A "see you later", or maybe a goodbye...

little girl and boy hugging each other

From Voz como arma

Hello to all.

For some time now, we have been internally questioning the real usefulness of this blog for social movements, or revolutionaries, in our environment and beyond. We have tried to revise which were really our contributions to the fight and which, on the other hand, only contributed to the spectacle, the folklore, and a purely aesthetic radicalism. We have wanted to look back, see the changes in the news and materials, the drifts we had taken, a little driven by our own criteria, but also by fluctuations in the type of content that came to us. Through this exercise, we realized that we also had another need. It had to do with the way in which certain movements or spaces of struggle perceived us and did or did not count on us as a space for dissemination of their initiatives, calls, projects or reflections. And this, in turn, led us to the situation we have now.

We know that times have changed, and although it seems that they have always been there and despite the fact that many people are already unable to imagine the world without the mediation of those spiderwebs, when this blog (previously hosted on Blogspot) began its journey, some 10 years (said so soon, huh!), Social media hardly had a presence in our lives (of course, they were there, but they did not have the ubiquitous and omnipotent ubiquity that they have now, not even close), and we really felt that the Blogs or anti-authoritarian web portals were important projects, which played an important role, and were directly inserted in the struggles of their environment, as amplifiers of the actions and projections of the same, and as a round-up of the news that came out, at a very different pace and with much more authentic links, from other territories, from «abroad». What was done, the debates that were held, gave content and in turn, the content generated real debates and projects on the street, fanzines, publications, groups wanting to do things by organizing spontaneously and experimenting, in constant and impulsive dialectics. Now, on the other hand, reality strikes us and, whether out of honesty or respect, it forces us to retreat and make self-criticism and criticisms at the same time.

The fact that most of the projects of the Spanish state (social centers, athenaeums, local anarchists or not specifically anarchists but that are related to formulas of self-organization and an autonomous and combative approach, diverse groups, individualities …) have stopped using tools like this blog to spread their projections makes us think that they no longer consider these tools as theirs, but that somehow we have occupied a sphere of the alien. We do not say this with a desire for reproach, not at all, and perhaps this is only our own impressions, but we are saddened, and not because of the fact that X people do not send us their calls, but because this calls into question the only reason for a project like this to exist. We also felt this when we saw that we received more news and requests for the dissemination of calls from places that were thousands of kilometers away, than from our own environment. When we see that these same groups that are geographically close to us prioritize (when they do not exclusively use) social networks such as Facebook or Twitter, about which so much has been discussed and talked about, while there are no projects with which we have any affinity, self-organized and hosted by servers of a close nature, such as Noblogs, Espiv or others (within the contradiction of assuming the use of the Internet knowing that it is, by default, “enemy terrain”) then, at least for us, the time comes to ask ourselves if it deserves to be thought if it is worth continuing with this, and the truth is that we believe it is not. We have reached the point where we feel that we contribute to a totally fictitious image of our struggles, disconnected from the streets and their concerns and tensions. We did not want to continue from this demotivation.

Additionally, we feel, as we have already said, that an excessive importance is given to image and folklore, without stopping to think about what kind of projectualities we fed with it, and what discourses we put in the center, sliding the debate towards a parallel focus disconnected from the daily reality of the places and relationships that we inhabit. We want to regain sanity, get our heads from the clouds, put our feet on the ground, get dirty in the immediate terrain in which we find ourselves, and do so with the conviction that we are present not only in our ghettos but also in the contradictions and tensions of others. Because we get tired of the self-worship of certain approaches, the judgments, the moral superiority, and the mostly aesthetic approach, the radical “nepotism”, that we also project on countless occasions through our work here, and in the content and reflections to which we somehow end up giving priority.

To this we would have to add the need of some people who have participated in this for a longer time to take care of our mental health, prioritize ourselves, and leave aside projects that demanded a more or less routine and constant disposition, a job that we weren't always able do (with the burden of a certain anxiety that this caused us in the medium-long term), and that at times even ceased to enchant us, for reasons that do not necessarily have to do with what is expressed above in this writing, but for many others reasons. We need air, and we think it is time to take a rest.

Throughout all these years, the blog has been carried out by a single person, except fo this last year or two (more or less) in which, in fact, other people joined in a bit intermittently, and we started using a Majestic plural ‘We’ in part for making this change visible but, above all, for a mix between being misleading and for the kick of it. Despite everything, the links have always connected more than one person, and the activity on this blog has allowed us to meet many comrades, some of whom we forged powerful ties that last until today (others, on the other hand, have remained, fortunately, forgotten) and that have led to other projects and links. We have gone through different stages, in all of them we have made mistakes, we have succumbed to many things that we condemned, we have learned and we have taken risks, and at the same time, we have had the feeling that we are not doing enough and there is a need to go much further and to not remain in the loneliness and the hollowed out husk that the virtual is sometimes. We have also made contributions that other groups have said to us that have served them, translations, reflections, editions, and that is, possibly, what we value most, along with the number of affinities (and discrepancies!) that we have found, and the fruits that some of these coincidences have borne. That's what we'll take with us!

We did not want to fall into any moralizing discourse nor in any resentful nostalgia because we hate those endings and because, we say again, we understand these changes and the effect they have also had within our environments, and we have used social networks, some still use them, and despite our abundant criticism we do not believe that its use is wrong per se (And about this we could debate for hours, but please, face to face). In the end though we have fallen into both things, moralizing and nostalgia, we are sorry. We also did not want this to sound like a bitter farewell, but we believed it necessary to explain ourselves and leave written a small critique so that those comrades who feel like it and want to do so, could collect it and interpret it as they see fit. It is not our intention to give lessons, but simply to leave as we arrived, trying to contribute to the debate.

We don’t think that we’re going to leave anything vacant. There remain many other anarchist or anti-authoritarian counter-information or communication projects on the Internet with which at any given moment we have found (and in some cases shared in some depth) quite a lot of affinity, and which do a great job. To review a few: Briega, Portal Libertario Oaca, ALasBarricadas, Tokata.info , Publicación Refractario, Anarquia.info, AlGrano, Aleva and, for those of you who are more polyglot, others like 325 (a huge greeting to them), Act For Freedom Now!, Enough is Enough, CrimethINC., and many others that you can see in the right side column of the blog itself. But we would like, please, to recover the conspiratorial spirit that anarchist communication once had. We are not talking about giving up the computer or mobile phone and limiting ourselves to clandestine printing plates as if we lived in the 19th century, like we said, times have changed, but instead we're talking of trying to take better care of our communication and empowering (facing the big platforms and the great media of the enemy) the projects that have been born with the intention of being one more small amplifier for the voices and the revolts from the streets of our neighborhoods, towns or villages, develop initiatives and roots not domesticated that crack the grey concrete slab of the masters, invades their gardens and give light to forests and new life.

The blog will remain open, but, in principle, we will not publish on it again, at least for a long period of time.

It has been a pleasure, in many senses of the word, and we will be delighted to reconvene or to know and discover ourselves in other stories, at other moments and places. See you on the streets, because that’s where the fight is. It’s always been there, we haven't.

Long live anarchy!

La Rebelion de las Palabras [The Rebellion of Words]
Virtual project of anarchist counter-information

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I liked pairing these critical reflections about anarchist's engagement with, or distance and abstinence from, media projects with this short column by Bonanno that recently got uploaded to The Anarchist Library :

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-litanies

In it he says:

"At the present time, a list of attacks being carried out can only apparently be an impulse to act. Yes, it can fill the vacuum left by our demolished and afflicted conscience. Well, someone might say (actually, many, as I can see when I am moving around), at the end of the earth, it doesn’t matter where, someone is acting against power by attacking it in its interests, its structures, its technological components and everything else. My turn will come, of course it will, the little comrade says, holed up in their eternal doubts as perpetual preparer of the next action in the near future, always still in the making. For the moment it is enough for me to know what is being done, everywhere, even at the end of the earth, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care about differences of background, about the fact that the conditions are radically different from one place to another, it’s enough for us to go forward heads down. It’s enough to simply read this long list, it cheers me up and makes me feel proud to be an anarchist."

That reminds me more of sites like
Attaque.

I think it's nice to celebrate those who chose to leave their late night scrolls in favor late night strolls. But also cheers to those who can manage to do both!

Another blog "dies" (https://attaque.noblogs.org/post/2020/05/26/sortir-les-idees-dinternet/), somewhere else another is "born". The most trivial of events, specially now, considering the heyday of might have been before the advent of social media, maybe the peak was somewhere where they were just starting. Precisely now they're more plenty than ever that ever, is when each of them is less important, even invisible by themselves, when everybody and their grandma has one, and everyone has multiple tendrils of online presence, feeding to and from each other.
But it's this aspect of the online aspect of daily life and its existential component for anarchists which has any significance. If it's unimportant and even pernicious, why engage in it at all? There's an element of cosmic horror to all this. Like we're all feeding a giant monster that's constricting on us all, and is going to swallow the world whole.

Below is the French to English machine translation of one more melodramatic suicide letter/quit notice of another blog:

I decided to delete the Diomedea blog. Also, I planned to lay out the texts published on the blog, in order to keep a record of it, on paper. You can contact me by email to receive the brochures by post.

If I made this decision it is because I have not wanted for a while to feed a blog, whatever it is, without being able to have in front of me those who read it, and especially because that I have been questioning for some time the fact of giving a presence to my ideas on the internet, which is why the Heresy review has always been only on paper. Being critical and worried about the advancement of technologies in our daily lives, and the dystopia that is being created on this basis, I no longer want to participate in a virtualization of my ideas, which thus lose their reality and value, I find, and become simple objects of consumption. The virtual makes everything porous and puts everything on the same level,

Internet is the popularization, the standardization of differences and tastes, conformism, which produces a generalized stupefaction, and moreover already involves changes at the cognitive and physical level (spending your day sitting in front of a screen it does not risk develop certain skills that humans and their ancestors developed through non-sedentary lifestyles). With the internet everything becomes accessible, light, ordinary, within everyone's reach, and therefore very often insignificant.

Soon people will pretend to climb summits by putting on a virtual reality headset from their living room, and then we can have sex with "someone" without making the effort to meet, or have an individual in front of us, you just have to choose an avatar from a catalog, a fictitious fictitious partner, and put on your helmet. We could already see that affective and / or sexual relationships tend to transform the other into a simple object. Well ! Soon it will be real objects that will be the essence of these reports. Others already claim to have virtual friends whom they have never met and who they cannot verify if they are what they claim to be. We can also today pretend to speak a language after having learned it on a program, without ever having spoken with a native speaker, or even call oneself a botanist by having memorized the name of the plants in Latin without ever having observed them in the field. Here I contrast real experience, and the knowledge that flows from it (known as “hot knowledge”), with virtual knowledge, disconnected from an experience in reality (“cold knowledge”) which is comparable to that of a machine. by its uniformity, its coldness, its mechanical and superficial form, its lack of perceptible sensations, but can never pretend to equal it, because an artificial intelligence has an instantaneous ability to memorize and an almost unlimited capacity of memory, which greatly exceeds everything a human could do at this level.

Fifteen years ago we could, perhaps, still allow ourselves to be naive and to pretend that we could decide to make a "good" use of the Internet (a tool created by the military, therefore which never been neutral), but right now you have to be damn blind, or tech savvy, to continue to make such an argument. Or you have to give up and say to yourself that you have to adapt well to the society in which you live, and try to see something positive in spite of everything, to "democratize" access to ideas by disseminating them on the Internet. In reality we have no control over this huge spider web, and every piece of data swung on it feeds huge databases that are used to develop the intelligence of Artificial Intelligence that is no longer science fiction, and which undoubtedly promise us serious trouble in the not too distant future. Generations before us have very well been able to spread their ideas without the internet, and they may have had more exchanges than we have today, where virtual reports can never replace real reports, links affinity and real friendships based on the trust that sensitive relationships allow to others.

And then lately it must be said that the reflection on the relationship to the internet is also fueled by the increasing attacks (mainly on the European and American continents) against antennas, whether they are TV, radio, 3G, 4G antennas or 5G. These are intended to make the connection much faster for smartphones and other connected objects, which tends to make the internet ubiquitous in everyday life, where users are connected 24/24 in one way or another, than it either with their smartphones, their watches, or any other everyday object. Not to mention the advances that 5G allows for the military and police, for example with drones, radar systems, laser vibrometers (capable of locating our pulsations at 200 meters) and other joys; and then the nonsense that are autonomous cars. Little by little, daily dependence on the internet is developing in areas that do very well without such an auxiliary: depending on a GPS to get around, having your watch connected for jogging, listening to music, paying for your shopping. , open the door of your building, buy train or bus tickets and only have them scanned, use a connected speaker to turn on your radio or oven, turn on the living room radiator remotely from your office, and other possibilities so essential that everything connected allows. The day when money will only become virtual, and we will no longer be able to shop without a smartphone or other connected object, and we will no longer be able to access a salary, RSA, APL without it (certainly, we can do without all of this, but can we just do without money in this society?), that it will be the room for maneuver if we refuse to use these objects, apart from being totally excluded from the society ? And what is the room for maneuver in the face of a “social credit” program, a sort of totalitarian digital system, as developed in China and which already seems to make some other states envious? Tomorrow the choice will be simply to enter the connected mold or to live "outside" of society, without even knowing if this will only be possible. sort of totalitarian digital system, as developed in China and which already seems to make some other states envious? Tomorrow the choice will be simply to enter the connected mold or to live "outside" of society, without even knowing if this will only be possible. sort of totalitarian digital system, as developed in China and which already seems to make some other states envious? Tomorrow the choice will be simply to enter the connected mold or to live "outside" of society, without even knowing if this will only be possible.

Having an object connected today means accepting in fact the 5G antennas that are installed for, and which will soon flourish in the streets, and accept the dystopia already present in China, and which will soon arrive elsewhere. Today some people adopt these objects, sometimes without assuming it, by finding justifications, and tomorrow it will be subcutaneous fleas or other surveillance objects inserted in the bodies which will become the new norm (some are already poking their skin to insert fashionable jewelry), and that the same will accept with the same wobbly justifications, or the same technophile enthusiasm ... each time there will be one more step taken in this artificialization of life, a new object to adopt, and each time the limits of freedom will be narrowed,
It is worth remembering that the first thing that was done to the prisoners of the gulags was to have them build the barbed wire fence… the connected objects that we take everywhere with us are the barbed wire fences of today, which for the moment are voluntarily used, because there is nothing like choosing your own cage.

If we take the problem from another angle, it is interesting to see that in recent years several states have not hesitated to cut the internet during large revolts, in order to destabilize the populations who then had to learn to rebuild structures and communicate outside internet. So, as long as we can use the internet as we want it is that it does not bother the power too much, because if by internet we made the power wobble its access would be restricted.

On defending the distribution of brochures on social networks, or on the internet in general, probably considering that the single paper does not reach enough people, or not accepting that ideas do not need the internet to exist, thus using a productivist logic, the quantitative preferred to the qualitative; but considering probably also the advantage of the speed of the dissemination of texts on the internet, because speed has become a major objective in this hyper-connected world, I can only retort that I see behind all this a hope of waking up masses by diffusing ideas in quantity and accessible to all, by adopting the means of diffusion of the society, whereas me I have no desire of inclusion of my ideas in the social, nor of an interaction with, having for some time abandoned the illusion of a revolution and refusing to separate substance from form. Posting brochures on Facebook would be, I think, much worse than distributing brochures or books by Fnac, publishing them as well as they should (ISBN and tutti quanti), instead of having them printed in my own way and broadcast myself. Not to mention the fact that social networks create a background noise effect, a virtual crowd ready to comment, consume and broadcast the latest buzz, or to virtually lynch the last controversial subject, like these crowds who were yelling at the condemned before their execution . by publishing them all right (ISBN and tutti quanti), instead of having them printed in my own way and distributing them myself. Not to mention the fact that social networks create a background noise effect, a virtual crowd ready to comment, consume and broadcast the latest buzz, or to virtually lynch the last controversial subject, like these crowds who were yelling at the condemned before their execution . by publishing them all right (ISBN and tutti quanti), instead of having them printed in my own way and distributing them myself. Not to mention the fact that social networks create a background noise effect, a virtual crowd ready to comment, consume and broadcast the latest buzz, or to virtually lynch the last controversial subject, like these crowds who were yelling at the condemned before their execution .

Also, talking to people who have no affinity with his ideas seems to me completely futile, because even if they read these ideas, if they have in them another relation to the world it will have no reason to 'evoke something in them, at most they can find them interesting from an intellectual point of view, but it will be drowned in the immense mass of other ideas present on the net, formatted so that we want to go to these consumer products. In addition, in such a context I would fear that consumers will do more than embrace a new ideology, with all the exaggerated conviction and passion shown by new followers who have something to prove. Certain analyzes of social psychology do not seem to me devoid of interest on this subject, especially concerning group manipulation, sectarian phenomena or what the need for recognition and integration pushes to do. It is the history of society versus the individual, and above all the history of certain “political” circles and their propensity to recruit docile and obedient parrots.

At the same time, reading on paper is a habit that is lost, and it reminds me of those people who are unable to see the posters stuck in their street, and who only get information for concerts or other things on the web. What is their eye drawn to, what do they do when they walk down the street, if they don't see the posters pasted under their noses? No doubt that looking beyond a few inches in front of you has become so unusual, because of the ubiquity of screens in their lives, that they are not even able to see the details around them… the buds that hatch in the spring, the flocks of birds in the distance, the cameras that push in the streets, the tags traced during the night, all this is invisible to those connected who start to look more and more like machines.

If there are still blogging platforms, such as noblogs, espivblogs, etc., or sites that operate independently and offer interesting texts (but it is necessary to make a very large sort in the mass of sites / blogs), and that I recognize their importance, I bet that the ideas that I carry can spread outside the internet, as was done without asking questions less than 15 years ago. I do not want to continue to adapt to this society by accepting means which do not suit me and which are not mine, over which I have no control (the state shutdown of the internet, the legal closure of 'a site, etc.). The means for me say a lot about what we carry in ourselves. Disseminate on my scale, according to my capacities, and be satisfied with it,

I did not have access to the internet when my critical thinking started to become clearer during my adolescence, and it is undoubtedly thanks to this that I was able to chart my own path, looking for what could feed me by a few readings prompted by my own reflection. With the little that I had at my disposal (the philosophy department of the high school library, the rare anar newspapers in newsstands, etc.), without having anyone to advise me, I explored the reflections that worked on me, I I made mistakes in my explorations, I learned from them, and finally I come back to the same point as when I was 18, no matter the thousands of texts that I could read (including on the internet ) meanwhile, the few readings of that time, which I perceive today in the light of my experiences, still feed my thought and would be sufficient. I did not need the internet or a "political" environment to go to what I am today, and even, it is because I wanted to live things in reality, to share experiences with real people who have a singularity that exists only in reality (a smile, an intonation, particular gestures, an energy etc), explore what surrounds me, let develop my sensitivity, that my thought took this orientation. In a sanitized environment that I choose, where I would be connected to social networks, dependent on the image I would give of myself, and therefore dependent on the gaze of those others whom I cannot even see, I would not have gone, I think, towards individualist thought. And “being born in” the relation to all this does not prevent having a critical reflection. I was in school from the age of 3, but that did not prevent me from having a refractory attitude towards the school system. And I could give yet another example among many others: being born in a patriarchal society necessarily makes me accept patriarchy?

To return to the original subject, I do not defend the paper per se, because there would be interesting analyzes to say about the appearance of the printing press. But I prefer paper to virtuality. And I hope that people close to my ideas who are still keen on Internet dissemination realize that there is nothing to expect, except that the data that we voluntarily give to this web immense are used for something sooner or later (it can be just data which make the fortune of a company which is enriched by that).

That being said, concerning the brochures and the theoretical texts it seems pretty clear to me. Regarding press releases, I am nevertheless obliged to recognize that a distribution on paper would undoubtedly be more complex, although it has been done in the past. To avoid a debate that has been going on for some time, I think that there is no sense in opposing non-communication (I will not speak of anonymity, because everyone is anonymous in this kind of situation) to communicating, because the two approaches can quietly coexist. And unfortunately in this specific case, communicating by internet remains the most simple and secure solution. And it must be recognized that texts which accompany acts are all the more important, inscribing themselves in a praxis which breaks the dichotomy theory versus practice. The diversity of approaches is a richness, and communication can be inspiring and arouse vocations, in any case show that it is possible; and explaining the ways of doing things can also allow this famous "reproducibility". In this context there, the contradiction of using internet does not seem to me problematic in itself. And this is proof that everything in this world is not black or white, and that in certain contexts it happens to make concessions, which differentiates a living individual from a machine. the contradiction of using the internet does not seem problematic in itself. And this is proof that everything in this world is not black or white, and that in certain contexts it happens to make concessions, which differentiates a living individual from a machine. the contradiction of using the internet does not seem problematic in itself. And this is proof that everything in this world is not black or white, and that in certain contexts it happens to make concessions, which differentiates a living individual from a machine.

You could tell me that it is contradictory to make a criticism of the internet while disseminating this text on the internet and giving an email address to contact me to receive the brochures. Indeed, I do not yet have a better solution concerning the ordering of brochures, and as for the publication of the text, given that it is mainly intended for people navigating in the virtual, it seemed to me that it was a solution to get them to pass this message (obviously, this text is also available on paper).

See you out of the canvas!

An albatross
May 2020
diomedea (at) riseup (point) net

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