EDITORIAL FROM OUR NEW JOURNAL ISSUE ON SURVEILLANCE EXPLORING STATES’ AMBITIONS TO CONSTRAIN AND REFUSE OUR FREEDOM – AND WAYS TO FIGHT BACK Anarchism in its essence is a lived philosophy of freedom. It is also a recognition that freedom, as Mikhail Bakunin knew, depends on equality. Only when we are equal can we be truly free from domination; free not just in mind but in body, to realise all the possibilities of life in a society forged through mutual aid and solidarity. But in a capitalist society guaranteed by the power of the state, we anarchists are engaged in an everyday war to preserve, protect, and expand freedom. If, as Freedom’s own Colin Ward claimed, anarchism remains a seed beneath the snow, ready to blossom if the conditions are right, then the fight to secure those conditions has seldom been more desperate. In this issue, we explore the challenges and possibilities of anarchist freedom in a time when supposedly ‘democratic’ states – aided and abetted by digital firepower – are seeking to constrain and refuse freedom in ways that would make some authoritarian regimes blush. In Ukraine, war itself is the testing ground for the technologies that seek to reduce freedom to a memory, with AI targeting systems demonstrating in the sharpest relief the power concentrated in the hands of right-wing tech barons such as Peter Thiel. These technologies fuel killing on the battlefield and the analysis of health data here in the UK, with the desperate Labour government also betting big on the magic beans of AI to somehow deliver ‘growth’, at any cost. How to fight in a situation where the implications of totalitarian technologies are – to paraphrase one of our writers in this issue – simply ignored with a shrug is a critical question for we anarchists. A return to more traditional forms of communication and the resurrection of zines and hardcopy media represents a partial way out, but it requires us to fundamentally reorient our audience – addicted as they are to the instant hits of easily-surveilled social media platforms. Also in the UK, the ongoing Spycops inquiry – in which Freedom is a core participant – is a constant reminder that the state’s ambitions to constrain and refuse freedom are in its very nature. The state’s aims today are unchanged from the era in which police officers lied to women and fathered children with them; indeed as our author notes, what is being investigated by the inquiry has actually been made legal for future state agents. But there remains cause for hope. From the Twin Cities in Minnesota where abolitionist initiatives are contesting the authority of the Trump regime, to Greece where anarchist groups are mobilising actively around the cause of prisoners arrested for protest, battles are being won. The German police’s lack of appetite for scrutiny comes up too, but while the police may not be comfortable with being watched, the security apparatus is perfectly delighted to watch us. So much so that we at Freedom recently learned that two separate US Department of Homeland Security accounts were subscribed to our newsletter. Meanwhile, despite civil liberties being up for grabs on a daily basis in the form of a Labour government who thinks an eternal right-wing drift is the cheat code for success, the popular response to the government’s heavy-handed attacks on those protesting genocide implies very strongly that Reform voters are not, nor should they be, the centre of gravity for UK politics. The veteran Spanish anarchist Jose Peirats once said ‘the state is a virus, it can exist in all of us’. The key question in the coming weeks and months will be how can an anarchist immune system effectively fight it? Some of the ideas are in these pages. The rest are in our communities. Together we have everything we need. The post Freedom winter 2025-6: Watched, databased, yet to be controlled appeared first on Freedom News.

WITH AMERICAN NUKES BACK IN BRITAIN, FREEDOM’S EDITORIAL AT THE HEIGHT OF THE COLD WAR COULD AS WELL HAVE BEEN WRITTEN TODAY ~ punkacademic ~ In its 4 October 1981 issue, Freedom laid out an unequivocal case against nuclear weapons under the bold heading, THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE. 1981 was the height of the Cold War, with Reagan in office and sabre-rattling at its peak. A month earlier, protests had begun at the Greenham Common RAF base against the siting of US cruise missiles there. These protests, famously feminist and often referred to in the media as ‘the Greenham Women’, featured spectacular acts of direct action as the years went on, including tens of thousands of women encircling the base, the perimeter fence torn down, and protestors dancing on missile bunkers. The Peace Camp there became an iconic symbol of resistance to patriarchy. The piece reproduced here is that cover editorial, which preceded an issue of Freedom accompanied by a supplement focused on the threat of nuclear weapons. The cover editorial included a map of US bases in the UK, including familiar names such as Greenham Common and Lakenheath. Commenting on the prospect of the neutron bomb Freedom considered it a tell on the true nature of government that states would seek to develop a weapon that would annihilate people but preserve property. The 1980s were an era when nuclear weapons were ubiquitous in popular culture. The decade kicked off with Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s haunting Enola Gay reaching number 8 in the UK charts. In 1983-84, films such as The Day After in the US and Threads in the UK brought the horror of nuclear war home to TV audiences (both films were TV movies, which heightened their impact). And again in ’84, the first glimpses of a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles where humanity battled for survival against a malevolent artificial intelligence which had triggered a nuclear holocaust to exterminate them were seen in James Cameron’s The Terminator. The iconography of nuclear war is hardly as prevalent now, but maybe it should be. To go in reverse, news broke this week that the major AI research company Anthropic have built a mechanism into their Claude chatbot aimed at preventing it from building a nuclear weapon. At the same time, news also broke that major AIs such as ChatGPT and Grok are developing a resistance to being turned off. For those who remember, Skynet didn’t actually build the nukes in Terminator, but it did come to control them. And it reacted very badly to those who tried to turn it off. Closer to home, Greenham Common may be no more thanks in no small part to the efforts of thousands of feminists, but Lakenheath is very much alive and kicking and, as of this summer, once again home to US nuclear weapons. Worse still, planning permission (how twee!) has gone in with the local council for modifications to the site to house new munitions facilities. It’s also come out that the council has no evacuation plan in case of a nuclear accident. Alas. Nuclear weapons are both a moral obscenity and, as the editorial alludes to, the ultimate representation of what government is. The ability for the government of some to simply delete the population of others at the stroke of a key is the ultimate rebuttal of any ‘contractarian’ justification for it. Hobbes claimed government was justified by the provision of security; tell that to those it disintegrates. THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE THE development of nuclear weapons has always brought with it its own brand of specious justification. The first Atomic Bombs, as dropped on Japan, were justified because they ‘saved lives by bringing the war to a speedy conclusion’. The Hydrogen Bomb. as developed by both America and Russia, was defended by the ghastly logic that they maintained a ‘balance of terror’ since both sides were afraid to use them. The appalling destruction, uncontrollable fall-out and long-term poisoning by radiation of land and spelled too much danger for the world’s rulers, who would be destroyed along with the rest of us. The latest development has brought with it a new justification – it can be controlled! The Neutron Bomb, dubbed by the Soviets as the ‘Capitalist Bomb’ — which doesn’t mean they won’t develop one themselves — was originally said to ‘kill people but leave property untouched’ and to have a very short life of radioactive contamination. Conquered territory could be occupied by the victors in a battle in a relatively short time. Because of this, it is now being justified because it would be limited in its use to ‘the theatre of war’ itself, and not used as a terror weapon against civilian populations. Messrs Reagan and Haig are now speaking openly of the possibility of waging war in Europe (that’s America’s ‘Theatre’) with neutron bombs to overcome the Soviet’s alleged superiority over NATO in numbers of conventional weapons. What does this mean‘? It means quite simply that war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries can now be contemplated, safe in the understanding that it can be contained within battlefield Europe. What bloody nonsense! Can anybody believe for a moment that if the commanders of either side saw themselves losing such a conflict (and one side must lose!) that they would not call up their intercontinental missiles to strike at the heartland of the enemy‘? Both sides now have enough megatons to destroy the world ‘several times over’ —and we know enough of the ruthlessness of the world’s rulers to know that they would not hesitate to use them once the chips were down. Neutron bombs, therefore, precisely because they sound more ‘controllable’, are even more dangerous than their predecessors, because nuclear war is now becoming thinkable in tactical terms by the lunatics who rule the world – instead of being unthinkable. It is time we all linked cause and effect. Governments are bringing us to the brink of annihilation — it is time we began to think of government itself as unthinkable! The post Radical Reprint: Against Armageddon appeared first on Freedom News.

OUR TITLE THEME THIS TIME: “WATCHING THEM WATCHING US”—DEADLINE 4 OCTOBER As long as there has been power, there has been resistance: just like those in power have always tried to tighten their grip and gain ever more control, people have always spoken out, pushed back and reclaimed their lives. In this present moment, we are seeing struggles around the crushing of protest, with state and corporate forces using ever closer and more detailed surveillance of popular resistance. For the Winter 2025 issue of Freedom, we want to hear your stories about what those in power are doing—and also how we are pushing back. How they are trying to make us governable numbers on a spreadsheet, but at the same time how we are miles ahead of their game and watching them as well. Please send us your writing about: * Surveillance from above * Information-gathering from below * The struggle to be able to protest at all * Lessons from history about resisting this kind of power-grab * How we have created our own forms of community and counter-power instead. Articles should be about 800 or 1,600 words long. Copy deadline: 4 October . Email your contribution—or a shorter pitch if you need encouragement—to editor@freedompress.org.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Image: Steve on Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 The post Freedom seeks contributions to Winter print issue appeared first on Freedom News.

EDITORIAL FROM OUR SUMMER ISSUE, A RARE ALL-COLOUR ONE, OUT TODAY WITH THE THEME OF OUR POWER – LOOKING AT HOW ANARCHISTS AND THE WORKING CLASS CAN AND HAVE RESISTED THE RIGHTWARDS RATCHET OF CAPITALIST POLITICS ~ The issue includes an interview with Toby Shone on prisons and resistance, and retrospectives on Reclaim the Streets, anti-war actions and the 2010s surge. We also feature Red gyms, PIP and disabled organising, thoughts on power from below, and an extract from our new title Physical Resistance on British anti-fascism—as well as book reviews and the Freedom Crossword. Here is the opener from today’s edition -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The other day I cleared the leaves away from my small patch of garden. It’s a project where I reclaim a public lawn and turn it into a wildflower meadow. After a long winter the faint fingers of small growing things were starting to peek out of the dusty soil. Two years ago this was nothing but a desolate space, a biological desert, but now the wild flowers were starting to return. And I felt powerful. Without me, without the small actions I took to reclaim this soil from the monoculture known as ‘lawns’ these flowers would not exist. That does not mean I am now the master of these flowers: I’m using my life’s energy, my power, to give them room to grow. Sometimes I also need to push back against the forces that want to destroy them; but I refuse to set up a fence. When liberating and using our power we need to make sure we do not become another kind of limitation that exercises power over others. We all have gardens of one kind of another. Through our everyday tasks we all participate in this kind of exercise of “power”, and pushing against power, although it may look very different. Often it doesn’t get called power at all. For this edition of Freedom we asked contributors for times they felt “powerful”, they made things happen. One of the hardest places to fight against power is prison. It’s an institution designed to take you and make you powerless. But when we spoke to Toby Shone about his experience of being a political prisoner, he spoke about how it was possible to push back against violent raids by the guards. “The next day the whole wing refused to go back into their cells after the early morning unlock hour. As a cacophonous and unruly mob we demanded the return of seized items”. “This led to the screws backing off”. Even in the most difficult situations we can build power together and push back. Another way in which social power can try to exercise control over us is through the separation and misery that disabled people face. We spoke to Millie Wild about organising against benefit cuts and building power together. Publishing this newspaper is also a way we try to reach out and build togetherness, so we can all be more powerful. Anarchy means being against authority and against sources of power, but scholars often draw a distinction between power-with, where we all become more able to achieve our desires, and power-over, which exists to stifle others and exploit them. To return to my rewilding project, if I tried to plant or to train the wild flowers that would mean there would no longer be any wild flowers any more. Anarchist organising dares us to become more powerful while at the same time letting go of any tendency to hold too tight and control. We need to trust and respect each other’s power if we are to build it together, side-by-side. We are all wild flowers. Likewise, if I use my power to control you or to make you act in a certain way I don’t have a comrade any more, I don’t have a fellow-human at my side, instead we become stuck in a destructive spiral of one person trying to hold tight to their power-over, and the other one pushing back with their resistance. So let us, side by side, wild and thriving, appreciate the ways in which we are powerful. Our dandelion roots break through concrete like weeds. Our caring hands foster life. Even the most authoritarian societies in the world depend on the mutual aid and the caring hands of powerful mothers, of people who fall in love, so that life can continue. We are power generators, we are the working class that keeps the lights on. Without our immensely powerful love the world would end. Anarchism is about recognising this, cultivating it by giving it space to flourish, but not enclosing it in fences. We hope the discussions in this edition can also be a place for wild flowers and powerful love to flourish. We hope they will help you to enjoy and build your own power. So that our mutual aid and our cooperation can spread, become the normal way of doing things – even while we must be vigilant to protect it from the lawnmowers who want to cut us down and turn us into a deadened monoculture. How are you powerful today? The post Our Power: Freedom on May Day appeared first on Freedom News.

FREEDOM’S WINTER EDITION HIGHLIGHTS SOLIDARITY ACROSS BORDERS, THEN AND NOW Internationalism’s a twisty beast, prone to making fools of us all. Just take the Leninist left’s insistence that Maduro, or Castro, or Xi Jinping (of all people) are worthy of our undying loyalty as opponents of Western imperialism. Autocrats given a pass on their obvious and ongoing destruction of social freedoms because they wave a red flag around. But the year’s events in Palestine have been a truly heinous example of this reality as it applies to the powers that be. We’ve seen a maddened Israeli politic level the homes of millions, kill tens of thousands and starve many more. Netanyahu’s quest to stay out of jail and his Knesset allies’ outright pro-ethnic cleansing policies have set fire to the Middle East. But rather than call this mass murder out for what it is the US and, to a lesser degree, the UK have shown how they view internationalism, as a cynical exercise backing particular horses in the great game. It took Sunak and Starmer more than 11 months to grudgingly suspend some (10% of) arms sales for the IDF, in which time first Gaza, then the West Bank, and Lebanon were relentlessly pummelled. And it was not simply a bunch of imagined “terrorist sympathisers” or deluded anti-Semites who called them out on it. The South African government, reflecting a population that remembers apartheid all too well, took Israel to the international court, which ruled there was “a plausible risk of genocide”. The UN has spoken up. International votes have been clear on the matter. NGOs as beige as Oxfam have petitioned for more comprehensive measures to be taken. But Starmer and co. swan on, placid in their internationalism of the moment. And of course, why wouldn’t they be? The UK Foreign Ministry is after all the most stable of the great offices of state, inscrutable in its aims, placed out of reach of serious oversight by a public that’s only vaguely interested in it, for the most part. Them out there are only a big deal if it affects us in here, and the politicians of Westminster know it well. Hence, of course, the other major moments of Starmer’s early reign. The trip to America must be prioritised, obviously, but the second greeting was for Giorgia Meloni, to learn from her how best to join the internationalism of closing borders. A far-right leader whose deputy Salvini was so egregious, with his “closed ports” policy as interior minister, it sparked a court case accusing him of kidnap. Starmer was full of praise for this brutal regime, thoroughly embedded in Fortress Europe as the bloc collectively pays thugs beyond its borders to terrorise and repress Earth’s tired and powerless masses for having the temerity to approach without sufficient money. Sir Keir’s Labour is welded to the hypocrisy of it all, begging inward migration from millionaires while decrying the feckless poor both inside and beyond the grand moat provided by the North Sea. Sucking up to powerful economic blocs while mouthing vague platitudes about dying neoliberal values of free trade to placate the orthodoxies of Blairism circa 1997. Worse even than the Leninists’ internationalism of fools, it’s an internationalism of the graveyard. We need the revival of a long-quietened opposition, of an internationalism that unites the working class to kick the legs out from this tottering zombie and put it six feet under. In this issue of Freedom we take a look at some of the work that is taking place, and which went before in the building of solidarity across borders. Dave Morris talks about the McLibel campaign in the context of spycops and taking a transnational corporation to the cleaners. Ben Cowles recalls the immense work that goes on under the radar as migrant support groups work in defiance of aggressive policing, while other articles address prisoner support work, and the Zapatistas’ holistic, solidaristic approaches to education. Several touch on or recount elements of the major wave of internationalist revolt that took place arond the Millennium, fighting globalised capital in its pomp before falling apart in the wake of post-9/11 reaction. There are many lessons in this issue but the most important of them is this. Isolated, we struggle and always will. Our rulers know the value of collectivity. To rise up to meet them we must do the same, and better. Our futures depend on it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This editorial first appeared in Winter 2024/25 issue of Freedom. The post Their internationalism, and ours appeared first on Freedom News.