#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Italy, FAI: XXXI Congresso - For a New Anarchist Manifesto Against the War (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Italian Anarchist Federation - FAI

In these months in which the tragedy of war is increasingly brought to
international attention by the crisis in Ukraine, the theme of anarchist
anti-militarism is more compelling than ever. We see how, already before the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, some heavy-handed criticism of our traditional
anti-militarism was carried out by some individuals and groups who declare
themselves anti-authoritarian, libertarian or anarchist. We have carefully
considered these positions in the last few months, and we believe today that we
need to clarify our point of view. ---- Our thoughts first go to our comrades
who, more than one century ago, before the tragedy of the First World War, felt
the need to affirm that: "To all the soldiers of all countries who believe they
are fighting for justice and liberty, we have to declare that their heroism and
their valour will but serve to perpetuate hatred, tyranny, and misery"
(International Anarchist Manifesto against the War, 1915). Like Goldman, Berkman,
Malatesta, Schapiro and the others, we believe in the need that the
internationalist and solidarity voice of anarchism, together with its principles
of universal sisterhood and brotherhood, return to speak to everyone, even more
in a world that is increasingly fragmented by national, ethnic and identity hatred.

War stands at the origin of the current social order, based on domination,
exploitation and oppression. This is a key point for the FAI, as it is exposed in
the Anarchist Programme which is the theoretical reference of our Federation:
"Not understanding the advantages that could come to everyone from cooperation
and solidarity, seeing in every other person a competitor and an enemy, a part of
humanity has tried to grab the greatest possible amount of wealth to the
detriment of the other. In such a struggle, the strongest, or the most fortunate,
ends for winning and variously oppressing and dominating the vanquished".

This is why we maintain our position of rejection of all wars and of support to
the idea of revolutionary defeatism. By defeatism we mean a revolutionary
position before war, which implies that one should fight for the defeat of the
government and the ruling classes of their own country, believing that wars are
fought for the interests and privileges of the oppressors and exploiters. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, and especially during the First World War,
some European governments used the charge of "defeatism" to repress any form of
dissent, opposition to war, political protest or workers’ struggle, which would
break the national unity before the enemy. Therefore, defeatism does not accept
the suspensions of social struggles that are imposed by governments in times of
war through censorship, repression and martial laws. On the contrary, the
struggle against the government during wartimes continues, by both sabotaging the
war and encouraging social struggles. Defeatism is inserted in an
internationalist and revolutionary perspective which aims at provoking the defeat
of the imperialism of "our own" countries, and one of its fundamental points is
the refusal to support any belligerent party in wars between states and / or
imperial blocks.

Dozens of wars are currently being fought, with their load of deaths,
destruction, rapes, looting and mass deportation. In the last fifteen years, the
crisis of the hegemony system based on globalization has produced a worldwide
trend towards authoritarianism and militarization. Globalization as a form of
world domination has for a long time ensured a privileged role in the
exploitation of the planet's resources to Anglo-American imperialism, with the
support of the privileged classes of various countries. The entry of Russia and
China into the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization has
shown that the conflicts between these powers do not question the division of
society into classes and various hierarchies.

At the FAI Congress that took place in Empoli in June 2022, we issued a statement
regarding interpretations of the war in Ukraine, of which we quote a part: "In
the last ten years, a very different scenario has been defined by the
intensification of tensions between states, the trade and financial wars, the
progressive isolation of markets to a greater or lesser extent, the extension of
conflicts which occur partly by proxy, but increasingly in direct form, between
worldwide and regional powers in different regions of the world. The capitalist
model that was imposed in the last century by US hegemony is still the horizon
within which contentions between states take place, but the world is no longer
dominated by a single superpower. The US have lost the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq
and Syria, and compared to a few decades ago their influence in Central and South
America, which they used to consider their backyard, has significantly
diminished. The AUKUS agreement between Australia, the UK and the US, which
reoriented the strategy of these states towards the Pacific with a separate
alliance, seemed to challenge the US presence in Europe and the very cohesion, if
not existence, of NATO. Thus, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is part of a process
of redefining the global balance of power.

The crisis of this global hegemony is closely linked with the crisis of
governmental systems based on social cohesion, due to the cutting of social
guarantees and the weakening of consensus mechanisms. In many countries, we have
seen the rising of movements that, with different forms and characteristics,
question the governments and the agreements between the ruling classes. In this
context, the use of force becomes these latter’s main instrument for the
preservation of power and social order. In this sense, we have discussed in
recent years the growing role of the military in societies. The uprising in
Belarus in 2020 and the insurrection in Kazakhstan in January 2022 have shown a
serious crisis of consensus within the Russian-led system. In the holding of the
OTSC, the military has assumed a key role. The Russian military intervention in
Kazakhstan to bloodily crush popular uprisings gave a tragic demonstration of
this, and paved the way for the invasion of Ukraine in February. Even in the US,
the anti-police riots against racist violence in 2020 led the armed forces
leadership to support Biden's installation as president in a prelude to civil war
in early 2021, to prevent Trump's violent supremacism from irreparably
exasperating the consensus crisis."

The response to the crisis is the increase in military spending and the
strengthening of the role of the armed forces in political decisions. Once
destroyed the mechanisms of economic and political regulation that established
the hierarchy between powers and the flows of profits towards the imperialist
metropolises, the ruling classes need war to restore the old domination or to
define new ones. In the context of this new world disorder, recourse to war and
military missions is growing, in whatever way governments define them in their
propaganda.

 From Ukraine to Yemen, from Sahel countries to Myanmar, from Afghanistan to
Tigray and elsewhere, passing through all the regions where genocides such as the
Kurdish one and those of indigenous and Afro-descendant populations are underway,
we are all potentially under the bombs and the threat of destruction, repression
and authoritarian change. We know well that the revolving doors between so-called
democracies and the so-called autocracies can move very quickly, and that the
state of war quickly reduces the space for those who want to act for social
transformation. We always give our human solidarity to those who suffer and risk
their lives being in difficult situations, even if they have ideas and practices
that are distant from those we express.

However, social anarchism breaks the current imperial, capitalist, nationalist
and authoritarian logics, rejecting the divisions imposed by borders. We do not
recognize the concept of territorial integrity or territorial "defence" of a
state or any entity that aspires to be like a state because, associated with the
principle of territorial sovereignty, these principles inevitably end up to
foster nationalist or micro-nationalist perspectives. Whatever the word "nation"
means, it hides the division between exploiters and exploited, between oppressors
and oppressed.

We reiterate our irrevocable and unambiguous condemnation of the Putinian regime
and of its criminal invasion of Ukraine, as well as its ferocious repression of
internal dissent. But we also condemn the criminal role of all governments that
blow on the flames of this and other conflicts by providing weapons, often making
money with these supplies. We strongly oppose NATO, which has long been trying to
impose the militarization of social life and the increase of military spending in
member countries, and which thanks to Putin has gained new strength after the
inglorious end of their aggression in Afghanistan. In the same way, we don’t buy
the narrative of a war between freedom and dictatorship. From this point of view,
Zelensky's Ukraine is truly a small Russia, with an authoritarian government, a
circle of oligarchs who plunder the country, acting a repression against all
forms of protest and against minorities that the war has made harder. Today
Zelensky, in order to remain in power, is making debts and sells his country to
the US, the United Kingdom, the European Union in exchange of their military
support. Yet, the penetration of Western interests in Ukraine is far from being
only due to the Russian invasion of February 24: multinational agri-food
companies, many from the United States and one from Russia, control part of the
"granary" of Europe and its main commercial port in Odessa since over 10 years.

The consequences of this war are dramatic on both sides of the front. They are
disastrous also for the rest of Europe, with the increase in prices due to
speculation, the growing militarization and rearmament, the worsening of the
living conditions of millions of proletarians, including fear and violence, which
risk to become dangerous tools for authoritarian governments. This situation is
once again perceived in Europe, but it actually characterises most regions of the
world, paralleling the environmental devastation fostered by the logics of
profit, markets and states, which threaten the very life of the planet where we live.

The first commitment of those who oppose the war is the construction and
dissemination of mutual aid practices such as networks of solidarity from below
to fulfil the immediate needs of the people who suffer most from the consequences
of the conflict, being these food or medical support. There is also the need of
support networks for those who practice strikes, sabotage, desertion, such as
transnational networks for those who hide or flee from or over both sides of the
front. In this vein, we reject and fight to deconstruct the patriarchal and
domination models imposed by militarism that are endlessly repeated by the war
propaganda on official media and on social media as well, where centre stage is
always taken the same images of robust and young male fighters.

 From various parts it was suggested to take a stand by actually fighting for one
of the governments that make this war, as if taking sides for one or the other
were inevitable.

Some relics of Marxism think that they can support a minor imperialism in order
to defeat the prevailing threat that they identify with the "Western" one. But
the strategy of playing with imperialist powers to sharpen their contradictions,
like the alliance between workers’ movements and nationalist forces that
characterized Stalinism between the two world wars and after, led to destroy all
revolutionary perspective and to hinder all autonomous action of the exploited
and oppressed classes.

Other interpretations follow different approaches, assessing Russian imperialism
as a danger for the whole of Europe and beyond. These interpretations are also
endorsed by some components of libertarian orientation. Without questioning the
threat posed by Russia’s authoritarianism and militarism, we believe that it will
not be Russia’s military defeat in Ukraine that will prevent an authoritarian
turn in Western Europe. The authoritarian social processes that are evidently
dominant in Russia and in the OTSC countries are also being acted since years in
the European Union, and the war is now giving them a further acceleration.
Furthermore, "democracy" is based on the condition of someone’s privilege. The
vision that presents the European Union as a beacon of democracy, identifying
instead Russia, China and their satellites as the heirs of totalitarianism
combined with wild capitalism is the quintessence of a Westernism that does not
belong to us.

These are our positions, confirming our anti-militarism in an internationalist
and revolutionary perspective that should be concretely rooted in social
struggles and networks of solidarity, to create collective and libertarian ways
out from the vortex of war into which states and world capitalism throw us. This
is our contribution to the international anti-war debate. We think that one thing
must be clear above all: with or without weapons, to be effective, any fight must
be done and organized from below, outside the apparatuses of states, governments
and especially outside the armed forces.

Even the belligerent or co-belligerent governments are aware that the war will
imply massacres and devastation in the areas directly affected, but also misery,
unemployment and hunger in the rest of the world, even in Europe, even in the
United States. Governments are aware that the conditions are ripening for an
unprecedented social crisis, which is why they are making the brass bands of
militarism and nationalism play, to prevent the solidarity of the exploited and
oppressed classes.

Since governments are the promoters and beneficiaries of wars, to stop wars,
governments must be afraid of popular movements, because the only limit to the
whim of each government is the fear that popular movements can instil in it.
Opposition to the war is part of our daily commitment, starting from the
denunciation and boycott of the productions of death and from the criticism and
deconstruction of militarist rhetoric, starting from militarist education and
language at all levels. We must stand against all wars and all armies deploying
an intersectional strategy that identifies and counters the connections between
militarism and other forms of oppression such as patriarchy, racism, capitalism
and all kinds of chauvinism, through collective actions as well as personal
relationships.

Only the action of the exploited classes can stop the war by boycotting war
productions, by refusing to construct, trade and transport weapons and all
instruments of death, by participating in the opposition movements to military
plants and bases, and by promoting strikes at the national and international
level against war and the war economy. The anarchist movement participates in
this struggles, in different ways according to the circumstances, by criticising
militarist and nationalist ideologies, constructing grass-roots associations and
networks from below, practicing direct action, supporting all forms of refusal,
desertion and objection to the massacres promoted by capitalism and states.

We are more than ever convinced of the validity of the anarchist principle that
means must be consistent with ends. There are no good wars or just wars, and in
times of growing nationalist and sovereignist craziness we believe that we must
never side in any way with governments or take part in wars between states and
imperial blocs. People must never die or kill for territorial sovereignty. Wars
are all criminal and armies (including their auxiliary corps) are all instruments
of exploitation, patriarchy and more or less "legitimate" state domination over
territories and over the bodies of individuals. We do not recognize any of these
territorial legitimacies and we are not willing to fight for any of them.

History shows that wars are traditionally fought to hinder the action of the
exploited classes for their own emancipation, which is why it is paramount for
anarchism to mobilise now against the war, outside and against all military
institutions. Our strength lies first in the circulation of ideas and in the
defence of spaces for the production and circulation of critical thought,
promoting the unification of pacifist and anti-militarist movements in a common
struggle against governments. The ability of the anarchist movement to be
coherent in the fight against war is the way to activate libertarian practices,
organization and ideals among the exploited and oppressed classes that are the
first to suffer the consequences of wars. On this basis, a new agency will be
possible to provide a different solution to the crisis, looking forward to
building a libertarian society.

Italian Anarchist Federation - FAI

[document presented at the XXXI Congress - Empoli June 2022 and ratified in the
following weeks]

https://www.federazioneanarchica.org/

Altre Mozioni e documenti
https://www.federazioneanarchica.org/archivio/archivio_2022/20220722manifestonowar_en.html

https://federazioneanarchica.org/archivio/archivio_2022/20220722manifestonowar_en.html
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