KAE TEMPEST, LORENZO KOM’BOA ERVIN AND PETER GELDERLOOS WILL BE AMONG THE PERFORMERS AND SPEAKERS AT THIS YEAR’S BIG ANARCHIST GET-TOGETHER. ~ Freedom News ~ With the bookfair nearly upon us Freedom threw a few messages at the organisers, who have kindly gotten back to us with the workshops schedule, fresh off the spreadsheet. The event, which is taking place at the Leake Street (or Waterloo) Tunnel, near Waterloo Station, is hosting its usual wide assortment of stalls, including our own venerable table, AK Press, Housmans, Agit Press, Dog Section Press, the Anarchist Review of Books, PM Press and many more. But no bookfair is complete without people having a good old try at putting the world to rights in the form of a workshop or breakout room, and with more than 20 events across four rooms ranging from sex work decriminalisation to radical singing and urban liberation, visitors will be spoiled for choice. Full programmes with room numbers and pointers for where to go will be available on the day, but below is your at-a-glance guide to what’s happening when. All details, as ever, are subject to change so double check on the day! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10AM Learning from Capitalism’s Past and Confronting Future Challenges | Old Moles Collective A presentation and discussion on capitalism’s history and the threats to our future through environmental crises and war. A journey to TOTAL LIBERATION and VEGANARCHY | Autonomous Animal Action Solidarity with our fellow animals is not too much to ask. Join us for a discussion on how we can create a multi-species world.How can we create a radical antispeciesist pathway? What skills and tools do we need? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11.30AM Anarchism and Anti-War Resistance in Russia | Antti Rautiainen Thousands of Russians have been opposing the invasion of Ukraine. During the first month of protests against the war, 15 000 people were detained. Small street actions are still taking place, although they are heavily persecuted. More than 300 people have been imprisoned for anti-war activities, including six anarchists and antifascists. How can we support the movement? The Mimeo Revolution | Aloes books Talking about the history, mechanics and technology of the stencil and spirit duplicator, with hands-on demonstrations to include using typewriters, scribes and both stencil and spirit duplicating machines. Global Ecology not Global Economy: What can we learn from the history of the 1990s eco-anarchist direct action movement? | Mayday Rooms The archive and meeting space is whipping out its girthy documents for people to look at and discuss. Decrim! What? Why? How? | Decrim Now Exploring the fight for decriminalisation of sex work, the movement’s history, and its current manifestation in the UK and beyond. Offering a historical perspective as well as practical steps for change, the workshop seeks to empower attendees with knowledge and next steps, whether they are sex workers, allies, or allies-in-development. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1PM The Apocalypse All Over Again | Peter Gelderloos Exploring ecological crisis’s roots in colonial capitalism and the State and how collective memory, mutual aid, ecosystems of revolt, and rooted networks can transform how we understand the urgent question of survival. The author will discuss examples from the UK, Catalunya, North and South America From rage to insurrection | Earth First! What can we learn from successful radical ecological direct action in the past? What worked, what didn’t, and how can we encourage more of the good stuff, and get over appealing to governments and corporations to do the right thing? And when is the moment to stop discussing and fight back, navigating questions of grand strategy versus insurrectionary joy? Solidarity Economy as Strategy | Solidarity Economy How we can build collective power to survive and overcome capitalism? The solidarity economy – a pluralist framework which can include cooperatives, unions, mutual aid and much more – offers a framework for surviving together while also building systems and infrastructure for a better world, based on values of cooperation, solidarity and mutual support. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.15PM Social Revolution | Andrewism The radical writer, vlogger and Solarpunk advocate will be talking on this, that and the other. Prisoners Solidarity Catching up on who’s in need of support, how to do so, and most likely writing a supportive letter. Punx of Colour, solidarity and collective organising: The story of Decolonise Fest | Decolonise Fest Taking an opportunity, following the big event earlier this month, to reflect on the DIY project. Radical Singing | Red and Black Song Club and Song Bloc Singing and discussion session. Join in and learn about the history behind the songs. No experience necessary and children welcome! The Red and Black Song Club is based in Glasgow and celebrates songs of working class struggle, anti-fascism and resistance. Song Bloc brings together various singers from Fire Choir, Trans Chorus, Stop Shopping Choir and F*Choir. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.30PM Kae Tempest – Satellite stage Tempest, fresh off his latest album Self Titled, will be performing a range of his works. Solidarity work in Palestine with the International solidarity movement | ISM Hear from activists who’ve been doing solidarity work in Palestine and find out how you can get involved. The ISM was founded during the second intifada and has since then brought internationals to Palestine to stand in support of communities struggling against the Zionist regime. How to start a union in your place | Draughts Workers Union Come hear from the Draughts Workers Union on what steps they took to build a fighting union in their workplace, and how you can do the same in your job. How to map your workplace, have 1v1 conversation, find key leaders, and get ready to strike. Solidarity not Charity? | Bad Apple Magazine Based on interviews with former guests and volunteers of an anarchist shelter for migrants and refugees with no recourse to public funds, the workshop will look in depth at some of the complex power dynamics in practical solidarity across borders. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.45PM Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin The US anarchist and former Black Panther will speak on the continuing necessity of black anarchism, and about building a new anti-fascist movement, recognising the importance of black anti-fascist movements of the 1960s and 1970s that created the National Committees to Combat Fascism. He will discuss how understanding European colonialism, and its maltreatment of African peoples, is important to any discussion of Fascism. The talk will be followed by a Q and A session. Genocide Panel (Palestine and Sudan) Discussing two of the most lethal situations in world politics today. Panel details being finalised, Anti raids and migrant solidarity: resisting changing types of violence | Anti-Raids London Violence from the state and the street against migrants is rising and converging. As the landscape of violence changes we have to grow and be flexible to meet it. We’re bringing together a coalition of London anti raids groups to share knowledge and skills, and think together with attendees about strengthening networks to keep all our neighbours safe. Fighting for our right to the city | Festival For Urban Liberation: Aylesbury Campaign, Lesnes Occupation, Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth, London Renters Union Grassroots organising for housing access to everyone. We are fighting against flying rents, attacks on council houses, ethnic cleansing in the estates and housing in London turning from a common to a commodity. The city’s sterilised urban space, ghost like empty buildings, deserted areas rotting as tokens of the stock market, are reclaimed for our right to live a life worth living. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pic: B/Flickr CC The post London Anarchist Bookfair 2025: The workshops list appeared first on Freedom News.

THIS LUCID AND PASSIONATE DOCUMENTARY ABOUT PALESTINE ACTION IS WELL WORTH VIEWING BEFORE STARMER’S “SOCIAL DEMOCRATS” CENSOR IT ~ Rob Ray ~ I can certainly see why the makers of To Kill A War Machine are worried that proscription of the subject of their documentary, Palestine Action (PA), will turn into a ban for them too. The Rainbow Collective have produced one of the most explicitly pro-direct action features I’ve seen in years. Unapologetic in tone, the programme includes interviews with members and supporters, who talk about their motivations, strategies and the ways in which State repression has ramped up since the start of Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. PA hardly needs much of an introduction after a week of intense media focus. But in brief, over the last half-decade the non-violent group has carried out a campaign of sabotage against Israeli arms firm Elbit, which operates numerous sites across the UK and is well meshed with Britain’s corporate and political Establishments. Its tactics have been to target not just the property of Elbit itself – making it as expensive as possible to operate in Britain specifically – but to also go down the supply and financing chain, hitting the likes of Barclays for investing in the firm and Arconic for selling it monitor screens.  Produced in a kinetic, glitchy manner which will be familiar to anyone who has watched many activist film productions, To Kill A War Machine flicks between footage of PA activists smashing through windows and rooftops, interviews, slickly dystopian Elbit advertising bragging about its lethality and accuracy, and blurred but nevertheless horrifying footage of the child victims of such “precision.”  Included in the interviewees are several recognisable figures, in particular eloquent takes from Sukaina Rajwani, mother of Filton 18 prisoner Fatema, Shezana Hafiz of Cage International, and Palestine Action founder members Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard.  The analysis and insights provided are well-presented, lucid and passionate, with Rajwani’s deeply admirable fortitude speaking out in what must be extraordinarily stressful circumstances watching her daughter going through the hell of Kafkaesque persecution being particularly worthy of note.   A minor quibble I might have with interviewee Lowkey’s otherwise solid analysis is his focus on how they draw primarily from the Raytheon Nine and suggestion that their iteration is unique, whereas throughout, I was seeing influences from the animal rights movement of the 1990s and 2000s, which might be useful to draw out a bit. The campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences has strong parallels to Palestine Action’s strategy, particularly “go down the chain, find the weak points”.  They’re also being dealt with in similar ways (with some crucial differences).  In the case of HLS, government repression was more subtle, but used the same playbook – identify, vilify, isolate and shock. Rather than use the wild overkill of anti-terror legislation, in the 2000s Establishment reaction took the form, initially, of information gathering and infiltration by the State, while the media portrayed animal rights activists in the most ghoulish of ways, with the aim of dividing a perceived “extreme” wing of the movement from the cover of broader support.  Legislation was then beefed up, with injunctions being used to physically push legal campaigning away from the gates of the research establishments. Punishments were increased to allow for exemplary sentencing – frighten people off by making it clear political crime in particular was unacceptable, in a way that non-political crime was not. Back in 2015 I interviewed an AR activist from the time about this for Black Flag (p.16-17), who explained: “People had been sent down before, but it became multiple forms of harassment. We’d do a local stall about animal rights and local cops would show up trying to shut us down. They’d stand in front of the stall, intimidating people away. They’d follow activists around, stalk them at demos, anything to isolate us. At government level they changed laws to facilitate crackdowns. Harassment legislation was extended to companies after we challenged the idea in court. In SOCA (section 146-7) they specifically included anti-animal rights rules by banning home demos. That was specifically to stop us from getting shareholders’ addresses and targeting the communities where they lived, which was extremely effective. All the cops who used these laws have moved on now, so they’ve fallen out of use, but these laws are still on the books.” It might seem odd that Starmer, who would be well acquainted with such strategies from his time as a pro-bono movement lawyer in the 2000s, doesn’t simply re-employ them before leaping to terror legislation. Until, of course, you remember that his priority is not to stop a movement, but to outflank his political critics while shoring up his international position. The disastrous effects of proscription on free speech and individual liberty are simple collateral damage in the cause of silencing far-right “two-tier” accusations and brown-nosing the US.   The documentary highlights this procession around 3/4 of the way in, noting the path from an early 2022 meeting between Priti Patel and Elbit (shading into a dodgy inclusion of a rep from the supposedly independent Crown Prosecution Service), through to Labour’s use of arrests for non-violent action under terror legislation and a ghosting of activists within the prison system so thorough that even their lawyers couldn’t reach them. A clear path of private complaint, Establishment mobilisation, and politically-charged escalation towards the moment of outright repression we find ourselves in. The hope in the face of proscription is it might finally break through to the general public that it’s all our rights that are at risk when a political party decides to arbitrarily apply the label of “terrorist” to strictly non-violent forms of dissent. Unlike the bleating of far-right types about university students telling them to get lost, proscription is full-on, indisputable State censorship in the raw.  To Kill A War Machine is a solidly made, inspiring film to watch, but even if it were absolute rubbish, it has already done the job it set out to do. I ended up watching it in a meeting room, on a borrowed projector, via a hastily-organised showing by people intent on getting it out before the proscription vote. Up and down the country this weekend, and again tonight, others are doing the same. It’s already out there, and a State ban would come too late to shut the barn door. Now it’s not just the story of Palestine Action, it’s the story of Palestine Action they don’t want you to see.  To Kill A War Machine is available now and can be streamed or downloaded from their website. The post Film Review: To Kill A War Machine appeared first on Freedom News.

AS THE GROUNDBREAKING PLAY “METAMORPHOSIS” REACHES THE END OF ITS RUN IN GREECE, ITS DIRECTOR REFLECTS ON ITS SIGNIFICANCE TODAY ~ Tasos Sagris ~ I remember very clearly the moment I decided to direct this iconic literary work. I felt an intense need to offer the audience a chance and a way to share what remains hidden and unspoken behind the imposed norms of this world. Metamorphosis tells the tragic story of a man who wakes up one morning and cannot go to work. This event turns him into a social parasite, a gigantic insect that those around him perceive with fear and horror for what he is and what he represents. The initial dramaturgical idea was to highlight job insecurity and the constant anxiety of survival that overwhelms us all. With the outbreak of the pandemic, suddenly—without changing anything in the performance itself—the content took on new dimensions. People around us started being seen as parasites, it became easy to label someone as a harmful entity, and patients were isolated, dying alone and buried without their loved ones present. After the pandemic ended, the war in Ukraine broke out, followed by the genocide of the Palestinian people, the global rise of fascism, and skyrocketing prices of basic necessities like housing and energy. We live on a planet that is becoming more unlivable every day. Gregor Samsa, imprisoned in the routine of his daily work life, represents each one of us, trapped in the gears of a production system that neither benefits nor includes us. Work is no longer a means of creative expression, but an anxious necessity and a condition for survival. In today’s era of job insecurity, fixed-term contracts, and the constant threat of unemployment, Gregor’s body transforms into a parasite—symbolising the crushing of the human spirit under the weight of the endless effort to remain productive and useful. The identification of “I am” with “I produce” creates a perpetual survival anxiety that permeates every aspect of our existence, making Kafka prophetic in his portrayal of the unacceptable labour conditions we face today. The pandemic brought to the surface a radical shift in how we perceive the human body and physical contact. Fellow humans became potential sources of infection, potential threats. The social condition of the pandemic turned the afflicted into modern-day Gregor—beings whom their surroundings faced with fear and revulsion. Even after restrictions were lifted, this experience left an indelible mark on our collective psyche, exposing the fragile nature of social bonds and the thin line between acceptance and rejection. War and violence erupted. Civilians crushed between the hellish volcanoes of geopolitics are today’s Gregors—waking up in a world where daily life has been replaced by terror, uncertainty, and displacement. Metamorphosis becomes a collective traumatic experience, with humanity watching in anguish as the spectre of war returns to the heart of Europe, showing just how thin the thread of peace and normalcy we took for granted really is. The cycle of violence is perpetuated by the capitalist arms industry, and the future appears increasingly terrifying and irrational. Kafka’s narrative takes on a chilling relevance as we witness the global rise of fascist and authoritarian trends. The family in the play accepts, recognises, rejects, and ultimately wants to rid itself of the “foreigner,” the other—a microcosm of society’s slide toward fascism. The forgetting of our shared humanity, the division into “us” and “them,” and the normalisation of disdain for the different. Power, as always—regardless of its source—exploits fear and insecurity, curtails freedom as a concept, an act, a reality, and stigmatises minorities and all forms of otherness. Gregor’s anguish mirrors the daily struggle of millions of people for basic necessities. Life becomes both a refuge and a prison. Millions of families experience unbelievable stress over economic survival, watching their income evaporate just to meet basic needs like shelter and heating. Home becomes a privilege, warmth a luxury, and daily survival a constant battle against the uncontrollable forces of the market. Kafka, living in a time of economic instability, foresaw humanity’s paradoxical condition—its inability to secure the essentials for all despite its technological advancement. The world is becoming increasingly “Kafkaesque”. This adjective—Kafkaesque—has entered our vocabulary to describe a world that is irrational, incomprehensible, full of faceless bureaucratic labyrinths and invisible powers. A hundred years after the death of the Czech author, our lives are more Kafkaesque than ever: algorithms govern our lives without our understanding, bureaucratic systems leave us vulnerable to their decisions, and artificial intelligence reshapes social and labour relations. The modern individual experiences this sense of powerlessness and alienation, as decisions that deeply affect their life are made in inaccessible spheres of authority. We wake up one morning in a world where all the rules have suddenly changed—new crises, technological shifts, and socio-political upheavals constantly alter the landscape of our existence. In Kafka’s world, domination is omnipresent—sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, suffocating, elusive—a condition that also characterises our current era. With digital surveillance and predictive algorithms, mechanisms of control have infiltrated every aspect of our daily lives, beyond the limits of our immediate perception, often without us even realising it. The modern person, like Gregor Samsa, desperately searches for cracks in the system, gaps and edges where they can exist on their own terms. The slits beneath the door, the dark corners of the room, the spaces beneath the furniture—these small zones of freedom sought by the transformed Gregor correspond to the small nuclei of resistance cultivated by today’s subjects: from encrypted communication to alternative communities and grassroots movements. Like frightened cockroaches in the twilight of a system programmed to destroy us, we seek places where we can preserve our humanity. Despite its grim ending, Kafka’s Metamorphosis harbours a paradoxical optimism: the potential for radical change. This is the hopeful interpretation of the play. Gregor’s metamorphosis, though violent and unwanted, frees him from the chains of his social role, from family obligations, from the exhausting work routine. Likewise, every major crisis and disruption in our lives can become an opportunity for a deeper reevaluation of what we took for granted. The power of total liberation lies in the recognition that identities, relationships, and social structures are not natural givens but human constructs that can be reinvented. Kafka, denouncing an alienating world, reminds us of the innate human capacity to dream and create different worlds—a capacity that remains revolutionary even in the darkest of times. The play Metamorphosis concludes this season, yet the work itself can continue to be performed for years, and its meaning for us may continue to evolve as events, history, and the fabric of our lives change. A hundred years after Kafka’s death, our performance has shown that the great Czech author remains more relevant than ever. As the world becomes increasingly Kafkaesque, as power structures grow stronger, individuals search for ways to escape through the cracks of the world like frightened cockroaches. And yet, at the same time, humanity continues to carry within it the possibility of radical transformation—the power of total liberation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Translated from The Epoch The post Kafka in the 21st century appeared first on Freedom News.

POLITICAL ARTISTS ANDREI MOLODKIN AND SANTIAGO SIERRA, AND WIKILEAKS AMBASSADOR JOSEPH FARRELL, TALK TO A/POLITICAL ABOUT THE SHAM OF WESTERN LIBERTY, JULIAN ASSANGE, AND HOW ART CAN STILL TRANSFORM PAIN INTO DEFIANCE ~ Becky Haghpanah-Shirwan ~ The heightened tensions of international politics are reflected in the work of Andrei Molodkin (Russia, 1966) and Santiago Sierra (Spain, 1966); two artists from contrasting backgrounds who share strikingly similar agendas through a formal language of Political Minimalism. Presenting highly charged and censored artworks, the exhibition EAST / WEST, presented by A/POLITICAL and currently on at the National Gallery in Sofia, questions the legitimacy of the “free world” in the binary approach to the global landscape.  Andrei Molodkin, Democracy / Santiago Sierra, The Maelstrom installation shot.  A/P: Santiago, the entrance to the exhibition sets the tone with The Maelstrom where you overlay the video with the quote by Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. He repeats: Europe is a garden. We have built a garden… The rest of the world…Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden. The gardeners should take care of it…Because the jungle has a strong growth capacity, and the wall will never be high enough in order to protect the garden… The gardeners have to go to the jungle.”  How does The Maelstrom reflect the darkest elements of western ‘democracies’? Santiago Sierra: Calling this regime of terror the government of the people is Orwellian. The people of Africa do not deserve this permanent plundering of lives and wealth and Europe does not deserve this inhuman degradation of values. Civilisation exists where there is solidarity and mutual aid, where there is not, it is fascist barbarism no matter what name they give it. Democracy is choosing between two twin dictators every four years. So much evil is disgusting. A/P: Are you tired of the distinction between East and West and the creation of artificial geo-political boundaries? Whose agenda does this segmentation play into? Santiago Sierra: A lot, and let’s say it clearly that is an idea of the Anglo-American elite to prevent the union and progress of Europe. The European Union is a cave of corrupt politicians who do not care about anyone’s life or death, only serve their transatlantic masters and profit from it. Here it is about taking over the enormous natural resources of Ukraine and Russia always coveted by Atlanticist fascism, generating a lustfully sadistic war of attrition while they show us their nuclear missiles like perverted exhibitionists who open their raincoats at the door of a school. The exhaustion is total and there is not enough fentanyl to take us all down. Andrei Molodkin: As a soldier I was punished and put in military prison. We could only sleep 4 hours a day so that you lose your will. They convoyed us with weapons with the bullet inside the gun, so when you walk in front of them in the street you have the bullet on your back. You feel this tension so strongly. The boundaries are internalised. It is the citizens who are treated as animals for a political agenda based on manipulation.  East / West installation shot A/P: Andrei, your new work Bloodline uses the blood donated by military deserters. It is placed on the floor like in a Mausoleum, surrounded by Santiago’s series of veterans facing the wall. How does Bloodline serve as a contemporary portrait? Andrei Molodkin: When you’re in the military you have to be like a drone, or a machine — following orders without any questions. But of course many people were resisting. During my time I saw my contemporaries being punished for their disobedience. One of my friends was stationed on military storage. One morning we went to the canteen, and I saw a bloodline lasting around 100 meters, like a signature, on the floor. I later understood it was this man who had shot himself in the heart to relieve his tension. We passed this line quietly but the image — his last sign against his repression — stayed with me. For this work I poured the blood of deserters from, for example, the Russian Army, the Ukrainian Army, from Israel, into the empty vessels of democracy. It becomes a memory of my friend. The deserters are the true heroes who refuse to work for the corrupt power structures.  A/POLITICAL: Why is it important to make a statement like the exhibition EAST / WEST in today’s political climate? Santiago Sierra: There is evident fatigue with this absurd regime that we suffer. Hypocrisy infects populations saturated with lies that only try to live in peace while deliriously sadistic massacres are incited whose only reason for existence is the greed of sociopathic arms merchants debased by corruption to the core. Openly fascist speeches are smeared with progressive makeup without this idea of progress representing in our eyes anything more than the lie of a bloodthirsty empire that collapses in the face of the people’s desire to live and truly progress in a society without fear of massacre. Permanent. Andrei Molodkin: During my service in the Soviet Union Army near the end of the collapse of the Soviet Union, my work was to convoy missiles from the place of production to the place of dislocation. As I transported them for journeys of up to a week, I understood the size and the quantity and which warheads could erase different sized cities. It was on these journeys that I started to produce art, drawing with ball point pens to relieve the stress. I now understand the tension, the amount of weapons used in contemporary warfare and on what sort of precarious border we stay.  A/P: On 2 October, 2024 The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) recognised Julian Assange as a political prisoner. The committee expressed concern at his “disproportionately harsh treatment” having spent 14 years detained and explained this has had a “dangerous chilling effect” which undermines the protection of journalists and whistleblowers around the world. In support of Assange, and as a gesture towards freedom of expression and information, in February of this year, Molodkin publicly announced that he had taken $42,000,000 of Art History hostage (including works by Picasso and Rembrandt amongst others). Vaulted in a maximum security safe, the artworks were situated next to a bomb which would explode if Assange died in custody. DATE OF FREEDOM (2024), a ballpoint pen portrait of Assange, was drawn by Molodkin in February 2024 before he won the right to appeal. The release date was deliberately left blank in the hope that Assange would complete the work when he was released. Since becoming freed, Assange has visited the safe and drawn the release date 24 JUNE 2024 on the canvas with ball-point pen.   Julian Assange co-authoring DATE OF FREEDOM, Andrei Molodkin & Julian Assange Andrei, do you think the fact that Assange was in the position to complete his portrait could be interpreted as democracy functioning? Andrei Molodkin: In underground traditions, like Russian conceptualism or alternative art, we try to use the language of power to communicate with power. That’s why the idea of the portrait, like a mug shot, it shows he is a political prisoner, with an empty space for Assange to fill and complete when he is free. Just like my sculptures, these empty vessels which spell, for example Democracy, Justice, Capitalism, I insert politicised materials such as Russian or Iraqi crude oil. In DATE OF FREEDOM the empty space was filled by Assange, and immediately politicised. The date is a reset counter placed in art history. In the time of catastrophe, art history may exist in a new form, as a pile of grey ashes, just like the children in Gaza.  Julian Assange was released, but he was not released as a free person. A/P: The existence of political prisoners is said to serve as a critical indicator of the health of a nation’s democratic institutions and the rule of law. Santiago, what was the reaction to your work Political Prisoners in Contemporary Spain when you first exhibited it in 2018? How has the work been utilised by community groups? Santiago Sierra: The reaction was so hysterical that it produced the first recorded censorship at the Madrid Art Fair, which had become a catwalk for the most corrupt monarchy in Europe. How the censors, as testicular as they lacked the slightest intelligence, caused the opposite effect to that desired and currently I can proudly say that the work no longer belongs to me because it has become an instrument of vindication and struggle of all groups retaliated for wanting a better world. Never has one of my works been exhibited so much and in so many different places. Spontaneous presentations were made that we sometimes didn’t even know about. People would simply paste the images on the walls and advertise it as an exhibition. I had never before seen a crowd shouting for freedom in front of a work of art, neither mine nor any other artist’s, and this happened with this work. You can’t imagine the emotion that seeing such an impact caused in me, it didn’t matter who the author was, the work belonged to everyone. A/P: Joseph, how useful is culture in the fight for democracy? Joseph Farrell: Art has the power to transform political rhetoric into something visceral and urgent. Art and culture have always been sanctuaries for political expression, thriving even under authoritarian regimes. They’ve offered a space for dissenting voices and truth-telling when other avenues were silenced. Political art isn’t just commentary—it’s an act of defiance. The image of Julian Assange within this exhibition stands as a symbol of resistance, free speech, and the human cost of truth-telling. Created during his incarceration for practicing journalism, the work was shadowed by the uncertainty of his survival. Its completion—by his own hand—transforms it into more than art. It becomes a testament to his endurance and the pursuit of truth. This piece bridges the worlds of culture, art, politics, media, and justice, challenging the viewer to confront the essential fight for transparency in an age where truth is increasingly under siege. While Julian is now free, the struggle to liberate journalism and protect those who speak truth to power is far from over. This work isn’t just a reminder of what’s been fought for—it’s a call to action. EAST / WEST continues at The National Gallery of Bulgaria until 16 February 2025 The post The lie of a bloodthirsty empire appeared first on Freedom News.

NOW ON SHOW AT WHITECHAPEL GALLERY, HIS WORK SINCE THE 1970S INCLUDES SOME OF BRITAIN’S MOST ICONIC IMAGES OF RESISTANCE ~ Becky Haghpanah-Shirwan ~ Since the 1970s, Peter Kennard has produced some of Britain’s most iconic and influential images of resistance and dissent. These have spanned his support for the movements against the Vietnam War, Apartheid and nuclear weapons; the alter-global and anti-war campaigns in the 2000s; and his ongoing commitment to environmental activism and position on the present wars in Ukraine and Gaza. His exhibition Archive of Dissent at Whitechapel Gallery, open until 19 January 2025, is repository of social and political history on its own. Showcasing five decades of his work, it also explores a way of making art that has continuously pushed against the status quo. In this interview, I talked to Peter about his uncompromising visual practise. You started painting at an early age. Can you explain what drew you to art in the early days and then what galvanised you into producing art that was politically engaged? I started painting when I was about thirteen. Coal was banned when smokeless fuel was introduced so the coal shed at the bottom of our flats was empty and I turned it into a studio. I painted on bits of wood, card, metal, anything I could find mainly from nearby bomb sites which were still there from the war. I painted and drew small mainly figurative work and rushed through influences, Bacon, Sutherland, Picasso, Kollwitz, Giacometti, Goya were all plundered for techniques, materials and subject matter. I left school at sixteen and got a scholarship to Byam Shaw School of Art, where I continued painting and in 1967 went on to the Slade School. Peter Kennard, Whitechapel Gallery, July 2024 I became politically conscious through the anti-Vietnam War movement. A crucial event for me in terms of my work was what’s become known as the Battle of Grosvenor Square in March 1968, this big anti-war demo ended up in a violent confrontation with the police in front of the American Embassy. I’d never experienced the police including police horses seemingly on a rampage against demonstrators. I suddenly wanted to find a way to make work that could relate to the war, the protesters against war and to other struggles around the world, the Civil rights movement in the US, the Anti-Apartheid movement etc. That’s when I started using photography by ripping photographs from magazines and newspapers which I copied onto 5X4 negatives and then sandwiched the negatives to create composite images showing the wars, uprisings, protests, state violence, picket lines etc. At the Slade the big thing at the time was colour-field painting so my degree show of work mainly showing violent protest and war was not appreciated by the powers that be and was placed in the basement next to the gents bog. Nor was my first street work much appreciated by the Slade. It was in 1970 consisting of large prints of one of the four students protesting the Vietnam War who were all shot dead by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University. I fly posted big prints up around London with a group of fellow Slade students in solidarity with the US students. This image is the earliest placard in my new installation The People’s University of the East End on show at the Whitechapel gallery. It is this authenticity, in process and spirit, that is central to your work, which presents a truth. How does the artist fight through the recent onslaught of deep fakes and fake news to maintain this and remain a witness? I think art maintains its integrity if it comes from a passion deep inside the artist. Deep fakes, AI montages etc are more and more dangerous as they become more and more authentic. But don’t forget that a hundred years ago Stalin airbrushed Trotsky out of group photos of the Central Committee. The Stalin School of Falsification, as it’s become known, was a precursor of what’s happening now with AI. It’s always been possible for photos to be manipulated. It’s the basis of photomontage that photos can be joined up to get to the truth lurking behind the single image. But AI isn’t looking for a truth. You can cut a photo of the Pentagon and place it in a photo of a bomb crater in Gaza. AI can do that technically but the idea has to come from a human who is moved to create this as a symbol of the horrific reality pounding Gaza 24/24. In my own recent work ‘Boardroom’ I’ve tried to deconstruct the idea of photomontage by showing images of oil company logos or drones projected through glass onto human faces. This work is, in part, a response to our world of HD screens showing high-res images with everything smoothed out, and leaving us as passive consumers. In ‘Boardroom’ nothing is hidden, the means of image making is foregrounded to show the process which hopefully encourages critical thinking in the viewer.   Peter Kennard, Whitechapel Gallery, July 2024 In your new work, Double Exposure (2023) you integrated light via a Raspberry Pi computer to make your first dynamic work. Can you speak more about your move away from the ‘classic’ mode of photomontage in your later works? Evidently they are produced for a gallery setting instead of a media platform.  In my recent work in my Whitechapel exhibition, ‘Double Exposure’ and ‘Boardroom’ which were first supported in their making and shown at A/POLITICAL last year I’ve tried to make work that uses lights and three-dimensional structures to break down and expose the elements that were originally connected together in my photomontages. In ‘Double Exposure’ I’ve collaborated with the technologist Nigel Brown using Raspberry Pi computers to flash lights on and off behind the stocks and shares pages of the Financial Times. When a light flashes on the page of the FT it shows a montage of police violence, climate breakdown, war etc. It’s revealing what’s behind the serried ranks of numbers on the page, a conjunction of image and text that is never shown together in the press. It’s trying to create a form of photomontage in action, that connects obscene profit with its obscene result. The other work ‘Boardroom’, mentioned previously, contains studding of different lengths screwed into salvaged wooden boards with images of oil company logos, drones, crosshairs etc. attached to glass so that they project onto faces that have no mouths. The structures are all exposed so that you see the image and its projection. It’s deconstructing montage so that nothing is hidden, all elements are up for grabs. Both works are trying to go beyond the flat screen of computers that we all spend our days staring at to engage the viewer in a more physical way that changes perspective as you view it from different angles. In a sense both this work and ‘Double Exposure’ are attempts to make gallery-based work that can counteract our total reliance on the computer screen. They are both intentionally difficult to look at compared with the montages I’ve made in the past. By using crude metal supports that are not sleek and smooth I want people to engage with the work through its materiality and feel how the technology of war and the company logos of climate breakdown are projecting onto humanity. I’ve always thought in the past that galleries would rather turn a blind eye to political art which is why I’ve always made work that I feel can stand up to the scrutiny of the gallery setting and then fight to get it shown. In my current exhibition ‘Archive of Dissent’ at the Whitechapel Gallery, which is a remarkable gallery with a radical past and now a radical present, I’ve noticed a much more engaged response to my work than before. This is due to the times we live in, where the lies and power structures of the so-called land of the free are so blatantly obvious that they are in our minds all the time. We see everyday videos of some of the thousands of children dead under the rubble of Gaza and we know of the weekly arms shipments from the USA to Israel with the compliance of our Labour Party. Peter Kennard, Whitechapel Gallery, July 2024 Could you speak more about your personal politics? Your practice has spanned over 50 years and so you have seen governments come and go. Seeing that a large part of your artwork was produced as a critique of Conservative politics, do you find art-making more challenging when you’re not the opposition? I am a committed internationalist, concerned with inhumanity, poverty, racism and war wherever it is, so the fact we now have the Labour Party in power does not make a jot of difference to my art practise, I believe they will continue the Neo-Liberal onslaught on the poor. the working class and the climate protesters that the Tories brought in. That almost feels guaranteed with Starmer leading a party that will not call for a ceasefire in Gaza. I will just continue to express my outrage by all means possible. I produced some anti – nuclear weapons posters for the Labour Party for a short time in the early 1980’s when almost by mistake they were calling for unilateral disarmament, it didn’t last. I only ever joined the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. Suddenly there was a chink of light in the Labour wall of false promises. I left the party when he was shat on, both by the Labour Party and the establishment press, in the end being thrown out of the party.  Being so outspoken regarding the dire reality of UK politics, you have managed to achieve what many politically engaged artists have not been able to – a voice on the streets and also institutional recognition. How do you think your work has been able to transgress the more traditional nature of these cultural venues? Have you ever come under any pressure to conform to external pressures? I’ve always been concerned about getting my work out through as many channels as possible, be it postcards, badges, t-shirts, books, posters, newspapers, museums, art galleries. We’re living in times of great emergency, climate catastrophe, Gaza, Ukraine, the poverty created by neo-liberalism and on and on… For me that calls for an art that can communicate both inside and outside the structures created especially for showing art. The official art world has only recently opened up to showing artists of colour and women artists but if you cross an unspoken line there can be trouble. I’ve had work censored in the past for being too direct and that’s a good reason to try and show in art galleries, it pushes the institutions into stating their position on subjects they’d rather brush under the carpet, so they don’t offend their sponsors. As state money for the arts has been reduced or in some cases has dried up all together sponsorship has become key to survival for a number of arts institutions, but it always comes with strings attached in the sense that the artist’s work should not name names. I’ve only found a few institutions that would support the making of my work. In the 1980s it was the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone who supported the production of my posters against nuclear weapons and were then sent around the country. The Imperial War Museum supported new work for my Retrospective Unofficial War Artist in 1995. More recently, it is A/POLITICAL which is the first organisation I can think of in Britain that is actually committed to supporting and collecting work that is dissident to the status quo and is overtly political without being propagandist. It’s a vitally important organisation because it’s the only arts-based organisation where radical political ideas are central to its thinking and where artists and thinkers are encouraged to pursue projects that would be considered dangerous to the status quo of other arts institutions. Peter Kennard, Whitechapel Gallery, July 2024 Having the accolade of being the first Professor of Political Art in the country, lecturing at the Royal College of Arts from 1995, you have maintained and nurtured the younger generation of engaged artists for nearly three decades. How did you reconcile your life-long solidarity with the working class, with your teaching at a University that is prohibitive for many?  I’ve considered teaching to have been an important part of my practise as an artworker. Teaching art is a complex business especially as the art schools have been and are being under severe attack from the state. When I first began teaching the students didn’t have large fees to pay and also got small grants. It meant poorer students could come on courses and the social and class mix which resulted created a thriving experimental environment where the students could really let rip and go down alleyways of thought and making. Now it’s more difficult for students to work so freely as modular systems and marking projects have been imported onto art courses and the organic nature of making art is poured into a structure that is inherently against the free space that an art school should inhabit. Art schools are not just about nurturing the next generation of artists (as we know so much of the best rock music has come from ex-art students) they are places where young people who don’t feel they quite fit into the 9-5 job machine can find an alternative way of being in the world. That’s why the Tories have cut off so much funding to art from primary schools up to universities they’re shit scared of what they see as the incipient anarchy of art and artists that are not under their iron fisted control. Do you think this environment is still a useful and effective space for protest, and for artists who want to produce art that’s against the grain? While maintaining a half time job at the RCA I’ve always gone around the country giving talks and tutorials at all sorts of colleges and art schools. I still find that working class students are getting loans and becoming art students, often having to work evenings and weekends to keep going. It’s tough, but they are determined to find a voice through creating something, be it painting, sculpture, performance, music, writing etcetera, anything and everything that is against the grain of our corporate landscape.  Peter Kennard, Whitechapel Gallery, July 2024 I show my work to students but never foist on them the idea that their own work should be explicitly political. I introduce them to histories of political and social art that are not fashionable so often are not part of the curriculum but I’m totally against wanting to get students to make a certain kind of art. It’s more about them finding what it is they feel passionately about and then going for it. No-one gives a fuck about artists making work or not making work, it’s totally about the compulsion to do it and finding a way to continue after college. I always get shocked when people refer to my ‘career’, I’ve never thought of it as a career, it’s more a compulsion and teaching students is enriching when they themselves find ways to express their own compulsion. Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent. Whitechapel Gallery. Closes 19 January 2025. The post Peter Kennard: “My art erupts from outrage” appeared first on Freedom News.

SPOILERS AHEAD: DID DAVID GRAEBER REALLY INFLUENCE FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA’S VISION OF THE FILM? ~ Simoun Magsalin ~ I first heard of Megalopolis (2024) last year when its director-writer-producer Francis Ford Coppola shared the four books that have “strongly influenced” his vision for the film. Three of the books were by the late David Graeber, namely Debt (2011), Bullshit Jobs (2018), and The Dawn of Everything (2021). This was quite intriguing. Would Adam Driver’s character, Cesar, be some sort of Graeberian utopian radical fighting against the corrupt Romanesque elite? Searching for Graeber in Megalopolis, however, is somewhat difficult, unless Coppola’s reading of Graeber was a shallow misreading. Don’t get me wrong; the film is monumental, Promethean even, and consuming and reflecting on the film leaves one at a loss for words—that’s certainly what I felt going out the cinema. But a reflection and accounting of the film’s politics is critical. Megalopolis, after all, takes itself seriously, sometimes too seriously—“It insists upon itself” was once the criticism lodged against Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). For Megalopolis, politics is absolutely central to the film’s theme and message. It is at once a story about an empire in decline and a society in renewal. But as we will see, this renewal is ambiguous. EMPIRE OF DECADENCE For starters, the film clearly is trying to say something about the fall of empires. Coppola re-imagines New York as New Rome, a capital city of an empire in decline. The opening shot of the film sees a relic of a past empire, an abandoned nuclear-powered Soviet satellite with C.C.C.P. (the official acronym of the Soviet Union in Cyrillic) embossed. The message is clear: an empire has fallen in recent memory and the empire centred on New Rome can fall too. But what is Empire to Coppola? Nowhere in the film do we see the dastard inner workings of Empire or imperialism. Decadence is in open display, and corruption too. We are reminded several times Clodio (Shia LaBeouf) is so decadent that he and his siblings sleep with one another. Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) is widely denounced and hated as corrupt, calling for a new state-of-the-art casino to be built where the Design Authority (that Cesar heads) had demolished some tenements. Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), once Cesar’s classy girlfriend has a whole arc where she marries Cesar’s uncle Crassus (Jon Voight), banker and the wealthiest man of the world, and tries to steal Crassus’s bank from under him. There are fascists too, represented by Clodio (Cesar’s cousin and grandson of Crassus) and his coterie. Empire in Megalopolis, then, is not the Empire of Joyful Militancy (2017) or the “the organized destruction under which we live,” of domination, capital, hierarchy, patriarchy, imperialism, and all. In fact, while oppression to immigrants is hinted at the film—the Design Authority apparently demolishes some immigrant neighbourhoods off-screen (gentrification much?)—the “empire” in decline is merely characterised by decadence. To be sure, our own era of late capitalism really is marked by decadence, but the precise character of this decadence is rooted precisely marked by “organized destruction.” The empire of decadence in Megalopolis is one divorced from oppression, domination, and organised destruction. The first we do see of the working class, we see them under the leadership of fascism. Fascism is curious in Megalopolis in that it is a working class movement made of immigrants and “human garbage”—as Clodio’s fascist associate puts it. One fascist associate even has a black sun tattoo on his forehead. This working class is being misled and provoked by Clodio and his coterie for personal ends to be used against Cesar. At one point, Clodio’s associate stands atop a tree stump in the shape of a swastika while Clodio organises a Trumpist-esque rally—“subtext is for cowards” indeed. That fascism in Megalopolis is a working class mob goaded by a decadent incestuous party-boy for the purposes of a personal vendetta, and not a petty bourgeois mass movement in the defence of their property against both big business and communism is certainly a writing choice, just as Megalopolis is a movie of all time. Sure, fascists in the film do get their comeuppance, and it’s quite satisfying to see Clodio get Mussolinied (get mobbed and strung upside down), but aren’t the working class justified in their anger against Cesar? Since his Design Authority demolished their homes after all? After all, we are not told if either the government or the Design Authority gives them new homes in the titular Megalopolis. For Megalopolis, the renewal of society is not class struggle, anti-fascism, and generalised resistance to Empire, but the foregoing decadence and literally designing a utopian new world. This is precisely Julia Cicero’s (Nathalie Emmanuel) arc in the film. She desists in her party-girl lifestyle (decidedly not going back to the cluUuUb) and becomes Cesar’s secretary and love interest after witnessing him stop time and encountering his genius upfront. The fascism of the working class is defeated by a few utopian arguments from Cesar as the working class embraces Megalopolis and subsequently Mussolinies Clodio. There’s this whole bit where Cesar loudly shouts in front of a loud crowd, “We are in need of a great debate about the future! We want every person in the world to take part in that debate.” But for Megalopolis, silence is quite louder than words: we never hear of the perspective of the working class in the film, only that they are angry at Cesar for levelling their neighbourhoods for Megalopolis and left out in the cold with no house (and very explicitly) “no food.” THE CITY OF THE FUTURE Cesar’s Design Authority levels whole neighbourhoods for the construction of Cesar’s dream: Megalopolis. Megalopolis is not built with mere concrete and steel, but Megalon, a fantastical interactive material invented by Cesar himself that won him a Nobel Prize. For Megalopolis, the city of the future is techno-futurism, a fallacy wherein contradictions in society can be solved in the future through technology. After the decaying Soviet nuclear satellite falls on New Rome, Cesar has the literal clearance he needs to build Megalopolis. Beside the fact that “never let a good disaster go to waste” is a neoliberal dictum, Megalopolis here misunderstands the utopian potential of a liberated city. We don’t even see if the working class thrives in the new Megalopolis. For Megalopolis, Megalopolis is a city powered by Megalon that intuitively responds to the needs of its citizens. Megalon escalators, walkalators and spherical carriages allows citizens to speed around Megalopolis, and the Megalon houses expand when families grow bigger, and pieces of Megalon architecture can move to act as umbrellas or moving covered walkways. But a city is not made merely by its architecture and technologies. Henri Lefebvre argued in Le Droit à la Ville/The Right to the City (1968/1996) that just as the products of the labour of workers is expropriated by the capitalist with only a pittance returned as wages, cities are likewise the product of the everyday life and living of its citizens as denizens. The city is produced and reproduced by its residents, but the whole of the city is appropriated by the ruling class, creating a city in which the people created and reproduced but are simultaneously excluded from. In the same way that the communist project seeks for workers to expropriate the expropriators and control the full value of labour, the right to the city sees that the city must be re-appropriated in turn and returned to those who truly make the city: the everyday working class people of the city. This is the city of the future that the right to the city promises for working people. But for Megalopolis, the struggle for the right to the city goes in the opposite direction. It is Cesar and the Design Authority—the expropriators of urban housing—that creates the city of the future. The deliberate exclusion of working peoples from the planning of Megalopolis betrays Cesar’s desire to bring about the “great debate about the future.” Just for Megalopolis, the working class is left homeless and without food, falling to the clutches and machinations of fascism. How much less can imperialized peoples of the world participate in Cesar’s “great debate”? Rather than techno-futurism, the city of the future can only be built through class struggle. Techno-futurism is a fallacy precisely because “there are no technological solutions to social problems,” as the saying goes. Megalon, for all the brilliant applications it could have in the real world, is ultimately a technology that can and will be appropriated by Empire. In the film, this is somewhat the case: Cesar is born into privilege as a member of the Crassus clan and Crassus himself seems to own the patent for Megalon. Crassus, however, releases the patent to the world; presumably, the entire system of intellectual property still remains in place, despite that it is (presumably) the workers who produce Megalon for Megalopolis. It is only through class struggle by which intellectual property can be smashed and the means by which to create Megalon can be released to the whole world, and Megalopolis to be created, directed, produced, and reproduced by the people who live in and make the city every day, rather than the ego of one man like Cesar. O GRAEBER, WHERE ART THOU? If Francis Ford Coppola drew inspiration from David Graeber, perhaps we must ask where Graeber’s influence is in all of Megalopolis. We can certainly see the utopian aspects of the film, and David Graeber is really all about what this world could be. He once wrote, “every day we wake up and collectively make a world together; but which one of us, left to our own devices, would ever decide they wanted to make a world like this one?” (Bullshit Jobs, 2018) Graeber’s vision of an alternative world is certainly a theme in the film. The film even ends with a pledge to humanity, after all. But Graeber’s analytical method is one precisely not rooted in utopianism but materialism. Many are the Marxists who would lodge the complaint that Graeber was not dialectical materialist, but his anthropological method is one precisely and specifically rooted in materialism. His arguments in Debt, for example, are rooted in historical, archaeological, and anthropological records and research. His arguments are consistently evidence-based, rather than one rooted in utopian designs. If Graeber did write on utopias, it was in the context of nowtopias, that is, taking human beings as they are now and finding the ways by which people are already doing alternative and liberatory ways of doing things right now. Indeed, Graeber famously wrote about anarchism as a way most everyday people do anarchy right now in simple and mundane things like self-organising a waiting line at the jeepney or bus stop or organising non-hierarchically in voluntary organisations like clubs. Yet the Graeberian stand-in with Cesar sees social change precisely in utopian terms, as a plan to be carried out by benevolence, whether of Cesar, Crassus, and a converted Cicero, or by the Design Authority. This is quite literally classical utopian socialism as envisaged by Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier. Fourier’s phalanstery finds new life in the titular Megalopolis. Megalopolis seems to have a grand plan for humanity, a utopia for all humanity, how it means to reach it is unclear. At the end of the film, Megalopolis’ utopia is still someplace in the future, with the titular Megalopolis being only a fraction of Cesar’s full vision. Crucially, the utopian future of Megalopolis is one predicated by technology and coming together to sing kumbaya after the bad billionaire heir is Mussolinied. What practices Cesar and Julia use to build the city in the future was shown through a montage where Cesar’s team toss a ball around and do team-building exercises (it’s hard to make stuff up things about this film; it’s just so unreal at times). The “great debate about the future” that Cesar talked about in the climax of the film is also one that doesn’t take place. This great debate is the closest we can get to a Graeberian perspective, embodying the new global collective decision to decide how to socially reproduce the world against Empire, but it just doesn’t take place—the film just ends. It’s clear that Megalopolis does try to impart something Graeberian in its viewers. The pledge to humanity at the end imparts a kind of common loyalty to humanity that implies a certain treachery to nation-states and Empire. But this grand vision of a common humanity seems undermined by Cesar’s Design Authority mowing down the homes of working people. It’s unclear what Megalopolis means by this since the theme of hypocrisy is not particularly present in the film (as much as say, decadence), nor is Cesar presented as particularly hypocritical. CODA I’m not telling you not to watch Megalopolis. Cinema simply isn’t made like this anymore with grand earnest visions. The role of literary criticism is not to say things are bad and wrong, but to unpack, dissect, and figure out how the text works. Students dissect frogs to learn about internal biology while physicists smash particles together to make sense of the universe. In the same way, literary criticism deconstructs and reconstructs the text to learn more not just about the film, but about the society that made it. What can literary criticism of Megalopolis tell us about the society that made it then? I think Megalopolis speaks to the idea that social renewal relies on great men like Cesar, great technologies like Megalon, and great visions like Megalopolis. This reflects a largely liberal world-view that eschews revolution and revolutionary change. This is, perhaps, not surprising given the class conditions of its director-writer-producer. But crucially, this literary criticism and discussions of it are only made possible through the production of the film. The post Searching for Utopia in “Megalopolis” appeared first on Freedom News.

FROM SHOWS IN SQUATS TO MILITANT ACTION, PUNK SHOWS THE CONVERGENCE BETWEEN CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS, PSYCHEDELIC CONSCIOUSNESS, AND CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING (1/3) ~ Alex Ratcharge ~ In memory of Marc, aka Papi (1965-2022) “We operate as a kind of clandestine, blundering, haphazard anarchist collective, made up of a group of friends who like to do things together” – Giacomo Stefanini1 For all intents and purposes, let us say that I am neither a theoretician, nor a philosopher, nor a specialist in political matters, but a humble 40-year-old reader, also a fanzine publisher and the author of a novel (Shortcut to Nowhere) exploring the world of punk and autonomous squats in France and Navarre – fictions inspired by my experience since, to quote NOFX, “I’ve been a punk- rocker for most of my life”.2 Or more prosaically: for better or for worse, I am one of the countless cogs in the wheel of what I will call here “radical punk”.3 I use this term in reference to a decentralised global network that its participants have called, over the decades, “DIY punk”, “HC punk DIY”, or “anarcho-punk” — designations that are as porous as they are shifting, none of which seems more appropriate to me. On the one hand, the acronym “DIY” (Do it Yourself) has been emptied of its subversive potential and diverted towards self-entrepreneurship, “creative hobbies”, and this tendency to keep telling us that “doing everything yourself”, in a socio-economic context, would be a guarantee of freedom and not of precariousness. On the other hand, the term “anarcho-punk” seems to me to be too unrepresentative of the different sensibilities, even if they are all very left-wing, at work in radical punk: anarchists, certainly, but also libertarian communists, autonomous, post-situ, “without labels”, even “classic voters” or quasi “apolitical”. Especially since this term has tended, for at least two decades, to become synonymous with ultra-codified sounds and aesthetics, which means that a group that sounds like Crass, will tend to be described as “anarcho-punk” regardless of its practices, while a group of anarchists playing, for example, Oi!, will simply be described as an Oi! group. For these reasons, I have chosen the term “radical punk”, which has the merit of referring to the term “radical left”, of making a distinction with other types of punk and, above all, of allowing us to name it without needing long-winded explanations such as punk-where-we-favor-squats-and-whose-actors-are-feminists–anti-racists–anti-authoritarians–etc. (Reminder: the word “radical”, derived from the Latin radix [“root”], means among other things “Which aims to act on the root cause of the effects that we want to modify.” Knowing that the “effects to modify” here are those of capitalism, patriarchy, etc.). A horizontal movement, radical punk is not supposed to have flagship groups: it is internationalist, plural, and each of its actors is theoretically replaceable. To make my point, here are a few names. In the 1980s, let’s randomly cite Crass, Alternative TV, The Door and The Window, The Desperate Bicycles (United Kingdom), Heimat-los (France) or Minor Threat (United States); in the 1990s, let’s pick Harum-Scarum or Los Crudos in the United States, Sin Dios in Spain, or Seein’ Red in the Netherlands. In the 2000s and 2010s, why not come back to France with Gasmask Terrör, Holy Fuckin’ Shit! (Bordeaux), La Fraction, Nocif (Paris), Zone Infinie, Litige (Lyon), Traitre, Douche Froide (Lille), etc..4 In terms of labels, they are virtually as numerous as the groups (in France, among dozens of others: Panx, Stonehenge, Creepozoïd, Mutant, LADA, Symphony Of Destruction…), and as for the media, besides the infinity of small fanzines, most of which do not exceed two issues, but which play an important role in the liveliness of this movement, I will limit myself to citing important English-language titles which are now defunct: Slug & Lettuce, Profane Existence, Heartattack , Reason To Believe and especially Maximum Rock’n’roll, which we will come back to soon. I cite these names to anchor my point, and not to give some more importance than others. Because one of the general rules of radical punk, home to thousands of bands and other ephemeral collectives, is that all its participants are of equal importance, whether they are musicians, concert and/or tour promoters, label bosses, fanzine editors, squatters and/or “owners” of venues, participants without roles or titles — all these functions being infinitely interchangeable, so that a radical punk can be seen, on the same night, in the role of singer, cook, working on the door of the show, mopping the floor, or simply leaning on the bar counter… This interchangeability of roles being, it seems to me, one of the ways to distinguish radical punk from other types of punks. In short, radical punk is a decentralised global network that aims to establish or maintain a “parallel society” with its music, customs, diet, debates, media, and even its own postal network. Its strength owes much to international tours managed with the means at hand, to its principles of hospitality and reciprocity, to its uninhibited relationship with illegality and/or clandestinity, to its places, its media, as well as to its countless moments of conviviality: meals, drinking sessions, dances, and daily tasks are often practiced in groups. Hoping that all this seems a little clearer to you, let’s move on to the thousand-euro question: how did I come to want to report on the practices of radical punk? It would be difficult to explain it without mentioning the North American agitator Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989) and the British theorist Mark Fisher (1968-2017). What is the connection between Mark Fisher, Abbie Hoffman, the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s and the so-called “DIY” punk network? This is the question around which this article is structured. The article would not have seen the light of day without these four elements. * * * "The idea that 'I don't intend to work and I should stop worrying' was the key element of the counterculture. What the capitalists feared was that the working class would become hippies on a large scale, and that was a serious danger." – Mark Fisher In 2018, the French translation of Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, published by Entremonde, was an event for some readers, including myself. Philosopher, blogger, music critic, Mark Fisher has devoted a good part of his life to building a body of work whose keystone is precisely this “capitalist realism” – that is, the persistent impression that in times of climate chaos, after four decades of neoliberal rule, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than that of capitalism”.5 Under Fisher’s pen, pop culture reveals its intentions; behind its a-political facade, it would be a site of ideology. From blockbusters to music videos to reality TV, the bulk of mainstream culture of the twenty-first century would thus have the aim, conscious or not, of reinforcing neoliberal hegemony by polluting our imaginations with this notion dear to Margaret Thatcher: there is no alternative. Utopias buried, counterculture defeated, avant-gardes forgotten: for freaks, punks, hippies, left-wing radicals and other revolutionaries, the time would have come to bow down, that is to say, to join the ranks of the great war of all against all, if possible isolated in a cybernetic cocoon based on telework and/or self-exploitation, like in a good old Covid nightmare. For Fisher, whose primary subject of study is music, from the post-punk of The Fall to the dubstep of Burial, this observation explains the endless loop of “retromania”6 in which the fourth art has been mired since the end of the 1990s: if the listener becomes bogged down by revival after revival, rehash after rehash, it is not because everything has already been done or said, but because our imaginations have been colonised, wasted away and then cryogenically frozen by capitalist realism. Neither dead nor alive, our ability to imagine another soundtrack, and as for making other futures, now floats in limbo, like the “spectre of a world that could have been free”7…Or, quite simply, as in one of the oldest punk slogans, the so-often misunderstood “No Future”. Blog post after blog post, conference after conference, Fisher ploughs his furrow. What he fights is neoliberal ideology and the way it infiltrates our bodies, our minds, our workplaces and even our songs, all the while managing to convince us that it is not ideology, but pure pragmatism. According to its advocates, late capitalism would be humanity’s final destination after millennia of wandering; despite its “small flaws”, it would therefore be unconscious to look elsewhere. But here’s the thing: for Mark Fisher, this belief in the inevitability of capitalism would be nothing more than an ideological presupposition that needs to be torn to pieces as a matter of urgency. Whether he’s writing for his blog or in the pages of The Wire, about Tricky or Joy Division, about Kanye West or The Cure, about Scritti Politti or Public Enemy, our man is dedicated to this task. He co-founded the publishing house Zero Books, reworked his blog posts, and published them as books. And then in 2016, after more than a decade of identifying the problem, here he is tackling a new task: formulating a solution. This way out of capitalist realism, Fisher calls “acid communism”.8 A concept that “refers both to real historical developments and to a virtual confluence that has not yet materialised”. He wrote the introduction to an eponymous essay (Postcapitalist Desires) which ends with these words: “the material conditions for a revolution are more present in the 21st century than they were in 1977. But what has changed since then is the existential and emotional atmosphere. People are resigned to the sadness of work, even as they are told that automation will make theirs disappear. We must rediscover the optimism of the 1970s, and we must analyse the machinery that capitalism has deployed to transform our hopes into resignation. Now, the first step in reversing this process of deflation of consciousness is to understand how it works”.9 This seems to announce a program, but no one will know it: on January 13, 2017, Mark Fisher, a notorious depressive who vilified the “privatisation of mental health,” took his own life in his home. A year earlier, during a conference on acid communism, the man who was banking on the plasticity of reality declared that “We are on the threshold of a new wave, on which we can begin to surf towards post-capitalism”. Is it because of Fisher’s suicide and its unfinished aspect that the essay Acidcommunism struck me so much? In part, yes. It must be said that it all seems like a bad joke: after hundreds and hundreds of pages of criticism and definition of the contours of capitalist realism, it is in this text that the theorist finally seems determined to propose a solution, that is to say a possible way out, a liberation from the almost invisible chains by which this ideology suffocates us, depresses us, separates us, destroys our planet, etc. This unfinished text therefore evokes a future corpse on its deathbed, taking its last breath a second before being able to dispense its precious advice. But that’s not all. The second reason for my obsession is that the ideas mentioned in this introduction to Acidcommunism resonated with me, as if some of Fisher’s words had held up a blurry mirror to me, reflecting elements of my own experience, without me dwelling on them carefully enough to put my finger on the reasons for this disorder… At least until someone put a book by another deceased author in my hands: Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman. (More next week…) from Audimat via Lundi Matin, corrected machine translation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Member of the Italian label and concert organising collective Sentiero Futuro ↩︎ 2. “Theme From A NOFX Album”, on the album Pump up the Valuum (Epitaph, 2000) ↩︎ 3. I think I first came across this term about fifteen years ago, in the fanzines of the Spanish anarchist punk Teodoro Hernández, who wrote it with a “k” in “radikal”. Perhaps it was then a derivative of the term “radical rock” which was attached to Basque punk groups including Eskorbuto, RIP or Delirium Tremens. ↩︎ 4. I only cite Western groups here, but the radical punk network is active all over the world, with groups from Latin America to Japan, via Southeast Asia, Russia, Morocco, Algeria, etc. ↩︎ 5. According to the formula attributed to the Slovenian Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek. ↩︎ 6. To use the expression dear to his colleague and friend Simon Reynolds. ↩︎ 7. K-Punk, p.753. Repeater Books, 2018. ↩︎ 8. Ibid, p.758. ↩︎ 9. M. Fisher, Postcapitalist Desires, p. 770 (Audimat, 2022) [trans. back from French, refer to original –Ed.) ↩︎ The post On the practices of radical punk appeared first on Freedom News.