective about the people in the so-called republics; I have only lived here for several years”—having grown up in a neighboring country—”and have never been to the southeast. It’s true that there have been some conflicts about language, and local far-right people have exacerbated these conflicts needlessly and severely. For this reason, in the ‘republics,’ we saw some people waving Russian state flags to welcome the troops, even though this ‘independence’ will mean the opposite, it will mean being totally subservient to Putin. At the same time, nearby across the trenches, on the other side of the battle lines, we saw thousands of people waving Ukraine’s national flags. We don’t like this, either, as anarchists, but it does mean that people are ready to fight—that they are ready to defend their independence not only as a state but as a society.”
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/bad_immigrant/status/1496968005212721153\n\n\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/02/24/1.jpg\")
“This is the Kyiv subway now. Frightened people gathered underground to avoid possible bombings from Putin’s regime.”
\nWe will follow up soon with more news.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2022/02/22/against-annexations-and-imperial-aggression-a-statement-from-russian-anarchists-against-russian-aggression-in-ukraine", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2022/02/22/against-annexations-and-imperial-aggression-a-statement-from-russian-anarchists-against-russian-aggression-in-ukraine", "title": "Against Annexations and Imperial Aggression : A Statement from Russian Anarchists against Russian Aggression in Ukraine", "summary": "A statement from a network of Russian anarchists against Russian aggression in Ukraine.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/02/22/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/02/22/header.jpg", "date_published": "2022-02-22T09:08:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:53Z", "tags": [ "Russia", "Ukraine", "war", "civil war", "anti-war", "anti-imperialism", "anti-fascism" ], "content_html": "This statement appeared in Russian on avtonom.org, a media project that grew out of the libertarian communist network Autonomous Action.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/02/22/1.jpg\")
“No War Between Nations! No Peace Between Classes!” A mural in Moscow promoting Autonomous Action.
\nYesterday, on February 21, an extraordinary meeting of the Russian Security Council was held. As part of this theatrical act, Putin forced his closest servants to publicly “ask” him to recognize the independence of the so-called “people’s republics” of the Luhansk People’s Republic [LPR] and Donetsk People’s Republic [DPR] in eastern Ukraine.
\n\nIt is quite obvious that this is a step towards the further annexation of these territories by Russia—no matter how it is formalized (or not formalized) legally. In fact, the Kremlin ceases to consider the LPR and DPR part of Ukraine and finally makes them its protectorate. “First the recognition of independence, then annexation”: this sequence was already worked out in 2014 in Crimea. This is also clear from Naryshkin’s stupid reservations at the meeting of the Security Council (“Yes, I support the entry of these territories into the Russian Federation “).1 Since the meeting, as it turned out, was broadcast on tape [rather than live], and these “reservations” were not cut out, but left in—the hint is clear.
\n\nIn an “appeal to the people” that same evening, Putin seemed to “agree” with these requests and announced the recognition of the LPR and DPR as independent states. In fact, he said the following: “We are taking a piece of the Donbass, and if Ukraine rocks the boat, then let it blame itself, we don’t consider it a state at all, so we’ll take even more.” According to Putin’s decree, Russian troops are already entering the territory of the LPR and DPR. This is a clear gesture of threat towards the rest of Ukraine and especially towards the parts of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions still controlled by Ukraine. This is the actual occupation [in the sense that until now, Luhansk and Donetsk were only occupied by proxy].
\n\nWe do not want to stand up for any states. We are anarchists and we are against any borders between nations. But we are against this annexation, because it only establishes new borders, and the decision on this is made solely by the authoritarian leader—Vladimir Putin. This is an act of imperialist aggression by Russia. We have no illusions about the Ukrainian state, but it is clear to us that it is not the main aggressor in this story—this is not a confrontation between two equal evils. First of all, this is an attempt by the Russian authoritarian government to solve its internal problems through a “small victorious war and the accumulation of lands” [a reference to Ivan III].
\n\nIt is quite probable that the Kremlin regime will stage some kind of spectacle of a “referendum” on the annexed lands. Such performances already took place in the DPR and LPR in 2014, but not even Moscow recognized their results. Now, apparently, Putin has decided to change that. Of course, there can be no talk of any “free and secret voting” in these territories—they are under the control of militarized gangs completely dependent on Moscow. Those who were opposed to these gangs and against integration with Russia were either killed or forced to emigrate. Thus, any “referendum on the return of Donbass like a lost ship to its native harbor” will be a propaganda lie. The residents of Donbass will be able to formulate their decision only when the troops of all states—and first of all the Russian Federation—leave these territories.
\n\nThe recognition and annexation of the DPR and LPR will not bring anything good to the inhabitants of Russia itself.
\n\nFirst, in any case, this will lead to the militarization of all spheres of life, even greater international isolation of Russia, sanctions and a decline in general well-being. Restoring the destroyed infrastructure and taking the “people’s republics” into the state budget will not be free, either—both will cost billions of rubles that could otherwise be spent on education and medicine. Have no doubt: the yachts of the Russian oligarchs will not become smaller, but everyone else will begin to live worse.
\n\nSecond, the likely aggravation of the armed confrontation with Ukraine will mean more dead and wounded soldiers and civilians, more destroyed cities and villages, more blood. Even if this conflict does not escalate into a world war, Putin’s imperial fantasies are not worth a single life.
\n\nThird, this will mean the further spread of the so-called “Russian world”: a crazy combination of neoliberal oligarchy, rigid centralized power, and patriarchal imperial propaganda. This consequence is not as obvious as the rise in the price of sausages and the sanctions on smartphones—but in the long run, it is even more dangerous.
\n\nWe urge you to counter the Kremlin’s aggression by any means you see fit. Against the seizure of territories under any pretext, against sending the Russian army to the Donbass, against militarization. And ultimately, against the war. Take to the streets, spread the word, talk to the people around you—you know what to do. Do not be silent. Take action. Even a small screw can jam the gears of a death machine.
\n\nAgainst all borders, against all empires, against all wars!
\n\n\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/02/22/2.jpg\")
\nSergey Naryshkin, head of Russian foreign intelligence, stumbled in response to a question from Putin, accidentally proposing to absorb the DPR and LPR into Russia when he was not supposed to say that part aloud yet. ↩
\nNow that the United States has withdrawn from Afghanistan after a ruinous 20-year occupation, we can see the attacks of September 11, 2001 in a different light. Islamist jihadists were baiting the empire into a disastrous “war on terror” that they knew would polarize more people into their own camp, even as it inflicted unthinkable tragedies upon all sides—above all, upon those on the receiving end of imperialist violence. From the initial attacks to the US government response, the entire affair was calculated to channel conflicts resulting from capitalist colonialism into a religious war that would reduce the spectrum of possibility to a choice between rival militarisms.
\n\nThe US occupation of Afghanistan did nothing to erode the power of the Taliban, over fully 20 years—we must conclude from this that it only strengthened them. The US occupation of Iraq set the stage for the rise of ISIS, which was only stopped by a more or less autonomous resistance in Rojava.
\n\nSettling for a choice between colonial militarism and fundamentalist militarism is “letting the terrorists win”—not only the ones who planned the September 11 attacks, but the ones who took advantage of them to extend profit-driven capitalist resource extraction projects further into the Middle East. There are other visions, other possible futures, and we should see to it that they are not buried.
\n\nOne way to do this is to revisit the social movements that preceded the September 11 attacks and the subsequent invasions and occupations. On September 11, 2001, anarchists and others around the world were involved in a powerful movement against capitalist globalization. In the United States, thousands were preparing for what was expected to be a showdown at the upcoming meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. Building on powerful mobilizations in London, Seattle, Québec, and Genoa, they hoped to foster a worldwide movement that could abolish capitalism and replace it with horizontal social structures based in solidarity and mutual aid. The attacks and consequent war helped to disrupt this movement, though it continues to the present day—and likely remains our only hope of surviving ecological collapse.
\n\nThough the IMF protests never properly took place, thousands still gathered in DC on September 30, 2001 for what were effectively the first anti-war protests of the 21st century, opposing the US invasion of Afghanistan when no one else dared criticize the hawkish bilateralism of the US government. Let it be remembered that anarchists were at the front of this demonstration, clashing with the police in the name of protecting everyone from a disastrous war.
\n\nIn the following account, two young anarchist organizers who had come to DC to prepare for the mobilization against the IMF describe their experience of the September 11 attacks, during which they stood before the flaming Pentagon, looking into the burning future that we now inhabit. This text is an artifact of a more innocent time—and a document of the moment when that innocence was lost. It’s also occasionally hilarious.
\n\nThe following text is adapted from a version that appeared in Rolling Thunder in 2006. For an anarchist analysis of the significance of the September 11 attacks from that time, you could begin with this.
\n\n“Have you heard the news? Those motherfuckers just killed somebody in Italy!”1
\n\n“It’ll be our turn next in DC. And Genoa is nothing compared to the heart of the beast. It’s fucking war, and somebody’s probably gonna die.”
\n\nTime always gives one a strange sense of perspective on events. Nothing has fundamentally changed. The enemy is still the same, and so is what I want, which is of course anarchy.
\n\nOn the morning of the day this story takes place, we were ready to die. We weren’t really sure what that meant but I’m pretty sure it was at least a distant cousin to what embittered young men and women in Palestine feel. I don’t know. Those who die for the cause don’t come back to tell the tales.
\n\nIt was September 11, 2001, and I was hungry, dirty, exhausted, and utterly happy. I awoke in my dusty sleeping bag on the floor of a strange little basement, beside two of my comrades, who were still asleep. Not only was I hungry, but I also had to piss, ideally in some vaguely hygienic location. Next door—although to be exact there was no literal door, only a sort of a metaphysical door where a more corporeal door should have stood—I could hear the rough sounds of two people engaging in a vocal act of passionate revolutionary love… and blocking my path to the bathroom and the kitchen.
\n\nWhile the details escape me, and in fact I’m pretty sure I never knew them to begin with, I had somehow ended up in this apartment preparing for total war against capital and the state. It was a pretty big apartment, enough to fit about a dozen scouts for the upcoming protests against the summit of the International Monetary Fund. Our job was simple—we were making propaganda for everyone who was showing up: posters, leaflets, wheatpasting material, and the inevitable badly photocopied and confusing map of downtown DC. We hoped to improve that last one.
\n\nSo, I was utterly fucking happy. Often life is a hard thing, full of difficult decisions, personal tragedies, and the dreary weariness of a meaningless job. In better cases, there was no job, and the task was figuring out where the nearest dumpster with some vegetables was and a place to put my sleeping bag that wouldn’t involve getting too wet. Yet here I was, with both of those problems solved. The basement apartment, offered to us through shadowy means by a friend of a friend of a friend, was the perfect hideout. It was within spitting distance of the White House and most of downtown, and like all good hideouts, it had a distinct lack of windows—it was camouflaged by anonymity in a dehumanizing tenement block. The food problem was solved by the cornucopia of dumpsters in the nearby suburbs, where a certain organic food chain was literally overflowing with bread products and vegetables that were barely beginning the process of decomposition—and large amounts of decidedly vegan-unfriendly sugary treats. Dumpster crack, we called it.
\n\nAnd I was addicted.
\n\nI began engaging in all sorts of lewd fantasies about my upcoming breakfast. Orange juice and bagels—with those little onion bits that I normally detest—would be perfect. Some sugary smashed pastries would be perfect. I could imagine bathing in orange juice and building castles of bagels.
\n\nThe noises next door finally reached a dramatic conclusion. Despite their temporary nonviolent blockade of my route to the kitchen, I was so filled with feelings of good will towards my fellow creatures (except cops and politicians, fuck those bastards!), including the two lovebirds next door, that I could not even hold my delayed breakfast against them.
\n\nThe woman in particular impressed me. At first, I had written her off as a sort of well-meaning yet clueless reformist. Just a few months earlier, she had been giving workshops on nonviolence, yet she seemed to have transformed overnight into a bloodthirsty revolutionary with a plethora of creative—and decidedly not non-violent—ideas about how we could defend ourselves against the inevitable clash with the DC police. Love and revolution were in the air. I tiptoed to the kitchen.
\n\nI am not normally a morning person. That day, though, I was so brimming with happiness that I felt positively empowered. After all, when in life is the mission so simple? People were coming to try to shut down the center of neoliberal depravity that is the IMF, and we had to make sure they all had maps to get to wherever they needed to get to. Thanks to my magical Kinko’s free copy card, which a friend had manufactured by drilling a little hole into it, and the benign negligence—or was it complicity?—of Kinko’s employees, my job was pretty easy. My simple life was absolutely overflowing with meaning—but I needed help. After all, maybe fifty thousand people were going to show up to this protest, and that was more photocopies than I could make single-handedly.
\n\nIn the kitchen, I concocted a fantasy in a fit of anarchist evangelism: I would go to the Starbucks only a block away, sit down next to the first pasty, tired, middle-aged bureaucrat of the Global Capitalist Death Machine I could find, and say, “Look, buddy. I know you hate your job, waking up to work nine to five and being a minor accomplice to all sorts of nastiness. Secretly, you realize your life is meaningless. Drop that cappuccino right now, ’cause I got meaning to spare. Forget this whole capitalist job deathtrap and join me in Kinko’s.”
\n\nMy reverie was interrupted by the dull roar of the dump truck trash compactor. Fuck, and no one had taken out the trash! I grabbed the black trash bag and stumbled out the door into the bright sunlit morning. I waited by the trashcan, and within a few minutes the smiling trash collector, wearing an orange jumper, took the trash off my hands. He leaned over as if to tell me a secret:
\n\n“You heard, then? They just drove an airplane into the World Trade Center!”
\n\n“No shit! Well, you know, things are crazy nowadays.”
\n\nI just smiled and waved goodbye as he went on to the next building. Man, the things people say in the morning. It was sort of interesting how he, the legitimate morning trash man, had his counterpart in me, the illegitimate midnight trash man. Our jobs had the same slogan: Get the Trash. I only hoped that I had lightened his load by removing enough of the trash from circulation to make up for the trash that I had just given him.
\n\nAnyway, I was never one to let a good breakfast or even meaningful anti-capitalist activity get in the way of going back to sleep in the morning. So, I tiptoed past the post-coital embrace of my pals and slithered back into my sleeping bag.
\n\n“Get up, man! You gotta run upstairs!”
\n\nJust as I was about to get back to bed, the crazy toothless landlord peers in and wakes me up, putting me in a distinctly bad mood. I feign grogginess, and he all but drags me out of my sleeping bag.
\n\n“They just blew up the World Trade Center! There’s bombs going off!”
\n\nTo think that I had doubted the trash man. There went my peaceful morning.
\n\nNot realizing the full impact of these events, I grabbed another crusty bagel and shambled upstairs with my comrades to our landlord’s personal enclave, where, surrounded by cigarette butts and porn magazines, he had a small TV perched strategically on the filing cabinet across from his desk. Yes, the trash man was right. On the screen, there appeared to be some sort of James Bond movie playing. Or perhaps War of the Worlds. Except that the news reporter seemed to be actually panicking, uncertain how to comprehend, much less provide an advertising-friendly light chatter about a thousand people being incinerated.
\n\nThe building was on fire, and there was definitely some sort of gaping hole in the World Trade Center. Then I heard a shriek from the news reporter. The tower just crumbled in place, like a demolition. Except that it was full of people, many of whom had been running the financial apparatus of global capitalism, pushing the buttons that calculated the numbers written in the blood of the poor.
\n\nEmphasis on the past tense.
\n\nI sat transfixed by the spectacle on the television. There were undoubtedly many janitors and cooks and window washers in there, even if they were in the minority. No, this was not good. I wasn’t horrified, really, not sad, not scared, not surprised; this was just not something that I had expected to happen this morning. My brain was racing, yet somehow a useful analysis of the destruction of a sizable portion of New York City evaded me. The landlord, still in his boxers, just stood there slack-jawed. Behind me, the two lovebirds started cheering, including the person I had met just a few months earlier giving a nonviolence training. How times change!
\n\n“Well, I sure don’t think that was us. I mean, no one told me about that. That was someone who was really fucking angry.”
\n\nMy logic is less than razor sharp in the morning. My good friend Colin had a serious and grave look upon his face. “Those kids are not thinking clearly,” he said, rolling his eyes in the lovebirds’ direction. “We’ve got to figure out what to do, and quick. This definitely changes our plans.”
\n\nBefore Colin could get another word in, a report came across the screen that the Pentagon had been hit with an airplane. There was a quick cut to the Pentagon, which now featured a burning hole in its side.
\n\n“Jesus Christ. That’s not too far away. I mean, I can’t say they didn’t have it coming. The Pentagon’s full of fucking murderers. But this is getting a little too close for comfort.”
\n\nSuddenly, my razor-sharp deductive powers put it together that there might be even more planes in the sky that could be crashing into other parts of the US power complex. It seemed quite logical that another plane was going to crash into the White House, from which so much sheer horror was perpetuated throughout the world. We were literally a few blocks from the White House. The plane could miss and hit us! What about the debris? I wasn’t exactly sure what happened when a plane crashed into a city, but it seemed likely to have ramifications for everyone nearby. All of downtown DC was more or less worthy of being destroyed in the eyes of many people on the planet, and we were unlucky enough to be in the middle of downtown. I wished I could put a black flag on the roof so whoever was behind this would know we were anarchists trying to fight capitalism and the state, who had no great love for the US government—so please don’t kill us, thank you very much!
\n\nThe television at this point was stuck on what appeared to be an infinite loop of the planes ramming into the World Trade Center, over and over and over again. Just in case we had missed it. The news reporters were babbling and stammering. They mentioned that the death counts could be five thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand. Another airplane had apparently been shot down somewhere near Pittsburgh.
\n\nWe had friends in Pittsburgh. Then they mentioned that there was something like thirty more planes flying around unaccounted for somewhere.
\n\n“We’ve gotta get out of here.”
\n\n“My family has some land out of state. We can go there and just lay low,” suggested the former nonviolence trainer.
\n\n“I have a small car, we can fit everyone inside,” someone else chirped up. The landlord was glued to the screen, entranced by the images of endlessly repeating explosions. He seemed oblivious to our conversation.
\n\n“But we’d have to drive by the White House—is there a way out of the city from here without going near it or the Pentagon? Who’s got a fucking map of DC?”
\n\nWe had several thousand of them, albeit as photocopies with housing locations for out-of-town activists on them. Oh yeah, and these maps also listed major corporate and government centers with little notes about their heinous deeds and connections to corporate globalization.
\n\nThere was going to be a clampdown.
\n\n“We gotta burn the maps.” Colin read my mind.
\n\nThe news now had footage of how the collapse of the World Trade Center appeared from the streets of New York. There were people covered in grey dust, screaming, running down the street away from clouds of debris bellowing from the collapse. People were dying somewhere in those clouds, and there was a lot of screaming on the television. Then, on the blue scrollbar, it was announced that there were bombs going off outside the State Department.
\n\n“Wait a second, if we try to drive out of here, what if a bomb goes off near our car?”
\n\n“There are going to be thousands and thousands of people all trying to get out of DC—it’s going to be a clusterfuck. What if they target that?”
\n\n“Now we know how the Palestinians feel every day,” said Colin. It was probably the most sensible moment of the entire conversation.
\n\nAfter the hubbub had settled down, we decided it would be best to stay put for the time being. One of us went downstairs to burn everything a police officer or federal agent could hold against. us. It was unclear what the future held, but martial law definitely seemed a none-too-remote possibility.
\n\nLacking anything better to do, we all sat around and watched television. The news reporters and television commentators had gained some sense of composure by this time, and had begun pointing fingers.
\n\n“The government suspects Middle Eastern terrorist Osama Bin Laden, whose terrorist group previously attempted to blow up the World Trade Center.”
\n\nIt sort of surprised me that there was no commentary from our esteemed leader George W. Bush, or really from anyone in a position of power. They must have all been hiding beneath their desks. The television just kept looping the segment of the World Trade Center falling, over and over again.
\n\nWe started flipping through the channels. The same picture was on almost every channel. The death tolls varied widely, but they seemed to be in the thousands at least. There were more reports of the car bombs going off outside the State Department and maybe elsewhere in DC. The news occasionally flashed an aerial picture of the Pentagon pierced with a burning hole. Apparently, the corporate media had already realized that even the American public had less sympathy with the Pentagon than with the World Trade Center.
\n\n“We have to do something other than just sit here.” Colin growled.
\n\n“How many chances do you get in your life to see the Pentagon on fire?” I asked.
\n\n“Let’s walk to the Pentagon,” said Colin, always a fan of walking.
\n\nNot a bad idea. How many chances do you get to see the Pentagon on fire? I had always sort of imagined triumphant anarchists storming the Pentagon, driving out the murderous number-crunchers and paper-pushers. Probably things would catch fire—I mean, how else to dispose of a place that had caused so many affronts to human dignity?
\n\nHere we were and someone else had set the Pentagon on fire. I wished that whoever had been behind the attacks had at least noticed that we had a rather important protest coming up in mid-October. If they could have only waited a few weeks! Alas, the US anti-globalization movement was apparently not on the radar of whoever had done this.
\n\n“Yeah, I’ll go with you.”
\n\nWhy not? After all, there was nothing we could do to affect the situation by lurking about in the basement—and given the number of sketchy characters that had been hanging around, I would not have been terribly surprised if the police knew it was there. This would be a great excuse to clamp down on us anarchists. If they knew that a quorum of us could be found a few blocks from the White House we would be up shit creek—our little hideout was not nearly as safe as my companions seemed to think. Or maybe I was just being paranoid. Either way, a walk outside could only help. So Colin and I got our things together, and headed out into the light of day.
\n\nIt was still pretty early, and the sun was shining. The streets around our block were strangely eerie and silent.
\n\nI guessed that everyone was inside glued to their televisions, as paralyzed as we had been just moments earlier. We walked around the corner, and within minutes we were approaching downtown DC. Total panic was in full swing. All sorts of white men in suits, no longer drinking their lattes as usual as they calmly ordered the full-scale destruction of our planet, were desperately trying to get the fuck out of their buildings. It was extremely bizarre watching the sort of capitalists who ordinarily travel by limousine hoofing it down the sterile streets, stumbling and panting and heaving.
\n\nWe walked by the White House, and I half expected it to burst into flames before my eyes. Instead I got to witness the evacuation of the White House cooking staff. I saw a chef with a huge Swedish Chef hat perched precariously upon his head break into full gallop, presumably leaving the Little Boy Prince of the World to finish cooking his own steaks and foie gras. The whole thing didn’t look like tragedy, it looked liked absurdist farce. I half expected Bush to come running out in his underwear clutching hundred dollar bills in his hands. Whatever security forces were supposed to be present were clearly also busy getting the fuck out of there and were not in any way attempting to maintain law and order. It struck me that now would also be the perfect time to rob a bank.
\n\nWe passed through downtown and kept walking. We kept running into people panicking, and yet in other parts of DC life was going on as normal. On blocks containing government buildings, it was like an outtake from the\nSoon-To-Be-Apocalypse with employees running desperately down the streets. In the poorer neighborhoods, however, it seemed like life was more or less continuing as usual, although most businesses were shut as everyone was home watching events unfold on television. Overall, it was a fine autumn day, and the strangeness of the situation seemed to dispel some of the inhuman gloom that lays upon Washington, DC.
\n\nWe headed south until we finally arrived at the end of the road. On the other side of the river lay the Crystal City, the complex of glass-encased high-rise apartment buildings and fancy hotels that served the military bureaucracy of the Pentagon. On the other side, I could see columns of smoke rising up from the Pentagon. Reaching in my pocket, I took out an old instant camera and snatched a picture of the Pentagon on fire. I thought to myself, damn, this really is a once-in-a-life-time event. Well, hopefully twice in a lifetime. I asked Colin if he wouldn’t mind taking our picture together in front of the burning Pentagon. So, we snapped a quick picture. No one saw us. I lost the camera before developing the film, which is probably for the best.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/09/10/4.jpg\")
\nAs we approached the dreadful hulk of the Pentagon, full-scale insanity became apparent around us. There was absolutely no order here. From what appeared to be one of the main doors to the building, Pentagon officials were pouring out in a mad rush, grasping their suitcases with looks of shock and awe upon their faces. At the nerve center from which the world’s most fearsome military was directed, no one had any control. Smoke continued to billow ominously from the wreckage; the building was clearly burning up, and most employees appeared to have no fucking clue what was going on and were basically pissing their pants. It was sort of ironic seeing terror in the eyes of the functionaries of an establishment that had inflicted so much terror upon so many people throughout the world for so long. Were they really surprised that their misdeeds had come back to haunt them? Oh, how the mighty had fallen.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/09/10/3.jpg\")
\nWe watched the madness from afar at first, then crept closer. There weren’t even any cops in front of the entrance to the Pentagon, no barrier between us and the burning building. Soon we, two avowed anarchists, were only a few yards from the Pentagon, an institution we had both committed our lives to destroying. This institution was on fire, and all of the people who worked there were running away from it. A thought came upon us. This was our once-in-a-lifetime chance. We could run into the Pentagon. Who knows what we might find? In theory, we could destroy computers, steal files, wreak all sorts of havoc. With no police presence, we might even be able to get away. A quick look at Colin and it was clear he was thinking the same thing. I leaned over to his ear and whispered to him.
\n\n“Should we do it?”
\n\n“I’m not sure. It might be the only chance we ever get.”
\n\nWe stood there mulling over the prospect. We took a few deep breaths, taking in the destruction around us. Running into the Pentagon to do something—anything—did seem tempting, especially as one employee ran out with a handful of papers and a laptop. These murderers were actually surprised that they were getting a taste of their own medicine!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/09/10/2.jpg\")
\nBut by this time, the police were finally showing up to begin cordoning off the Pentagon. Our chance was gone. It occurred to me that we were in a precarious position, since we appeared to be the only people present who were not running away.
\n\n“We don’t have the slightest excuse to be here. I mean, we don’t even have an excuse to be in DC.”
\n\nWe really didn’t. What would the police do if they identified us? We were both your proverbial out-of-town agitators with arrest records at various anti-government events.
\n\nWasn’t it a bit mysterious that we just happened to be hanging around the Pentagon at the very moment it burst into flames? If they put us in the back of a car, would anyone ever see us again? This moment would be a ripe opportunity to pick off two weird-looking guys with Charles Manson beards creeping around the Pentagon while it burned.
\n\n“We should get out of here. They’re gonna shut this whole fucking area down.”
\n\nThat was observant—the police, who had been conspicuous in their absence for the duration of the madness around the Pentagon, had finally arrived. They seemed dazed and confused, but I expected that they were going to start asking questions any minute, and I sure didn’t want my name associated with any of this—much less my camera with the picture of me in front of the burning building!
\n\nWe walked coolly away, until we were just out of sight.
\n\nWhat if we were stopped a little further down the road? Looking around to make sure no one could see us, we began a mad sprint to get as fucking far away from the Pentagon as we could.
\n\nThe way back was not nearly as easy as the way there.
\n\nLike a beast that was slowly awakening from being dealt a near-lethal blow while asleep, the machinery of the state began kicking into action, confused and angry. The buzz of police sirens could be heard in the distance. We could see the road we had walked there in the distance, too. It was swarming with police.
\n\nThere was an entrance to the interstate nearby, so we ran up onto it as quickly as we could. What followed was straight out of a post-apocalyptic zombie movie: not a soul was on the highway, and we walked straight down the middle of I-95 for what seemed to be an eternity without a car in sight. In the distance, smoke was rising, bodies were burning, police sirens were wailing, but we had found the straight and narrow road the fuck out of Dodge. The highways crossed over each other like twisting snakes, and again, we heard sirens howling behind us. Did they see us? Were they coming for us? Were they busy with something else? Maybe they were closing the highway down! We scrambled off the road into the traditional hiding spot of robbers, outlaws, and anarchists—the bushes. We waited for the coast to clear, hearts beating out of our chests and Godspeed, You Black Emperor! blasting in our heads. When the sirens passed, we ran out of the bushes and straight up an embankment. At the top of the grassy embankment was a fence, which we leapt over in desperation, only to end up in Arlington cemetery! Judas fucking Priest!
\n\nWe ran, passing through countless rows of white crosses standing mute in the autumn sun. We ran through the flags and the fields, with the lamentations of legions of restless ghosts blowing in the wind around our feet. We ran until we came to a hill, and we climbed the hill. We climbed the hill, and there, sitting at the top, were two men. Their clothes were even more tattered than our own. Their bodies were even filthier than our own. Their beards were even more Mansonesque than our own. They were swilling malt liquor from a forty-ounce bottle in a brown paper bag. They were homebums, and they were watching the Pentagon burn.
\n\n“Sit down, brother,” one of them suggested. The other extended his arm, his meaty fist clutching the forty, wordlessly offering me a swig from it.
\n\nI shook my head. “Thanks, man, but we’re lost. How the fuck do we get out of here?”
\n\nThe first homebum gave us surprisingly lucid directions out of the cemetery, and we turned to leave. At the last moment he looked me dead in the eye and intoned, “But be careful. There’s guns, guns, GUNS IN THE GRAVEYARD!”
\n\nWith this last piece of disquieting information ringing in my ears, we fled back down the hill. The homebum—who had filled a role in my afternoon comparable to that played by the one-eyed oracle in ancient Greek tragedy—proved more or less accurate in his assessment of the local geography. We crawled through more bushes, jumped over more fences, and somehow ended up in the idyllic backyard of a suburban home.
\n\nAt least now we just appeared to be two maniacs who were getting ready to break into a house, as opposed to two maniacs at the scene of a national catastrophe surrounded by police. We crept around the yard to the road and beheld a great crowd standing at the top of an embankment overlooking the highway. Not a soul looked at us or even seemed to notice us. Instead, with the air of a macabre neighborhood barbecue, everyone from small children to grandmothers was staring into the distance, watching the Pentagon burn. It seemed almost festive; people did not appear upset—perhaps surprised, if anything—and most seemed happier than your average employees at work. It was, after all, a pleasant autumn day. There seemed to be a spirit of racial harmony that contrasted sharply with the usual terrorizing racism of Washington, DC. Black, Latino, Anglo-Saxon—it didn’t matter, everyone was in their front yards watching the Pentagon burn. In almost dead silence, with a bit of small-talk here and there. After a moment, we bid adieu to the assembled neighbors and continued down the street.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/09/10/1.jpg\")
\nWe were totally disoriented at this point, with little idea where we were or how to get home. It was getting later, and I was still feeling a little paranoid.
\n\nIt seemed that if we ran around the streets of Arlington, Virginia too much longer while full-scale chaos was in motion, we were almost guaranteed some trouble. While I usually welcome a tussle with the cops, today was not going to be a good day for that sort of thing. So, what to do?
\n\nCheap Chinese! There are few better things to eat after walking to watch the Pentagon burn than cheap Chinese food. We also suspected that the restaurants offering this fare might be ideal for laying low. Around the corner was a classic Chinese restaurant in one of the rundown strip malls that litter America, and the Chinese joint was—miracle of miracles—still open for business this September the 11th. I emptied my pockets, counted the quarters and nickels, and managed to scrape together enough for some vegetables and rice. The lone employee seemed to be happy some customers had appeared, and didn’t even appear to find us strange. An irrepressible fan of Chinese hot mustard, I covered my portion in the yellow tangy substance and turned around to watch the TV.
\n\nIt seemed as if nothing had changed since the morning. Our dear President George W. Bush was still nowhere to be seen. Instead, the footage of the falling towers (with shots of the Pentagon infrequently intermixed) was being played over and over again as if with the intention of inducing hypnosis. The talking heads of the media seemed to be somewhat more in control of themselves than earlier, and were now repeating “Middle Eastern terrorists” and “Bin Laden” over and over again, although there seemed to be no concrete evidence yet.
\n\nI was relieved that they were not mentioning the word “anarchists,” as this gave us a little time. However, it was pretty clear over noodles and fortune cookies that this would be the perfect excuse for a witch hunt against us and anyone else the government considered a threat. Colin and I sat, mostly in stony silence, trying to figure out the implications of this day for the movement—and how the hell we were going to get home.
\n\n“We should eat slowly. Look, we’re pretty safe here. No one knows we’re here. We can just sit here and eat until it gets dark and we can get home.”
\n\n“That’s going to be a while yet.”
\n\n“Well, better safe than sorry.”
\n\nWhen night finally began to fall, we bid a fond adieu to our host at the Chinese joint and proceeded down the road.
\n\nWe asked the few pedestrians we encountered for directions, and eventually found our way home through endless alleys and bridges and back streets. When we arrived at our little hideout, we looked around to make sure we weren’t being followed, then employed various comical anti-surveillance techniques that mostly involved walking in circles, before finally stepping inside. Apparently, the landlord had gone back into his porn- and cigar-laden cocoon, and our friends were inside chomping at the bit as they planned their getaway.
\n\nColin and I argued that we had to compose some sort of anarchist response, and quick. There was only going to be a short window of time between September 11th and the inevitable government clampdown. If we could manage to pull together a quick response, we could at least get our views out there. People were confused and terrified, easily manipulated by the heartless fuckers who were surely going to launch some sort of war in the not-so-distant future. Right at that moment, however, the US power structure was utterly paralyzed. If we had our act together, we could do something inspiring and historic then and there before the government even had time to respond with its witch hunts and wars.
\n\nThere were a host of practical questions to discuss: should we carry on with the IMF protests, should we flee underground before the roundups began, should we go to the public with our own answers about why some people had hated the US government and corporations enough to ram a plane into their headquarters? There was so much to do and so little time.
\n\n“When those bastards declare war, we gotta march in the streets of Washington, IMF or not, just to show people everywhere that we’re against the fucking US government, too.”
\n\n“Then we really gotta get the fuck out of dodge.”
\n\n“Man, that was the craziest fucking walk I’ve ever taken.”
\n\nTwenty years ago, we were ready to die. Or more precisely, to be murdered in cold blood by the state, as had happened to Carlo Giuliani in Genoa. That was a price worth paying for our dreams of a more compassionate world. We thought, not entirely without reason, that they were going to shoot at us, and we were headed to the front lines anyway, to lay down our lives if it came to that. And then history outpaced us—not, I fear, for the last time—and our thunder was stolen by people with drastically less concern for human life than ourselves.
\n\nIs the world a better place? Are we any closer to the revolutionary situation we dream of as a result of the decisions we have made or failed to make? And at whose feet can be lain responsibility for this sorry state of affairs, and for all the bloodshed and sorrow that took place that day and the days before it and the days after? Ours, theirs, the corporations’, the governments’? Twenty years ago, we were ready to die. For better or for worse, there is no doubt that the years to come will provide us with many more opportunities to ask ourselves if that is still the case.
\n\nGentle reader, the rest is up to you.
\n\nShortly after September 11, 2001, a cell of the CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective produced a text entitled “After the Fall” in an attempt to analyze the causes and ramifications of the events of that morning. Those days—and these—demanded much more than words in a newspaper or on a computer screen, but we still stand by this piece of writing as possibly the most clearheaded and prescient statement to come out of the anarchist milieu at that time. The future is still unwritten.
\n\nFor background on this reference, you could start with this article about the mobilization against the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy. ↩
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