Mexico: On Anarchist Internationalism

As other comrades put it well: we anarchists are internationalists until we have destroyed the nations. Even if the first step is to not recognise nor accept them, their destruction is part of the project of destruction of the State.

Anarchy has always stood on an internationalist position. We are well aware that we should take our local context into account, but internationalism is an inseparable characteristic of the thought which tries to annihilate any sort of State and authority, opposes all form of progress and forges a life attitude in revolt against the whole existent.

The exchange of ideas and thoughts between comrades on different latitudes on the planet has been fundamental for the building of an internationalist anarchist perspective which rejects the limitations of borders and ethnicities, for example through spreading the fights comrades are waging in other contexts. Direct action and sabotage have also allowed, starting from practice itself, to forge international links between anarchists from one place or another. That goes as well for the punctual and personal support between comrades of different places, a support which manifests itself in the struggle and the common projects which are being built day after day. Translations of communiques, dialogues between comrades, solidarity actions, pamphlets to spread the stories of comrades, support to different projects, journals for exchange of ideas, thoughts and critiques, sabotage, support to comrades who are on the run, weaving fraternal relations between comrades are some examples of the way in which the movement has put into practice the internationalism that characterizes it.

From the movement in solidarity with Sacco and Vanzetti when sabotage were realized, among others, by the anarchist circles close to the journal Culmine to the sabotage actions in solidarity with the hunger strikes of the Greek comrades, from the coordination and support between comrades of the United States and Mexico to organize and propagate the insurrectional upheavals of 1910 – including the support to comrades on the run or in prison – to pamphlets in solidarity with the comrades of the 5E-M in Mexico, anarchism has showed clearly that there exist no borders for solidarity and coordination, that is to say, for the struggle itself. From comrades in Norway or Finland, countries where social pacification is strongly spread to comrades in Turkey, Syria or the Arab countries which are since years finding them-selves in a logic of all out war, we anarchists are not going to create social or ethnic categorizations, neither are we going to reproduce those categorizations that the capitalist system has created to divide. We are not going  to treat comrades as little bourgeois due to the fact that they are born in a place different than ours, just as we are not going to discriminate (“positively” moreover!) others who are born in much more catastrophic and rotten places than where we are living.

It is clear that each place has its own characteristics that in a certain way define the conditions of the struggle and that the insurrectional project has to be adapted to this characteristics, but even as such the anarchist struggle does not only correspond to local outlines of struggle. On the contrary: the struggle tries to be global reality of attack against State and Capital. As such, anarchy is far away from leftist realism, that left realism which incites passivity, waiting, reformism and kills all dreams and desires for a life of quality through the speech of what is possible and what can be done based on “the reality we are living”.

Finally, we think that we should formulate our theses starting from what we are living locally – that’s why we, the group of comrades who are participating in one way or another, from the moment we started publishing this journal, tackled themes starting from what we have in front of our eyes (and this tears down the big lie that says that there is a sort of Europeanization or European exportation existing in Mexico). But at the same time, we refuse to exchange our dreams for political realism and we believe that also contributions from comrades from other latitudes, as well as the international solidarity, may never be neglected, because they are before everything else one of the bases of anarchy which is trying to destroy all kinds of limitations. We are individualists as we believe in ourselves and act in consequence, but we also share perspectives and project with many other comrades. We learn from our past and our own experiences, but also from experiences and perspectives from other latitudes which nourish us. We refuse anyway to fall into idealizations.

If comrades in Mexico have taken over on certain moments the acronyms of CCF or FAI to claim their sabotage actions, we do not think now that this has been due to a – total – lack of own analysis neither to photocopy a speech. Although we have a critique on revendication acronyms and what is commonly called “neo-nihilism”, we can not deny that they and other comrades have put forward, in acts, a manifestation of living anarchist internationalism, to take part in the attack against power according to their own premises and perspectives.

In the same way, nowadays there exist editorial projects in affinity with the insurrectional project that doesn’t rejoice about acronyms. Those projects try to be a link between anarchists from all over the world; but there is also the practice, inseparable from theory, to express clearly that anarchy can never be reduced to an alternative without perspectives of attack against power, and neither to a regionalist speech justified by unfounded arguments that are therefore sterile of any potentiality of real, and not fictitious, confrontation.

If we are individualists, we do not idealize anything of “our own or of abroad” and we represent nothing but ourselves. The social war is latent and our life is the authentic battlefield.

March 2015 – Mexico

(via Revista Negacion)