LibriumArcana.Games

Posted: **Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:49 pm**

Struggle above all else, that’s what’s missing in Italy”, says one of the new millennium’s individualist anarchists. The one afraid of missing a fleeting opportunity while waiting for the right moment. “When is the right moment? When do we grasp the fucking moment? It’s like the communists... wait for the perspective of revolution! What perspective? The perspective of revolution is now! It’s right now! I can step outside and I’ve got all the targets I want!... Do you know how many targets I’ve got if I just nip out? There’s no point in waiting for something to fall into your lap. It won’t. You’re the one that’s got to make it happen”.

A few snatches of conversation like these, intercepted by Carabinieri from the ROS special operations group, are enough to reveal the mindset of the new rebels accused of terrorism and subversion. The phrases came from the lips of Alessandro Settepani, 27, arrested and released in 2009-2010, currently facing further bombing charges and rearrested yesterday. They reveal the various takes on militancy in the revolutionary universe. The course of justice will decide whether they are sufficient to endorse the serious charges brought by the Perugia public prosecutor’s office but they do throw light on a world where violence and armed action are still very much on the table, long after the infamous “Years of Lead”.

Settepani says that when he was in jail with a comrade, also rearrested yesterday, “we preferred people to do something else instead of wasting energy on demonstrations. Use your strength to attack, not come and shout ‘Free Them’ for us... When I was inside and people on the outside continued to mount attacks, I mean, I was chuffed to mint balls! I could have done ten years, no sweat!... This isn’t a game of cards in a bar. It’s a war!”

This is the thinking of the new millennium anarchist who on release went straight back to militant extremism. Almost openly, as emerges from the phone taps, electronic eavesdropping and letter interceptions that the correspondents themselves must have imagined were going on. Yet they do not seem to have been particularly bothered. For the revolutionaries, actions speak louder than a thousand theoretical tracts: “For me, any attack is good”, says Settepani, “If you carry one out, if you can do it... you can get to work on a miserable ATM or on Parliament itself... I mean, you can blow up Parliament, or you can deface it, for instance... it’s still an attack. The main thing is that the action should be direct! ... But attacks should be widespread and should not just focus on a specific sector”.
A little later, Settepani comments on an attack in Greece reported on internet: “These guys didn’t give up and turn themselves in... they got the guns out... and started shooting... It was great because in the end... young guys... oh, twenty-one, twenty-four... Just think how great... the commitment... the fucking integrity! Just hearing that these things are going on!”

Not that the new violence-optional activists yearn for the old days of 1970s-style armed struggle, particularly not if it is Marxist-Leninist-inspired. All that is kept at arm’s length, which is what Olga Ekonomidou did in a letter to one of those detained yesterday. Ms Ekonomidou is the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire militant, now being held in her native Greece, who gave her name to the Cell of Fire that claimed responsibility for last month’s attack on Ansaldo Nucleare CEO Roberto Adinolfi. In her letter, which was seized during a search, Ms Ekonomidou writes: “When we of Conspiracy say armed struggle, we do not mean armed vanguard or armed party, as the Red Brigades and other communist organisations did. We use armed struggle to defeat the reformism of certain lukewarm anarchists who reject direct action and opt for peaceful action”. For that reason, she explains, “we propose calling it direct action, not armed struggle”.

In its claim of responsibility for last December’s parcel bombs, the “Free Eat e Billy” cell of FAI/FRI (informal anarchist federation/international revolutionary front) warned: “We have no need for action specialists. Anyone can take up arms”. However a few months earlier, Spanish detainee Gabriel Pombo da Silva said on the phone from his German jail to an Italian comrade: “I’ve nothing against specialising – bank robbers, bomb makers and so on – right? But it means us working together, the various groups moving in a concrete context”. Last January, he added after the parcel bombs he is accused of sending were dispatched: “We stay in contact and attack... we learn by doing... you know? Always on the move. And then there’s the FAI project to group all these tendencies together in the perspective of armed disturbances”.

The FAI/FRI rebels appear to have two categories of enemy: institutions, their symbols and the representatives of dominance in various forms on one hand; and on the other reformists and those who are happy with non-violent protest. In a letter from the prison cell where he was held in 2009, Settepani wrote: “Prison is a brutal cage, not a hotel. It is a tool which, like all tools that are part of the dominant system, should be eliminated, not improved... The principal objective of this mobilisation is to recover the joy of struggling in international solidarity, not to induce comrades to offer prisoners compassion”.

This is the tail end of a debate that has been going on for several years. It appeared in the Foglio anarchico rivoluzionario [Revolutionary Anarchic Sheet] under the headline of the formula for potassium nitrate, KNO3, identified by Rome-based ROS Carabinieri officers in 2008. The debate continues and perhaps involves other groups and movements, as Settepani again says: “I can be partially represented by a revolutionary communist, partially because if a revolutionary communist kills a pig, I am in partial agreement with him! He did well, partially... but he’s still a shit because he’s got a shitty opinion”.

To be honest I'm not seeing much of an ideology here, just a glorification of violence and a desire to tear everything down for... Fuck if I know. This seems pretty much like political Nihilism to me.

Posted: **Mon Jun 18, 2012 11:43 pm**

The Gilded Age is the useful parallel here. Most of the ideological inventions from that era faded pretty quickly, and a lot of steam was blown off through less-than-ideologically coherent movements, along with one US president.

We, and these folks from the article, need Teddy Roosevelts of the new age to start the ball rolling in the other direction. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any on the horizon, and frankly TR would've been politically slaughtered in the modern media environment. So who knows how this shakes out. I'm not quite ready to throw in with Van Creveld and the gradual fade of the nation-state into ethnic/religious communities breaking into LICs all over just yet, but the frustration of the system is boiling toward something.

ETA: To be very clear, not advocating assassination of heads of state, US or otherwise, or any such silliness.

Posted: **Tue Jun 19, 2012 4:33 am**

LICs?

Posted: **Tue Jun 19, 2012 7:10 am**

Low-intensity conflicts.

It takes at least three to get to the center of an industrialized country.

...and I realize that most people probably won't get that joke.

Posted: **Tue Jun 19, 2012 9:30 am**

Josh wrote:Low-intensity conflicts.

It takes at least three to get to the center of an industrialized country.

...and I realize that most people probably won't get that joke.

Mr. Owl.

Posted: **Tue Jun 19, 2012 5:49 pm**

SirNitram wrote:
Josh wrote:Low-intensity conflicts.

It takes at least three to get to the center of an industrialized country.

...and I realize that most people probably won't get that joke.
Mr. Owl.

Three.

Posted: **Wed Jun 20, 2012 2:40 am**

I fail to see how the existence of terrorists and anarchists, which has been a fact of life since the dawn of history, is proof of the impending collapse of society into general inter and intra-ethnic warfare. But then I'm not trying to sell books.

Posted: **Wed Jun 20, 2012 7:10 am**

I fail to see how the existence of terrorists and anarchists, which has been a fact of life since the dawn of history, is proof of the impending collapse of society into general inter and intra-ethnic warfare. But then I'm not trying to sell books.

Hey I'm just waiting for word from the publishers okay

...oh, you mean van Creveld. Nah, that's not his premise in "The Transformation of Warfare". I haven't read his later stuff, I'll get around to it sooner or later. But in 'Transformation' he points out that conventional warfare is becoming less prevalent by the decade and that national armies, regardless of stripe, tend to get worn down by guerrilla warfare. Mostly he's dissecting the premises of Clauswitz's 'On War', specifically the notion that warfare is a tool of policy. His thing on nations is that they are a fairly recent contrivance and that in many places in the world the whole concept of nationality has never fit well and as soon as the imperialists pulled out the whole concept started to fade out. Now he does see that disintegration eventually expanding westward, as it were.

Like I said, I'm not entirely sold on the concept. I have seen some interesting points on geographical cultural trends, though. For example, the I-5 corridor in the US and into Canada has more cultural homogeneity with itself than those areas do with the rest of their respective countries. The I-95 corridor is like that once you get north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Regardless, he's not saying that society will collapse, he's saying it will evolve just as the nation-state was an evolution from the previous feudal state. Nobles looking ahead to the concept of unfettered serfs would likely be predicting Armageddon, but it was simply the world rolling on like it always does.

Posted: **Wed Jun 20, 2012 3:49 pm**

I really should not criticize a book I haven't read, but he sounds much like one of those authors I occasionally come across who seem to have formed their opinions of how the world works around 1981 and cherry-picked examples out of more recent history to support them. I have no doubt that history will continue to roll on away from one thing and towards another. But predictors of the future based on "historical trends" have, generally speaking, an accuracy rate that approaches 0.

Besides, "Western society will imminently shatter along ethno-cultural lines" is a prediction made with nauseating regularity, usually about the US, occasionally about other societies, mostly by nations who retain extremely high degrees of cultural or ethnic homogeneity and cannot fathom how a nation which does not can possibly see out the week. This is why most science fiction from Japan pre-supposes the US disintegrating into general race war roughly ten minutes into their future-history. While the Nation model is not perfect, and will indeed eventually be replaced by something else, most predictors can't see past a regression to some form of high-tech tribalist barbarism. Makes for good copy, I guess.

Posted: **Wed Jun 20, 2012 4:37 pm**

We pretty much concur there, actually. I didn't even get into his concept of the possibility of insurgency tactics spreading to the inner cities, and in fairness to the dating of it, he did write the book in '91, so at least he was only a decade off from the '81 worldview. As for cherry-picking, not so much. Bear in mind it's not the central thrust of the book, but rather a complement to the main theme of how warfare is evolving.

Where I think his model is far more applicable is in places where nationalism never really had time to firmly take root or develop naturally, though.

Posted: **Wed Jun 20, 2012 9:28 pm**

To be fair, alot of science fiction set 20 minutes into the futures starts with "The United States fell apart into feuding states along regional or racial lines" mostly because if you don't dismantle the United States, then you have to tell a completely different story. Or at least explain how (to use a Euro example) France turned into a Fascist state fighting wars across the Med without the USN stepping in and saying "No."

It would be interesting to see a near future Sci-Fi that doesn't dismantle the US or cripple it somehow.

I should also note that the "The US is doomed and will fall apart because it isn't a "real" nation state has always been common. Aristocratic Western Euros preached that in the 1800s (this line of reasoning appeared unpopular in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, although some did push that without a central monarchy to unite us, we were doomed). Fascists in Europe and Asia preached it in the 1900s. There were Communists who did the same (though from what I can tell that was never a popular position in the USSR... Likely because the USSR was alot like the US in being created across racial and regional lines).

I figure it comes from the fact that some people don't grasp the common American mythology and belief system (not a religious one but there are more kinds of belief systems then religious ones) and it's effect at making sure Americans have more in common then not.

Posted: **Thu Jun 21, 2012 1:11 am**

The US is a complicated place. Moreso than most. And blanket statements about it consequently risk being... ill-informed.

I haven't heard much about the "real" nation state recently. Most of those predictions died out after WWII. It's hard to argue the viability of a national model when it conquers large portions of the world off-handedly and becomes the most powerful superpower on Earth.

That said, regarding the areas you were speaking of where the model might better apply, the issue there, as I've always seen it, is not a post-national but a pre-national development. The 'nations' of Africa, the Middle East, and much of South Asia did not arise organically, but were imposed upon the populations in question without reference to 'circumstances on the ground' as it were. Great Power politics and geographical coordinate partitioning, followed by extremely rapid decolonization, resulted in 'nations' like Nigeria or Sudan, which are effectively nations in name only, prone to fracturing at the slightest touch into smaller de facto pieces (and occasionally, as in Sudan's case, de jure ones). Their lack of staying power does not point to the end of Nations. We forget the sheer length of time it took for Nationalism to arise in Europe (arguably the work of a thousand years), and then condemn the entire edifice to the ash-heap of history when countries like Pakistan do not take to it, root-and-branch, in fifty.

Besides, failed states like Somalia and endemic fracture-zones like Waziristan, Northern Nigeria, or the Congo notwithstanding, I would argue that the story of the last thirty years has been the astonishing resilience of the national model, not its disintegration. India, which in terms of a multicultural society makes the United States look like Andorra, has defied all expectations by stubbornly hanging together, as have the largely tribal nations of Eastern and Southern Africa. Trans-national enterprises across the third world such as the UAR have all failed miserably (not at all the fault of the Arabs, who could spot an incipient kleptocracy to make even the Syrians blush when they saw one), and not simply because of some centrifugal tribalism lurking under every rock. Most third world nations have some form of endemic separatist movement (or movements) to deal with, but those rarely presage the total explosion of the nation in question. After all, the definition of a nation is somewhat subjective, and it takes time to shake down exactly what is and isn't going to get to call itself one.

Ethno-religious tribalism is certainly a major force in the world, particularly in the third world. But it's not as though it became one yesterday. Most people who argue its ascendency are ones who only recently discovered that ethnicities exist, that not all Arabs (or Africans) are the same group, and assume that this is some sort of recent development. As the world becomes more integrated by communication and cultural cross-polinization (call it imperialism if you want, but I will not), the result is a steady diminution of these effects. That is not to say they are not still very compelling, particularly when there's no other source of identity around (as is the case in much of Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, and other places). But to speak of the world returning to them is, I think, somewhat obtuse.

Nationalism will, in good time (and maybe even imminently) give way before some other default unit of identity. Its death may be fraught with upheaval and chaos (lord knows its birth was). But the result is unlikely to be a sudden regression to the state of affairs of a thousand years ago. That's just not how history works.

Posted: **Thu Jun 21, 2012 1:48 am**

Do we even have a competing idea to the nation-state? I don't mean tribalism or the silly anarchism above, but an honest to God idea that can compete with the power and organization the nation state promises and in many times delivers.

Posted: **Thu Jun 21, 2012 1:36 pm**

Havoc: Good analysis. It's not what Creveld was driving at precisely, because he wasn't saying that we're facing a global regression, but rather some form of progression and in the book he's pretty honest about the speculative portions being just that, speculative. He says more than once that he doesn't know what's coming, just that he thinks what we have won't hold.

...and yes, 'change' is a bold prediction. Robert Kaplan has similar notions, and having read a substantial portion of his works, I'd recommend them outright. He definitely isn't new to the concept of ethnicity- he was breaking down the ethnic nature of the Ethiopian Civil War in the '80s when most journalists were either outright ignoring it or treating it as a sparse guerrilla action against a well-meaning government. He has a tendency to go native in his writings (In Surrender or Starve he'd about make love to Eritrean culture if he could) but he does get into places and see things.

Frigid: The main 'US doesn't break up' fic I can think of would be Pournelle's CoDominium series, which also was written the the Soviet Union staying intact (essentially projecting the late seventies balance of power another three centuries down the road.) Firefly of course seemed to indicate a similar power-sharing structure only with the US and China.

As for an alternative model of social organization, I expect it'll arise the way the previous ones did. In a time of turmoil and dislocation when old models don't work, various new ones will be tried and the ones that succeed will become the new paradigm.

LibriumArcana.Games

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