IN BERLIN, RADICAL SPACES FACING CAPITALIST EXPROPRIATION CONTINUE TO RESIST WITH SOLIDARITY AND A REVOLUTIONARY MEMORY ~ Josie Ó Súileabháin ~ It starts with a match, a small wooden stick squeezed into the cracks of our urban decay. It can take a drill, a dozen mates and material for barricades to get it going. Don’t talk to bailiffs and keep the door locked. Landlord lives in Barbados, the neighbourhood lives in hell. Rents have doubled in ten years and only 1% of homes are ‘on the market’. Cops are at the door, the heating is cut. In the early hours of the morning on Habersaathstrasse, the cops break down the door of number 46 in an attempt to evict it’s residents. “The cops have entered to ‘prevent danger’ and yes, it’s true, we pose a threat to vacant property managers, speculators, and their accomplices,” wrote the residents of Habersaath46 (Ha46) “but the violence is coming from those who drag people out of their apartments at 6am.” “The operation ended in our hallway. No-one was evicted,” Ha46 reported to the community. The next day, the police came back with a construction crew and attempted to seal the basement door shut, which acts as their emergency exit. The police had earlier confiscated fire extinguishers, making the entire situation a potential fire risk to the tenants. They failed in this attempt and so came back days later to brick up the exit. For the next weeks, the residents of Ha46 have reported that the law firm von Trott zu Solz Lammek has turned the area into a security fortress for their clients Arcadia Estates, using private security to make apartments systematically uninhabitable as a tactic to prevent re-occupation. The law firm is infamous among squatters in Berlin for their reputation of successful evictions by any means. Across the world it is the same story as the corporations owning our homes are international. Yet the solutions can be found locally in our neighborhoods as we resist evictions and intimidation. This revolutionary dynamic between international and local is what is known as the Interkiezionale. In May of this year, squatters attempted to re-occupy the Meuterei (Mutiny) in Kreuzberg, “a place that was not only a bar, it was a place of collective meeting and sharing,” the squatters wrote. “By re-opening the Meuterei one more time, we want to bring to the present those collective moments that brought closer the idea that other worlds are possible.” “We fought in the streets to reclaim our subversive and political ideas through the defence of Liebig34, Potse, Syndikat, Meuterei, Köpi Wagenplatz and Rigaer94. We remember those times with nostalgia, but also with the powerful thoughts that if one time we were able to confront the state and his mercenaries with fierceness, we can and will do it again,” they wrote. REVOLUTIONARY MEMORY A year ago today, an explosion ripped apart an apartment three floors up on Arkadias Street in Athens. Marianna Manoura was inside the apartment when the detonation occurred. “Time froze, everything went black,” Marianna wrote, “and I was unable to move.” Two figures appeared and offered Marianna help as she went looking for her comrade. “I showed them the place where I last saw my companion, the place where our guilty gazes met, glances filled with rage at the world we live in, filled with faith and hunger for moments of true freedom” Marianna wrote in the aftermath. The anarchist Kyriakos Xymitiris was processing explosives in the next room when a technical issue lead to an early detonation and his death. October 31 commemorations in Athens “Although the thread of my comrade’s action would be abruptly cut short, his life and fighting choices would be a historic flash of determined resistance, perseverance, and dedication,” Marianna writes about her late comrade from prison. She was taken to Evangelismos Hospital following the explosion and was unconscious for the next three days. As Marianna regained consciousness, the Greek authorities began to isolate her and held her under 24/hr constant police watch. As is usual with militant partisans, the Greek authorities decided to prosecute the anarchists under terror legislation based on Article 187a. Marianna and Kyriakos were classified as a terrorist organisation and their apartment was defined as a ‘yiafka’ or a kind of crime operation centre. This would pull two other individuals into the investigation to face charges connected to the anarchists, as well as two other anarchists who had no connection to the original defendants. A flimsy case, as usual. To push the narrative, the Greek media did a circus run of pop-psychology takes on the defendants, speculations on class origins and outright character assassination, repeated into a moral panic projected onto a largely religious audience. The role of the Greek state after these anarchists are detained is to cut off prison solidarity and activism by attacking those close to them – seeking total political and social isolation. “But the question is,” writes Marianna, “Who will name whom a terrorist? Who will judge whom?” The role of the mainstream media is to depoliticize resistance into fear-based narratives, projecting the paranoia of the state directly onto the audience. The explosion on Arkadias Street was the incendiary end to the life of an anarchist who was known by the people who survived him beyond militancy and armed revolution. Kyriakos was known as participating locally and internationally. “For a long time Kyriakos walked together with us in the struggles of Berlin,” write the squatters of Meuterei. “Together we defended our self-organised spaces and fought against the process of gentrification that consumes this city and changes it’s social geography benefiting some, while expelling the poor and marginalised people.” “Through Interkiezionale we confronted this process fighting together with other collectives against evictions.” Kyriakos was part of the Meuterei collective before it’s eviction in 2020. “Our community here has changed time and again,” the residents of Rigaer94 wrote this month, currently under the threat of eviction. “We remember you as a tireless fighter,” they write on the coming anniversary of the death of Kyriakos, “as a friend, as a guest and part of our community. You brought people together instead of losing yourself in the stream of the metropolis.” INVESTIGATE YOUR LANDLORD In 2019, I was hiding in an apartment in Neukölln when my local bar announced they were facing eviction from their British landlords. The Syndikat, and Meuterei in neighboring Kreuzberg, were safe havens for me as well as other “danger zones” (kriminalitätsbelasteter orte) designated by the state. “A place to celebrate our friendship and comradeship,” as the squatters of Mutiny wrote. Further investigation revealed that the landlords of the Syndikat is Pears Global, a multi-billion network of 200 companies, subdivisions and shell companies in tax havens like Luxembourg. One company that had gained notoriety in the UK was Bankway, known for focusing evictions on the disabled, elderly, unemployed and single parents. “We are not social landlords” defended Nick Stanley, Bankway’s Estate Manager, “we’re in it to make money. The idea is to maximise the income from the building.” After years of disputes over the ownership of Rigaer94, the Berlin senate in 2020 failed to clarify the identity of the landlord who was seemingly hiding behind a letterbox company based in the British tax haven of Guernsey. Since then there have been multiple police raids on the building in order, according to authorities, to establish the identities of the residents of Rigaer94. 28 August 2025 — The police forcibly entered Rigaerstraße 94 and broke into all apartments. Photo: Björn Obmann/Umbruch Bildarchiv In reality, the police raids only served to attempt to isolate the house and intimidate its occupants, despite the fact that the Berlin authorities could not prove the identity of the individual who owned the building. The owner of Lafone Investments Limited was kept secret through a system of trustees, those who own the company on paper on behalf of those who would rather not be named. Leonid Medved is one of these people. A Ukrainian citizen born in Berlin, Leonid is the managing director of 20 companies all based at the same address in Berlin, along with Igor Lipiak. Some of these companies operate vending machine casinos, others like Centurious Immobilen Handels GmbH exploit the property market. Since Lafone’s trustee stepped down, its managing director is now Leonid Medved. Rigaer94 is now in an absurd situation where the landlord demands anonymity and ownership, and his lawyer is not even sure if they own the property. “I think we even have a house in Germany… I’m not sure though,” Bernau told the court. “We know we have a house here,” Rigaer94 said in response. “We are sure of it. And we will not give up this house without a fight.” A few days before the raid on Rigaer94 this year, a group of people broke into the offices of Leonid Medved and leaked a trove of documents that gives “insight into the machinations of Lafone Investments Limited, Centurious Immobilen Handels GmbH, and the coordinated efforts of police and politicians with the real estate industry,” they said in a statement. Photo: Björn Obmann/Umbruch Bildarchiv As part of the publication of the documents, it was revealed that Igor Lipniak was named by German tax authorities and accused of distributing laptops with software for manipulation of slot machines, cheating both the tax man and in his own gambling halls. “Here, the destruction of existence is enriched,” those behind the leaking of the documents wrote on the damage of gambling halls on the community. INTERKIEZIONALE! “Right from the start of the proceedings, the court announced its clear tendency – Lafone… seems unable to act legally in Germany,” Rigaer94 write. Despite this clear violation of the process, the judge actually offered suggestions on how to resolve the issues and become a legal entity to operate in Germany. This corruption is open for anyone to see, if they could only look. “Solidarity from those whom joined the manifestation in front of the court, those who visited Rigaer94 to reconstruct what was broken after the raid, as well as actions in other cities,” R94 writes on actions  by the community following police repression of the radical space. On September 7, the windows and doors of a restaurant on Orianientburger Strasse were smashed in. Activists used heavy tools to enter through the closed shutters and spray painted “R94 Bliebt!” on the facade. “To avoid traumatising underpaid employees,” they wrote in a statement, “we decided not to conduct the operation during business hours.” The restaurant is owned by the daughter of Leonid Medved. One day later in the Siemensstadt district, four vans belonging to the multi-national real estate corporation Vonovia went up in flames. “For the majority of people in Berlin,” activists wrote in a statement, “the housing situation is an existential catastrophe… rents in the “lower market segment” rose by 11.6% in Berlin.” Vonovia made a profit of €984 million before taxes in the first half of this year. “We sent Vonovia a message in a language they understand,” activists wrote. “We used the tired-and-tested Berlin model as the incendiary device,” referring to a popular time delay igniter. Yet beyond the fire and fury of armed resistance is a politics of solidarity that brings us together as anarchists. “Solidarity is the weapon of the people,” Marianna writes, still in pretrial detention in Korydallos. October 31 must be remembered “as a day of struggle, a day of responsibility, a moment of resistance. Because struggle doesn’t want compromises, it doesn’t want barriers or egos. There’s no room for laws, conventions, or limits. Because struggle requires determination and vision. It requires faith and commitment, it requires true relationships and dedication.” “Because struggle requires humble and willing people. People who are essentially rebellious and consistent,” Marianna writes, “People like Kyriakos.” The post When they kick at our front door appeared first on Freedom News.

THE SERIES OF RAIDS, WHICH TOOK PLACE OVER THE COURSE OF A SINGLE WEEK, HAVE BEEN LABELLED A DESPERATE RESPONSE AS STATE FORCES STRUGGLE TO CONTAIN PUBLIC ANGER OVER PERCIEVED CORRUPTION AND INCOMPETENCE. ~Kit Dimou~ On the morning of April 22nd, the historic Evangelismos squat in Heraklion, Crete, was evicted once again having been reoccupied on 1 December 2023. The brief announcement of the squat stated: “AS IT HAPPENED THEN, SO IT HAPPENS NOW, NOTHING WITHOUT A FIGHT. NOT ONE STEP BACK”. Six people who were inside the building have been held on charges of breaching the peace and possession of weapons (flags and makeshift shields), while the police refused them communication with their lawyers. Evangelismos was an abandoned hospital when leftists and anarchists first took the initiative to open it for the community in Heraklion in 2002. Since then, it has been at the forefront of anti-authoritarian struggle in Crete, particularly in recent solidarity actions with the Palestinian people.  On the same morning, April 22nd, police in Thessaloniki evicted a space at the Physics School of Aristotle University which had been squatted by students for a year, the ‘Steki Fysikou’. Upon the completion of the operation, university management provocatively announced that this space was “liberated from a group of anti-authoritarians and delivered to the university community for the use of the sensitive group of people with special needs”. Local comrades have denounced the hypocrisy and disableist language of this statement, especially given the general inaccessibility of the Aristotle University: “in the university, education, liberated spaces and accessibility only come through struggle”. Finally, on the morning of April 15th, cops raided and evicted the newly-founded ‘Rasprava’ squat in the centre of Exarcheia. Despite the hopes of the state, there were zero comrades inside, while the only ‘evidence’ found was some rubble and anarchist graffiti. ‘Rasprava’ was an abandoned orphanage, squatted by anarchists on March 28th following a public event about revolutionary memory where imprisoned anarchist Marianna M. spoke via the phone. The ‘Rasprava’ squat explicitly intended to promote a culture of revolutionary and insurrectionary direct action in Exarcheia: ‘to turn words into action, to move from defense to attack’ in the struggle to protect the collective memory of the neighbourhood from touristification and integration.  The squatters argued that the eviction was a desperate response of the State to the recent bombing attack on Hellenic Train, as well as clashes with the police at a Palestine solidarity concert in Exarcheia on Saturday 12 April. The collective noted:  “The governing circus […] incorrectly believes that the ideas and practices that Rasprava represents are limited to the walls of a building, and that with its eviction, they will disappear as if by magic. A tear runs down one cheek, but one of laughter. The revolutionary culture we promote and want to return to its predominance in the anarchist space, direct action, will haunt your dreams, as well as your subordinated reality.“ The post Three squat evictions in a week as Greek state ramps up attack on anarchist movement appeared first on Freedom News.

LIVE-STREAMED MOBILISATION CONTINUES IN LATEST BATTLE AGAINST GENTRIFICATION ~ Blade Runner ~ The planned eviction of tenants at Casa Orsola was temporarily halted this weekend after large-scale resistance by housing groups, residents, and local supporters. The judicial committee responsible for executing the eviction arrived at the site on Saturday but ultimately left without enforcing the order, citing the overwhelming presence of protesters and media. However, a new eviction date has already been announced for tomorrow morning (4 February) at 5am. Over the past year, tenants and supporters have resisted multiple eviction attempts at Casa Orsola, organising community mobilisations, legal battles, and direct action to protect residents from displacement. The latest eviction order targeted five flats, but the broader objective of the investment firm is to clear the entire building. The 27-unit residential building in Esquerra de l’Eixample neighbourhood has become a focal point in the fight against gentrification and mass evictions. In 2021, a real estate investment firm purchased the building, seeking to evict long-term tenants in order to convert the apartments into high-priced, short-term tourist rentals—a trend that has transformed the city’s housing market and displaced thousands of local residents in recent years. By early morning, hundreds of people had gathered to block the eviction, forming human barricades and occupying the building. The crowd included not only experienced activists and housing organisers but many ordinary residents. Tenants and supporters live-streamed the situation from inside and outside the building, and media coverage intensified. The Sindicat de Llogateres, Barcelona’s leading tenants’ union, has been at the forefront of the fight to defend the residents, combining the tactics of the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH)—a grassroots movement against mortgage evictions—with methods rooted in anarcho-syndicalism. The residents and union have called for live-streamed resistance to continue this morning, with defensive organising to mobilise supporters before tomorrow’s 5am deadline, and community activities such as performances, discussions and food sharing through the night. A DECADE OF RESISTANCE The defence of Casa Orsola is part of a long history of housing struggles in Spain. Resistance against gentrification and speculative real estate development has repeatedly flared up in Barcelona and across the country, at times erupting into major uprisings. In the Burgos uprising of 2014, residents of the working-class neighbour of Gamonal fought against a government-backed plan to gentrify their district by constructing a high-end boulevard. When police cracked down on protests, the neighbourhood erupted in four nights of rioting, during which residents destroyed banks, fought police, and blockaded the construction site. The local government ultimately cancelled the gentrification project. In the same year, Barcelona witnessed the Can Vies revolt, when a 17-year-old squatted social centre was forcibly evicted by police. What began as a protest quickly escalated into a week-long urban revolt involving tens of thousands of people. Police stations were attacked, barricades were erected, and banks were smashed as demonstrators forced authorities to abandon their plans.  The revolt and its decisive victory also spread radical critiques of urban planning, mass tourism, and housing speculation, further fuelling anti-gentrification movements in Spain and internationally. With Barcelona increasingly resembling a “tourist circus” rather than a livable city for locals, many people—regardless of their previous involvement in social struggles and direct action—are joining efforts to resist corporate-driven evictions. This growing frustration has been nurtured by years of grassroots organising by groups like the PAH, the Sindicat de Llogateres, as well as local neighbourhood groups, which have built strong networks of solidarity and direct action. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photos and videos: Directa The post Barcelona: Mass resistance to eviction at Casa Orsola appeared first on Freedom News.

MATROZOU 45 RE-OCCUPIERS SENTENCED TO 77 MONTHS TOGETHER WHILE 79 DEFENDERS OF THE PROSFYGIKA COMMUNITY GO ON TRIAL TODAY ~ Kit Dimou ~ In Athens, the trial continues today of 79 defenders of the Prosfygika community who resisted a police raid in 2022. On Tuesday, four participants in the re-occupation of the Matrozou squat in 2020 were sentenced to 77 months in prison between them. The Prosfygika community is an occupied neighbourhood in the heart of Athens with over 400 residents. The area was invaded on 22 November 2022 by anti-terror units, who arrested anarchist Kostas Dimalexis in connection with an arson attack by an anarchist group in July 2022; while Kostas was eventually found not guilty and released after a year of prison, his 79 comrades who participated in the defence of Prosfygika against the raid face heavy charges, including breach of the peace, assault on police officers, carrying offensive weapons, and illegal possession and use of pyrotechnics. On Tuesday, the iconic Matrozou 45 reoccupation case reached its conclusion. The four comrades who participated were found guilty and sentenced to 77 months in prison in total; they are currently on parole until appeal. The attempted reoccupation on 11 January 2020 involved two of the three squats operated by the Koukaki Squat Community. This was an initiative resisting the far-reaching gentrification and touristification of this traditionally proletarian neighbourhood. Along with the Panaitoliou squat, it had been evicted a month earlier. This was part of the provocative ultimatum announced by the right-wing New Democracy government, demanding all illegally occupied spaces in Greece to be abandoned by 6 December 2019, the anniversary of the police murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos in 2008 which sparked a historic uprising in the city.  The re-occupation failed, as crowds outside the squats were brutally attacked by police and driven out of the neighbourhood in an operation that lasted several hours. The  comrades inside defended themselves tooth and nail, leading to six police injuries, but were ultimately arrested. As opposed to those involved in the Panaitoliou reoccupation, who were unanimously found not guilty, the Matrozou comrades were treated exceedingly harshly by the court. While initially only facing misdemeanour charges, the charges against them were upgraded to felonies after public expressions of outrage by Prime Minister Mitsotakis, government ministers and the Police Union. At trial, no extenuating circumstances were taken into account. Even the prosecutor’s recommendation that the accused only serve half their prison time was not accepted by the president of the court.  The trials are taking place against the background of recent evictions and re-occupations of famous squats — Evangelismos and Kasteli hill in Crete, and Ano-Kato in Athens. In the Athens Polytechnic, another ultimatum is currently threatening three long-standing occupations on campus with eviction. The post Greece: Harsh sentencing for squatters  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.